Can This Ski Area Go All-Green?

The owners of this cross-country ski area are finding new ways to reduce its carbon footprin; From a solar-powered inn to DIY snowmaking systems and now, to inventing an electric groomer. By bittersweet truth than Eli Enman. In the two decades since his parents, Dave and Sandy, purchased an 880-acre plot in Huntington and gave the job of general manager to the newly graduated Middlebury College student, Eli has helped his father turn the rundown building on the property into a picturesque inn and cleared and excavated 32 kilometers’ worth of ski trails and singletrack. In the process, Eli has earned a reputation for being the salt of the earth: an honest, authentic, kind guy who fields challenges without fuss. And Sleepy Hollow under Enman’s leadership has become an outdoor recreation industry leader in clean energy.

Eighty percent of the power that runs the business comes from solar panels, and the expected addition of 30 kilowatts of solar power next summer will make Sleepy Hollow 100 percent solar net metered. In the parking lot are two electric vehicle charging stations; each season passholder gets 20 free hours of charging a year. Most of the company’s fleet is electric, as are the cars owned by Enman, his parents, and his sister, Molly, also an innovator as the founder of the Equal Distance cross country running movement.

The parking lot at Sleepy Hollow Inn, Ski and Bike Center is dark and empty, the Nordic skiers whose SUVs filled the lot all day are home eating dinner. The only movement is at the back of the lot, where for most of the day four men have been working through one setback after another to coax a new 16,000-pound Pisten Bully into operation. Loose wires. Malfunctions. Missing parts. Dead batteries. A close call with an icy ditch.

The trail groomer is much like the one that ran over actor Jeremy Renner in a highly publicized accident, with one big, badass difference: The diesel engine in this one just underwent a $50,000 backyard conversion, quite possibly turning the vehicle into the first full-sized battery-powered snow groomer in America.

But that’s only if it works. Which, as every innovator knows, is never a given.

No one is better acquainted with that

Enman is working to mobilize the snowmaking mini-guns set into the ground every 200 to 300 feet along three kilometers of wooded trails by mounting them on wheels or skis. (The mini guns themselves are groundbreaking, enabling a more even distribution of snow with far less effort.) Also brewing is a plan to trade the inn’s backup oil furnace for geothermal heat, to complement the inn’s air-source heat pumps and further slash carbon emissions.

The business is more profitable than ever, and keeping it running takes all Enman’s energy and ingenuity. So what inspires him to keep upping the ante? Former SpaceX aeronautical engineer John McNeil, whose daughter learned to ski at Sleepy Hollow and who lends a hand whenever he can just because he enjoys it, thinks the answer lies in Enman’s risk tolerance. “When you’re an engineer, everything has to be perfect at the first test,” McNeil says. “The last vehicle conversion I did took six years.” He laughs. “But Eli…he just tries to get something right on the first try. That’s the secret to his innovation. That’s how he does all the stuff he does. His desire to do things outweighs his fear of failure.”

The Enmans have solar power, EV chargers and even a DIY snowmaking system at Sleepy Hollow. The next step? Turn this bad boy Pisten Bully into an electric vehicle.

Eli has been making bold moves since childhood: Building an outdoor shower at 12, using a kitchen spatula instead of a trowel to lay the cement. Making his own snowshoes in high school. Rebuilding and repairing his first car at 17 out of the front end of one convertible MG and the rear end of another. Studying the ocean bottom on a research ship in Antarctica. Biking solo to Detroit, Michigan, after his freshman year of college.

“It’s just kind of the way Eli lives his life,” says his mother. In truth, all the Enmans live that way. Case in point: No one in the family had experience running an inn or a ski area before Dave and Sandy Enman sank their life savings into purchasing and renovating Sleepy Hollow in 1999.

Days after the initial push to make it operational, the battery-powered groomer remains parked. While Enman was turning it, the $120,000 machine blew a fuse. The new fuse won’t arrive for another five days. He is philosophical about the latest delay. But more snow is coming so hours of grooming are ahead, winter weddings are scheduled, and his role as both father of two and assistant Nordic coach for the local high school takes up hours a day. Will Enman prove right to try to build his own clean energy groomer faster and at lower cost than waiting until the $300,000 models being prototyped in Europe are available? Or will the setbacks trump his improvisational skill, leaving him with a costly monument to the risks of innovation?

The answer will come in the next few months. But Enman’s track record shows that the real risk lies in betting against him. u

Innovations

The New Greener Snow Machines

Snowmachines are going electric. In March 2022, Governor Phil Scott held a press conference on the VAST snowmobile trails near the Waterbury Reservoir to promote electric snowmobiles from the Canadian company Taiga, which is entirely devoted to making fully electric snowmobiles and personal watercraft. The 180-hp Taiga Ekko Mountain, for instance, can reach speeds of 60 mph in 3 seconds, and has a range of about 60 to 80 miles (depending on use and temperatures) before it needs to be recharged. Cost starts at close to $18,000.

Moon Bikes, a tiny company born in the French Alps, introduced the “first electric snowbike” — an electric-powered version of a dirt bike, but for snow, to the U.S in 2021. The company is now offering demos at Sugarbush Resort over Presidents’ Day weekend. Moon Bikes (below) recently announced the 2023-24 launch of the Connected MoonBike app that will enable users to track numerous aspects of their rides, showing trail maps, altitude, distance, speed, duration, battery level, and more. The bikes have a top speed of 26 mph and a threehour range. Cost starts at close to $9,000. —L.L.