On a roll...

I recently read an article in Skiing Heritage about the use of hand-held snow rollers that were used in the grooming of ski slopes up until the late fifties in America and well into the mid-sixties in the French Alps. I remember this because my brother Gaston was, in the early sixties, what was called a “pisteur-secouriste” which amounted to doing the combined job of snow groomer and ski patrolman. As I recently called him on his 70th birthday, I asked him about his experience riding these gravity-powered groomers.

On a snow day, the crew would catch the 7 am tram at Le Pleney, in Morzine, France, prepare the heavy equipment and begin work in team of two; one in the front, the other in the back. On intermediate slopes the job was fairly easy depending on the amount of fresh snow received; if there was too much of it, the first run, called the “B,” a long, meandering beginner run would take a good three hour to complete as the first team of rollers could come to a screeching halt in some of the flatter sections of the run. The second team by slightly overlapping their predecessors' tracks might carry a little bit more speed and wouldn't have to pull on the rollers as much in order to keep them moving. Steeper slopes were a different story altogether as speed control was a huge problem, especially for the man placed in front who relied on his rear buddy to "stay the course" and had to deal with the extra challenge of being blinded by all the snow plastered by the roller right into his face. The rollers were equipped with some internal brakes that were actuated by lowering the the two pairs of holding shafts, requiring at times very high force, but the weight and the momentum of the whole speeding device could become so significant that high-speed crashes were not uncommon. In fact, the best ways to keep speed under check remained an "athletic" snowplow as well as some powerful side-slipping...

The packing job was also far from perfect, as it depended a lot on snow depth, overall humidity and temperature; the five to seven hundred pounds of the rollers were still relatively light, and were just making the run passable for the first skiers of the day. Once packed, the snow couldn't be changed or tilled by these primitive rollers as this is the case today with the much heavier and powerful machinery. In the nascent Avoriaz ski resort, steel grids were passed on the run to breakup the crust, but never came close to true "grooming" as we know it today. Upon arrival at the base, the shaft assembly was taken apart and loaded back into the tram and sometime on a double-chair, along with the roller for another grooming session or would be left at the top ready for a future snow storm. Smaller rollers with only one set of holding shafts were also available for grooming smaller areas, including the uphill surface lift track.

The end of the sixties saw the end of grooming with hand-held rollers at Le Pleney, as the Ratrac snow groomer, an adaptation of the Thiokol snow cat, made its debut in the Alps and raised the art of grooming to a totally different level...