Snowmaking team at Vail improves efficiency, gets ready to open on Nov. 11

It might be hard to thing about snow in all this heat Colorado is experiencing, but it's already on the minds of staff at Vail. They have started doing maintenance work on their snowmaking machines in preparation for the upcoming ski season in the Rocky Mountains.

The team at Vail is confident it will get an unusually early start on the skiing and boarding this fall. According to the resort, opening day is set for Nov. 11. Last year the resort opened on Nov. 12.

Kate Schifafi, Director of Mountain Operations at Vail, told CBS News Colorado when she was loading up people on a gondola on Day 1 last year, there "was a guy running in shorts" nearby.

Last year's start date came despite the fact that Mother Nature was not generous with much natural snowfall early in the season. It can all be attributed to the snow guns. The whole system at Vail got an update 3 years ago, but each year since, the team has gotten better at improving its efficiency.

"Our goal every year is to make less snow and have people think we've never made as much in history," Schifafi said.  

A lot of thought goes into the locations where the snow guns are placed on the runs on the mountain. The obvious goal there is to place the snow where it will last and do the most good. Schifafi says that means a lot of offseason work "digging holes, moving guns, putting things where they didn't used to be ... maybe new installs."

"The whole idea is to say we want to maximize what we have. We don't want to waste a single drop of snow," she said.

"We want exactly the quantity where we want it, when we want it and not a bit more."

Vail has 5,317 total acres of skiable terrain. It has 195 trails and 31 lifts, but don't expect to find everything open until much later in the ski season when natural snowfall has brought a much bigger snow base to the region.