Learn more ABOUT
ME
A Long Passion For Skiing
At just 2 years old, skiing was embedded into my lifestyle. Being from Waterville, Maine, meant skiing wasn't just down-the-road. Every weekend my parents would load up the car on Friday night and off we went to Sugarloaf nearly every weekend from early December to mid April. We did this up until moving to Vermont for higher education at NVU-Lyndon in the fall 2016. That same fall I began working at Stowe Mountain reosrt. in 2020, I took a full-time year round career at Stowe. My fiancé Caroline and I, now live in Waterbury, VT
Sugar Peak Model Ski Area
Skiing introduced me into the ski industry. What turned it into a passion was my interest for learning, creating, and improving an assortment of model ski lifts which started in the 4th grade. At just 10 years old, those ski lifts turned into a massive model ski resort known as "Sugar Peak", a combination of Sugarloaf (home mountain) and Jay Peak (after a 2010 visit). The resort featured 4 fully functional chairlifts and a tram. Each chairlift was modeled after different manufacturers over time. Doppelmayr, Garventa/CTEC, Hall, Leitner Poma, and Yan were all present on the resort at one time or another. Each lift featured a tension system and drive with stop buttons at the top and bottom. Since 2021, I have been building a fully functional detachable model with a programmed ESP-32 micro controller to run it. 3v controls power 2 twin 9v motors.
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Birch Express Rope Tow
In 2018, while at NVU-Lyndon, the lift functions class constructed a rope tow using an old toro wheel horse my father had sitting around In Maine. It was a simple machine, at 200ft long with 40 vertical feet, it provided the campus with lift accessed skiing for the first time since the winter of 1970! In 2021, that rope tow was brought to Stowe Vermont to establish a private ski slope. The new rope tow underwent enhancement in the summer of 2021 and now services 100 vertical feet of skiing on a 450-foot run. Birch express uses a manual sears lawn mower transaxle to shift between gears so that torque can be adjusted based on the clientele. It typically runs at 400 FPM (Feet per minute) for ski operations and 300 FPM for sledding. This transaxle allows for the engine to be idled with the stop gate circuit disconnected. The rope tow is engaged using a PTO belt which is the same PTO for mowing grass in the summer. Each spring, the lawn mower is driven off its stand and onto a mower deck, where it continues to mow grass when not a rope tow.
Backyard Snowmaking
In 2012, a full backyard system was created. 200 feet of in-ground pipe, 3 hydrants, 2 tower guns, 1 land gun and a custom 3 stage pump system was built over the course of 5 years and counting! The system could sustainably run 7.5 GPM and max out at 10 GPM (gallons per minute) with 10 CFM (cubic feet a minute). It costs $3.45 an hour to run the equipment based off of Waterville, Maine utility costs in 2018. The equipment is 100% portable and was put to the test in the fall of 2018 when it successfully ran for 12 hours and buried a backyard hill in Lyndon, Vermont on the earliest snowmaking run to date, October 18th and 19th.
