Time to ski on “yellow snow”?

Next to the Big Sky ski resort in Montana is a private ski resort, known as the Yellowstone Club, that counts celebrities like Justin Timberlake and Bill Gates as its member.

Like most American ski resorts it now needs to make snow in order to guarantee it can operate, but instead of using culinary water, it wants to be greener by recycling its wastewater into artificial snow. That’s new and creative! 

The idea is being criticized though, because it appears that typically, according to a recent UNESCO study, treated sewage can only remove about half of the chemical products like pharmaceutical and other drugs from the water, and as it turns into snow and eventually melts, it can seep into streams and pollute their surroundings. 

By trying to be greener, the Yellowstone Club wants to add more colors to it trail map and perhaps offer a few brown and a beige ski runs in addition to its blue and black trails, next ski season, if its permit application, currently under review with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality gets the… green light! 

In the meantime, in the event Bill Gates invites me to ski with him in Montana, I’ll remember my mom’s admonition: “Don’t eat yellow snow!”