Minks feels his way through a ceaseless torrent of white toward the snowgun. He bends over the hose and touches the connecting valve as carefully as the way one touches a still animal that may or may not be alive.

Snowmaking hazards are real. Work is usually done in the dead of night. The "guns" can be located in precarious notches on the mountain. Water pressures are sometimes over 650 pounds per square inch. (An average home has 30 to 60 pounds per square inch.) Several years back, Homewood Mountain Resort's Woody Turner assumed a hose locking onto a snowgun was safe until it blew off, egg shelling his face and nearly killing him.

Few people in general, let alone those of increasing age, work in a more hazardous a job in such unsavory conditions. Minks, past 50 years of age, declares himself to be the world's oldest snowmaker, and the Alpine Meadows employee might be right.

Snowmakers are both the ultimate ski professionals and the ultimate ski bums; they are working-class heroes who are a breed unto themselves. Their raison d'etre is aiding Mother Nature in blanketing mountain resorts white. Without them, especially in light snow years, snowmakers are sometimes the difference between Happy Holidays or resort owners heading mortgage lenders.

To Minks, a former world-class mountaineer whose climbing accomplishments include India's Thalay Sager, Switzerland's Eiger, and the first ice ascent of the Silver Strand in Yosemite, the burly conditions are just part of the job. One of twenty snowmakers Alpine Meadows employs each season, Minks doesn't mind the hazards or responsibilities of the job.

"I don't think the public understands how much work goes into making snow. We pride ourselves in what we do. The work is always an adventure. I love it," he says.

"It's a very physical job and a lot of hard work," says Sandy McPherson, who as Minks' boss has directed snowmaking at Alpine Meadows for ten years. "The rewards are few but the camaraderie is great. In today's industry snowmaking is as important as any other aspect of the resort."

Rachel Woods, Alpine Meadows' Director of Media Communications and a long-time veteran of the ski industry, agrees. "It's incredibly expensive. We budget close to $600,000 for snowmaking annually and we're not even one of the bigger players. But when Mother Nature doesn't cooperate, especially early in the season, snowmaking can save a resort," says Woods.

Advancements have come a long way since 1966 when Ski Incline founder, Lugg Foeger, installed the first rudimentary, but effective, snowmaking system in the West. Making snow is no longer as simple as pumping water through pipes and spraying it into the air. Over the years, it has become an art and a science. Computerized systems allow snowmakers to respond to sudden changes in the wind and air temperatures. Advances in snowmaking guns make for better water disbursement, which in turn allows the ice crystal to form easier.

"Today, you'll have variable-speed pumping systems, water cooling systems, automated digital monitoring, and long-term tracking performance read-outs on computerized screens," explains McPherson. "Depending on outdoor humidity and "hang time" (time the vapor drop is suspended in the air), most modern systems can make snow with temperatures into the upper 30's."

Of course, water is the essential ingredient. McPherson says it takes ten million gallons of water to cover Alpine's halfpipe and five million for the terrain park.

Scientists are playing with flake ice and cryogenic snow processes that use either liquid nitrogen (-320 degrees F) or liquid carbon dioxide (-109 degrees F) for the ultimate in cooling and high-temperature snowmaking power. At Tahoe, resorts depend on Snowmax. This snow inducer is made of a dead bacteria whose molecular structure resembles a snow crystal. Put into water, Snowmax particles create wet bulbs that water attach to in order to form a flake.

Although Ski Incline, now called Diamond Peak, introduced snowmaking to the West, it was Heavenly, during the late 70s, which first committed to top-to-bottom snowmaking on both sides of the mountain.

Today Heavenly boasts having the most efficient and highest- capacity snowmaking in the country. The automated system includes over 100 snowmaking fans and 200,000 feet of underground pipe that can blanket 70 percent of the resort's trails with snow. With optimum conditions, the system can produce three and a half feet of snow over one acre in an hour. This is enough snow to blanket a football field with eight and a half feet in three hours.

Sugar Bowl, Northstar, Boreal ,and Palisades Tahoe have installed extensive automated snowmaking systems at great cost. Sierra-At-Tahoe, Diamond Peak, and Mount Rose have also added top-to-bottom snowmaking to insure quality conditions on-slope and in halfpipes. Kirkwood used to depend on its high elevation for snow conditions. After light snow years in the 90s, the resort finally installed snowmaking in 1996.

"Our system covers 65 acres, relatively small compared to other resorts, but it still costs us $200,000 a season," explains Dave Myers who is in Mountain Operations. "We're limited by power, emissions factors, and water rights, but in today's industry, no matter what the cost, we have to bite the bullet. Snowmaking is essential, an insurance policy to offering a competitive product and a successful winter season."