The man who made it snow
Gerald Rakestraw stands before a mound of freshly blown snow at Stone Mountain Park.
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by Gale Horton Gay
gale@dekalbchamp.com
Gerald Rakestraw is no meteorologist, but he has a rock-solid prediction for Stone Mountain for the next three months—snow, snow and more snow.
As vice president and general manager at Stone Mountain Park, Rakestraw is the one overseeing the production of thousands of tons of snow, which will transform a corner of the park into Snow
Mountain—a winter land where adventurers can tube race down a 400-foot slope, make and hurl snowballs at targets and play in the white stuff.
On Dec. 31, when Snow Mountain debuts for the first group of eager customers, Rakestraw said he and the engineers, designers, consultants, construction crew members and 800 park employees will be proud.
“I think it’s going to be one of the proudest moments for my team,” said Rakestraw. “It’s a rare chance to bring a product to market with this much buzz, this much uniqueness to it.”
Making the equivalent of three football fields of snow is no small task, and snowmaking has been ongoing at the park since Thanksgiving.
It involves using new, high-tech equipment to draw water from the park’s lake, filtrating it so that it’s potable, sending the water into the machinery that freezes it and then blasting it into the air. Melting snow drains into the lake and can be recycled back into the system.
Rakestraw didn’t want to reveal the “magic” of the process and wouldn’t go on record to discuss how it’s possible to make and maintain snow when the temperature is well above freezing.
“It’s interesting and exciting, watching people react to seeing snow being made in Atlanta, Georgia, on a day as warm as 70 degrees,” said Rakestraw, noting that he observes visitors’ and employees’ faces “light up” when they see the operation for the first time.
The unmanned equipment, which is monitored remotely, can create 200 tons of snow a day and will blow fresh powder daily “to keep it looking crisp and clean every day.”
Bringing Snow Mountain from concept on paper to reality has involved personnel from just about every department and a slew of consultants figuring out how to finance it, design it, build it, groom it and promote it. Rakestraw and other officials even traveled to Minnesota and Québec to visit snow parks and other winter attractions.
This project has run up against a few bumps in the road. Park executives were holding their breath that the high-tech snowmaking equipment would arrive in time so as not to disrupt their production schedule. It did but barely. “There were some nervous moments,” he said. “Any time you are dealing with technology there are interesting surprises.”
But even before the first flake was produced in 2008, the project faced a major challenge. When Snow Mountain was first conceived in the 2006, Rakestraw said Atlanta was experiencing one of the rainiest summers. By the next year, Georgia was in the throes of a drought. In the fall of 2007 after park officials had publicized the new winter attraction and advertising had been launched, statewide outdoor watering restrictions were announced.
Even though Snow Mountain’s designers had changed their plans from using water from the county water supply to lake water, they decided to scuttle the project for that year.
“Without question we were unable to deliver to customers,” said Rakestraw in an interview last May, noting that customers purchased 7,000 tickets in less than a week last year. “It was disappointing.”
Today Rakestraw maintains that temporarily pulling the plug on the project was the smart thing to do and that the park and the community have benefited since investigating their options led to other water conservation efforts. In fact, he said Stone Mountain Park has cut its water usage by approximately 35 percent through modifications in landscaping, changing out showerheads to the low-flow kind, converting more than 100 urinals to waterless ones and a new 400-porous paver parking lot.
And park officials are mindful of the state of the economy. “I wish we were rolling it out at a different economic time,” said Rakestraw. However, he and other officials are banking on excitement over as close to a white-out as Georgia is likely to get to draw people.
“When we did our research,” said Rakestraw, “more than 70 percent of Georgians had never experienced significant snow. To give them the opportunity to experience a winter setting is an amazing opportunity for us.”
Rakestraw can certainly relate. He grew up in Conyers and attended the University of Georgia and recalls experiencing only two significant snowfalls —one in 1982 when four to five inches fell in metro Atlanta and one in 1993, which he called a blizzard, when six to seven inches blanketed Athens.
He said they expect that this new annual activity, which opens the day after the park’s Stone Mountain Christmas closes, will be good not just for the park but for the larger community as well. “One of our roles in DeKalb County is to be an economic engine,” he said, noting that attracting visitors to the park at a time of year that is traditionally slow for tourism will help with the hotel/motel tax, drive traffic to convenience stores and ancillary businesses.
Rakestraw, who’s been managing day-to-day operations at the park for 13 years for Norcross-based Herschend Entertainment Corporation, is the proud papa of the newest entertainment jewel in Herschend’s ownership, operation or partnership in 20 entertainment properties in nine states. He said Stone Mountain is the first park in the Herschend system making snow and the first snow park in the Southeast.
And this new project has made him a winner at home as well. Rakestraw said his wife and oldest daughter, 4, are eager to have a close-to-home snow experience. And he’s happy to oblige.
“This is daddy’s opportunity to deliver snow,” said Rakestraw with a smile.
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