Editor's note: We recommend listening to this piece.
On a recent Wednesday morning, Chad Avery is out on the slopes at Pats Peak Ski Area before sunrise. He and other snow grooming crews at the mountain in Henniker begin late at night and groom until the morning. Avery usually works the final shift before the ski area opens for the day, around 8:30 or 9 a.m.
“Our job is kind of to put the snow back uphill,” Avery says. “Everybody, every skier and snowboarder will move it downhill throughout the day, so you kind of learn where there's a surplus of snow and you can take it and put it back up on the trail.”
Similar scenes play out across the state, making sure the trails are ready for the estimated 2 million people who visit New Hampshire ski areas each winter. At Pats Peak, Avery and other snow groomers do all of this using a snowcat, a kind of lightweight bulldozer. It’s got a large blade in the front and a tiller at the back.
As Avery explains, the blade moves the snow around, loosening and leveling it. The tiller chews up the snow and turns it into powder. Then, the flaps behind it comb through the snow to turn it into corduroy — that’s what skiers call the freshly groomed snow with lines in them, because it looks just like corduroy pants.
That’s all controlled by a joystick and a lot of buttons. Avery says there’s about 20 or 30 configurations alone when he hits the shift button. It’s a technical job. His hands are constantly busy: steering, clicking buttons, even as he speaks.
“[It took me] five seasons, six seasons before I was comfortable, where I don't have to white-knuckle the grip [and] the handles,” he says, “where I can actually look at you and talk to you right now and not freak out.”
For 20 minutes, he drives in loose circles on a gently sloped beginner trail, flattening out mounds of snow. It’s slow, detailed work.
Avery has been snow grooming for 20 seasons now. But he spent his winters snowboarding at Pats Peak long before then. His first job there was as a snowboard instructor, then when the ski area built a new terrain park back in 2002, Avery volunteered to help set it up.
“Eventually, I got my way into a [snow]cat,” he says. “It took a few years before they trusted a snowboarder to operate a quarter million dollar machine.”
In his day-to-day work, Avery works on the terrain parks, so he’s technically a cutter, a specialist snow groomer that builds and maintains the parks. In that role, he gets a lot of creative freedom to design and build all the jumps and features, like boxes and metal rails, where snowboarders and skiers can perform tricks.
Building or rebuilding a park can take days. The cutters need to push and pack a lot of snow to create ramps and jumps, some as large as 40 feet. Avery says he sees the layout for the terrain park in his head and then just builds it.
“No blueprints. That's all right up here,” he says, pointing to his brain. “It’s my medium. Snow is my art medium.”
Toward the end of his shift, Avery’s smoothing out the trails and patching up the ruts, leaving behind the nice corduroy finish that skiers and snowboarders love.
“Beautiful, huh? It's really hard to watch the skiers mess it up after you've taken so much time and made everything perfect,” he says.
By the time the morning sun is high in the sky, Pats Peak is opening for the day. The lifts start spinning, and as people walk up to the mountain, Avery’s heading down on his snowcat.
“I feel like if I make nice corduroy and people have fun in the park, I did my job,” he says.
