Crushing for Corduroy: A Night in the Life of a Snow Cat Driver

On a Friday afternoon in early April, photographer Joe Klementovich and I stand at the base of South Peak at Loon Mountain Resort in Lincoln, waiting for our snow chariot to arrive. After about an hour standing in the cold drizzle, I wonder how much longer we should wait before calling it a no-show.

My faith in Casey Surette is restored moments later when a mighty metal beast appears from around the bend with Surette at the controls, leaving a trail of belt tracks in the wet snow.

During the day, Surette shreds the blacks and blues at Loon on his snowboard. At night, after the lifts have ceased operating and his riding buddies are kicking back beers in the Bunyan Room, he joins the grooming crew to prepare the trails for the morning’s first chair, when early arrivals are rewarded with downhill runs on fresh corduroy.

“It’s a job I wanted to do since I was a kid,” says Surette, 44, a Thornton native who has worked for Loon for 12 years and lives in Lincoln. “Being able to snowboard during the day and work at night has always been a childhood goal.”

Casey Surette pulls a steel cable from the snowcat to secure it to a post on a black diamond trail.

Surette’s rig, the Prinoth Bison X Wincher, weighs more than 20,000 pounds. With its front blade and tiller attachments, it stretches about 30 feet long and stands about 10 feet high. The Italian company that manufactures the groomer at plants in Italy, Canada and Germany prices the snowcat and tiller combo at $550,000 — second only to the ski lifts as the priciest ride on the mountain.

This year marks Surette’s eighth on the grooming team. During the off-season, he works in excavation and landscaping, counting down the time before he can return to Loon, where in a good year — “good” being lots of snow — he’ll rack up more than 100 days on the mountain.

At the peak of the season in January or February, hitching a ride with Surette at 5 p.m. would mean traveling in certain darkness. This late in the season, we have enough time for Klementovich to shoot some daylight images before the temperature drops and the drizzle turns into snow.

The rig’s front tiller chops up snow while the rear attachment leaves fresh tracks of corduroy.

The Bison is equipped with two passenger seats on either side of the operator controls — just enough room for our mission. The only sacrifice would be on Surette’s part: Since part of his role tonight would be narrating the ride, he would have to mute his usual soundtrack on the groomer’s premium sound system.

It’s easy to see why Surette might want to blast some tunes in the cabin while tackling these mountain trails, if only to drown out the rumble and hum. The drive feels like a carnival ride, especially when the rig is riding straight up and down black diamond runs, crushing chunky snow boulders in its path and flattening them into a surface pliable enough for skis and snowboards.

All the while, Surette is handling “joystick-in-joystick” and touchscreen controls that “allows simultaneous blade movement, making it easier for operators to push large piles of snow and cut razor-sharp edges,” according to its manufacturer.

The warmth of late winter can transform those steep black diamond runs into sheets of ice as the temperature drops below freezing at night. 

“When it’s icy, it takes a couple of nights of us cultivating the snow, breaking it up. It depends on how icy it is,” Surette says as we make our way up the mountain.

Mike Cote, left, accompanies Surette on his rounds at Loon.

To keep from sliding down, Surette tethers his rig to a stationary post anchored by the side of the trails, first on Jobber and later on Lower Twitcher, both black diamond runs. The Prinoth is equipped with an automatic winch that includes a giant spool of cable long enough to stretch all the way to the base of the mountain. 

Surette doesn’t need thatmuch length, but the distance he covers downhill before he turns the rig around to make his way back up underscores the level of care required to prepare Loon’s system of 73 trails across three peaks before each day begins.

This late in the season, when the early evening temperature is hovering around 35 degrees, ice has not been an issue.

Surette inspects his rig during a stop.

“Springtime snow is just like driving around in mashed potatoes. There’s no real traction,” Surette says.

While he is plenty familiar with those trails, they can be disorienting at night, even with the assistance of plenty of lighting installed on the vehicle. One foggy night, he felt like he was upside down.

“Sometimes you can’t even tell where you are,” he says. “You have to take the spotlight and hunt for the sides of the trail. I think I’ve gotten lost in the middle of Grand Junction.” 

But he always finds his way back down. These days, he’s working the 4-to-midnight shift. Plenty of time to get some sleep afterward and be back on the slopes for first chair.