We go behind the scenes with Mt. Bachelor’s grooming crew in a record, stellar snow year

(update: adding video)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- With over 430 inches of snowfall this year, KTVZ News takes a look behind the scenes of how Mt. Bachelor maintains their trails for skiers and snowboarders.

A snowcat weighs about 25,000 pounds and moves at about six miles per hour. It's what creates that perfect corduroy look on the slopes for skiers and boarders. 

"There's three main parts here. Snowcat, you have the blade. So that will smooth the snow surface and make the snow where you want it to go," says Ben Suratt, the grooming manager at Mt. Bachelor. "And then your tracks run it over and help process down the snow. And then in the back of the cat, you have your tiller, which has a bar that spins. And then the mats on the back is what actually is the corduroy that you see."

Suratt has been grooming Mt. Bachelor and operating snowcats since 2004.

“We have 18 snowcats in our fleet. And between alpine grooming and great parks, we probably have 12 to 15 out on the hill," says Suratt.

He says his team grooms a standard of about 40 trails per night, and the responsibility is never-ending.

"It's a lot of pre-planning. So during the day, it's a lot of requests skiing around and seeing what needs to be done," says Suratt. "And then getting requests from other departments. So there's a certain cut. Need extra work? Does a run need extra work because the access road needs extra work, and then coordinating that based on the staffing."

Responsibilities can range from digging lifts out of the snow to clearing access roads for other Mt. Bachelor resource teams, and grooming 90 percent of trails.

Staff operates on two shifts. The first is from 4pm to midnight and the other from 12am to 9am.

"It can be really dangerous. You have to get out. You work on your cat or do whatever for your cat, For the night. In the dark, in the winter snow conditions," said Suratt.

Darkness can pose some risk, but snow cats are equipped with high tech equipment to help operators navigate the mountain.

"It really helps with navigation. They can tell where there's a lot of snow or there's not much snow. Stuff that maybe took years and years and years to learn from where we can take snow from and low snow years and add things up. Just look at the screen," says Suratt.

Training to operate a snowcat takes about a month of ride-alongs with someone else. The following few months entail riding on your own. But to truly master driving, it takes a few years. 

Suratt says, "That couple of years is just getting enough to, like, make your own decisions, based on what the snow is doing, so you don't get stuck. You know, dig holes, figure out solutions to your problem."

He continued, "A really good background to get into running a snowcat is just having the passion to ski or snowboard, and then we can do the training from there. But having the passion and desire to want to be in a machine and be in the mountains."

Suratt says one of his favorite aspects of the job is the people he's worked with and seeing the machinery evolve over time.

I asked Suratt, “What's one of the biggest things that you learned in your 20 years of doing this?”

Suratt replied: “Just keep having fun. At the end of the day, it's work. But it's also like an awesome place to work, and an awesome piece of machinery to operate.” 

The grooming team has been hard at work all season long, with Mt. Bachelor hitting above-average snowfall. In March alone, the base depth reached 157 inches, surpassing the 2012 depth record. The current base depth of 146 inches is among the top five deepest base depths in the country.

With the spring pass now valid as of this week, Mt. Bachelor is excited for what spring skiing will hold.