the.com/snowcat
A tank that grooms ski slopes by night so you can ruin them by day.
means A tracked vehicle built to travel over deep snow, used to groom ski runs, haul gear, and reach places ordinary wheels can't.
from A plain compound of 'snow' and 'cat,' where 'cat' is short for 'caterpillar' — the brand-turned-generic name for the continuous tracks that let heavy machines crawl over soft ground. So a snowcat is literally a snow-going crawler, kin in name to the bulldozer it resembles. The trade name Sno-Cat was registered by the Tucker company in the United States, and the lowercase 'snowcat' spread from there to mean any such over-snow tracked machine.
- weight
- Can top 20,000 pounds yet floats on snow
- ground pressure
- Lighter footprint than a walking human
- corduroy
- Those neat slope ridges are its tiller's work
- night shift
- Most grooming happens after lifts close
- winches
- Cabled versions climb terrifyingly steep faces
tucker sno-cat — tracked snow vehicle first manufactured in 1947, used for avalanche rescue and backcountry access worldwide