In the early 70’s, I was involved with designing and building The World’s Largest Dollar Volume Ski Area Restaurant in Vail Colorado. The main facility called MIDVAIL had huge potential, but until our team redid it (in 120 days) it was mostly an embarrassment. As part of the remodel we specified a waterproof carpet to cope with the volume of water (snow) brought in on skier’s boots.
PowerBond carpet by Collins & Aikman, I’ll never forget it. In order to keep the manufacture’s 10-year guarantee, the carpet had to be cleaned every 30 days with a Steam-Ex carpet cleaning machine.
No one else wanted to do it, so I volunteered to buy a machine and clean Vail’s four restaurants once a month. They’d installed PowerBond in their three other restaurants when they saw how great it was.
Getting me and the machine up or down the mountain was no problem. Either gondola or Snowcat worked great. My buddies on the cats moved the machine from one restaurant to the next when needed. But getting me down the mountain at 2 AM after working in a steam bath for 8 or 10 hours was another matter. I had assumed I could use a snowmobile, but riding in blizzard conditions with zero visibility was inviting disaster.
Necessity being the mother, etc., I decided to try walking down. To my amazement, it was just about as fast, not chilly at all, and much safer. Even the Snowcat drivers who worked all night grooming the slopes were amazed. It was a 2 to 5 mile walk depending on which restaurant I was doing, and the walk down was actually kinda therapeutic.
I wouldn’t recommend getting soaking wet, boots and all, at 11,200 ft. elevation, then stepping out into the -20 degree F (OK, -40 with wind chill) blizzard for the several mile walk down the mountain. As you might expect, I had ample time to contemplate why I warn’t dead yet.
The answer was something called ENTHALPY.
Calling on my limited knowledge of thermodynamic systems, I recalled that if you wanted to raise (or lower) 1 Gram of water 1 degree C, it requires that you gain (or lose )1 Calorie.
But to cross the threshold from liquid water to ice requires that 1 gram of water to lose 80 calories. There are almost 5 grams of water in a teaspoon. Those hidden calories are sometimes called latent heat, or its close relative ENTHALPY.
Those many grams of water in my clothes and boots were trying desperately to turn themselves to ice and throwing those 80 calories per gram my way. Added to the heat I generated by walking, I kept toasty and warm!
There is a product on the market that illustrates that phenomenon, called WALL O WATER.
Legend has it some guy in Utah was anxious to get his tomato plants in the ground, but he knew there were some freezing nights ahead, so he cobbled together a plastic water enclosure. He was counting on the water releasing latent heat at night, while trying to turn into ice. That kept his plants from freezing and he called it “Wall O Water.” He’s been in business ever since, and now has a few competitors, too.
You’ve probably experienced ENTHALPY going the other way, solid to liquid, with a home ice cream freezer. When you dump salt onto the ice, you FORCE it to turn into water, and it pulls that 80 calories per gram from wherever it can, which happens to be your ice cream mix, to turn the ice into cold salt water and your liquid mix into solid ice cream.
I kept that carpet cleaning job for three winters and made more money, with less work and less financial risk, than I ever did as a general contractor. There’s that old cliché “Find the job no one else wants,” and it turned out to be true.
Walking down the mountain at night in the dead silence, I often heard animals, which I think were foxes, hunting snow weasels and other small animals. The bears were all asleep, and the cougars were at much lower altitudes hunting mule deer. Or at least I hoped so.
I developed my favorite “runs” down from each restaurant. It’s common in the climbing world to ski across snow fields using your boots as skis. It’s called glissading.
I got fairly adept at the technique, plus I had all the runs to myself. If the snow was right, the slope, the moonlight and starlight were right, I could do S turns, slalom turns, even a crude “helicopter.” Jump into the air, rotate 360 degrees and come down going the same direction.
Occasionally I got to witness a phenomenon known as deposition, where a whole cloud of water vapor turns directly into ice crystals, skipping the liquid phase.
A cubic centimeter (1 gram) of water in ice form requires 80 calories to melt, 100 calories to reach boiling point, and another 540 calories to vaporize, making a total of 720 calories. For deposition to occur, that gram of water vapor has to lose the whole 720 calories, turning to ice in an instant. Diamonds form right before your eyes, and dance in the unstable air.… it’s a magic show you’ll never forget!
Going the other way, ice into vapor in one step, is called sublimation.
Obviously, the air temperature has to be very cold to make it work. Ain’t ENTHALPY great!
Those were good times, but you could never do that today. Vail is now a giant corporation and their liability lawyers would go nuts. They’d probably say something like “You are lucky to be alive!”
Until next time, thanks for listening.
Duane
Great stuff Duane. I just tracked down Nic Stone