THEY came by the dozens, drawn to a white oasis in a land of green and brown. A high school teacher and eight students drove halfway across Vermont. A lawyer made the trip from his home, an hour away. Three vans pulled into the dirt parking lot at noon and disgorged 22 Bates College students, bleary-eyed after the four-hour drive from Maine.
"Just get out and have fun, and get on snow," urged Becky Woods, head coach of the Bates cross-country ski team.
The irresistible prospect of snow had lured these cross-county skiing enthusiasts to the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in northern Vermont on a chilly mid-November day. Beneath a blue sky, there wasn't a trace of white in the trees or the parking lot. But nearby a mountain of snow stood 15 feet tall, and a ribbon of white crossed a green field, spilled down a short hill, circled back on itself and headed up the hill again.
It was opening day at the center, whether winter was ready or not.
About a year ago, Craftsbury joined the growing ranks of northern New England cross-country ski areas using artificial snow, long a staple of their wealthier downhill brethren. Spooked by fears of climate change, tired of on-again, off-again winters, and eager to lure visitors with promises of guaranteed snow, Craftsbury and other Northeast cross-country destinations are hoping to compensate for nature's shortcomings and to offer skiers a longer season.
Most American cross-country, or Nordic, areas are still all-natural, particularly smaller ones with tight budgets and areas in colder places like the Rockies. Some New England areas farther south have used artificial snow for more than a decade. Now, it's the trail systems in northern New England — the heartland of Northeast cross-country skiing — that are following their lead.
"With global warming and everything else, we can't rely on Mother Nature to give us everything we need," said Matt Skehan, director of the Parks and Recreation department in Waterville, Me., where the town is about to turn the switch on a $385,000 snow-making system.
Scientists have observed a striking decline in Northeast winters. The number of days with snow on the ground in a typical year shrank by more than a month between 1965 and 2005, according to a study by University of New Hampshire researchers that appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 2008. And many scientists are warning that it's likely to get worse. For Northeast cross-country ski centers, snow-making is creating two camps: those with the technology, and those who wish they could afford it. The meager snow last winter offered a stark lesson in the split between ski centers with the technology and those without. Craftsbury, already one of the Northeast's premier Nordic ski areas, became a refuge for skiers, while 40 miles to the southwest, in the foothills of the Green Mountains, the small, family-owned Sleepy Hollow Inn, Ski and Bike Center lay dormant most of the winter. Now, the owners are installing the first part of a snow-making system that could eventually churn out enough snow to cover 1.5 kilometers.
"We'd been thinking about it off and on, but the real clincher was last winter," said Eli Enman, the center's co-owner.
Thirty miles away, the Rikert Nordic Center, home to Middlebury College's cross-country racing team, plans to open a five-kilometer loop this winter, a project fed by artificial snow. In Stowe, the Trapp Family Lodge, the region's most upscale resort dedicated to cross-country skiing, began making snow in 2007, and Pineland Farms, near Portland, Me., started last winter.
Snow-making, however, doesn't appeal to all skiers. The results, particularly at the start and end of the season, entice only true die-hards, like the ones who showed up at Craftsbury in mid-November. Unlike the extensive snow-making operations at downhill resorts that can blanket much of a mountain, the loop at Craftsbury was just slightly longer than a standard 400-meter running track. The crowded line of skiers marching up the hill resembled a freeway at rush hour. A week later the loop had grown to a little over one kilometer.
These kinds of limitations help explain the reluctance to embrace snow-making at the Jackson Ski Touring Center in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Many skiers come for a trip through a winter wonderland, not just for a workout, said Thom Perkins, executive director of the Jackson Ski Touring Foundation. Still, the center is warily considering snow-making.
"The decision would have a huge economic impact on the organization, and not necessarily on the positive side," Mr. Perkins said, referring to the cost of installing and running a snow-making system.
Then there's the environmental cost. Some skiers see artificial snow as a blemish on cross-country's image as a wholesome, green alternative to the glitz and machinery of downhill skiing. As the industry frets about climate change, it faces the discomfort of turning to an energy-sucking technology.
Last year at Craftsbury, for instance, it took 2,600 gallons of diesel fuel to power the enormous snow fans that are used to create snow. Lucas Schulz, Craftsbury's Jack Frost, recently demonstrated how he creates winter — a process that involves three fans over eight feet tall; a 200-kilowatt diesel generator and up to 150,000 gallons of water in a single night. When the temperature drops to the mid-20s, water sprayed into the fans shoots 40 feet into the air, transforming into an arc of fine-grained snow. The snow accumulates in huge piles, which are then pushed and prodded into 18-inch-deep trails using fuel-guzzling snow-grooming machines that look like sleek bulldozers. Later in the year, an excavator will carve chunks from the snow pile and load them into a dump truck, to be hauled to various parts of the trail system.
"In a sport that prides itself in being green, it is difficult to countenance," Fred Griffin said, referring to Craftsbury's snow-making. He is a high school English teacher from Fairfax, Vt., and a founder of the New England Nordic Ski Association, a nonprofit that oversees the region's amateur racing circuit. Still, Mr. Griffin trekked to Craftsbury for opening day, along with a pack of students from his school's cross-country skiing club, eager to feel their skis gliding on snow, even if artificial.
Despite its increasing reliance on snow-making, Craftsbury is trying to build its image as an eco-friendly institution, an effort that is reflected in the name of its elite cross-country program: the Green Racing Project. Skiers swoosh past eight enormous solar panels that produce enough electricity to offset one-third of the power that the center uses. Mr. Schulz points to steps the center is taking to blunt the environmental toll of its snow-making. Heat from the diesel generator will soon warm water to heat several buildings and tap water. Eventually, they hope to switch to pure biodiesel for the generator and 20 percent biodiesel for the grooming machines.
"It's kind of too bad that it's becoming a necessity," Mr. Schulz said of the snow-making.
Such thoughts, however, didn't seem to intrude on the giddiness of the Bates students as they chased one another around the little loop, hurtled down the hill and otherwise enjoyed the only cross-country skiing in New England on that clear November day. Maybe they would be sick of the circuit after a few days, said 18-year-old Margaret Pope, a first-year student from McCall, Idaho.
"But I can't really complain," she said. "Snow is snow."
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