Snow Grooming at Perisher

At Perisher, snow grooming is an essential part of our commitment to delivering the best snow conditions for skiers and snowboarders. Our expert grooming team works around the clock to maintain optimal snow conditions on the slopes, ensuring the Experience of a Lifetime for guests of all skill levels.

What Is Snow Grooming? 
Snow grooming is the process of maintaining the snow surface to ensure it remains safe, smooth, and enjoyable for skiing and snowboarding. Our grooming fleet, equipped with state-of-the-art machinery, works tirelessly to manage snow conditions across Perisher's four resort areas. Snow groomers smooth out rough terrain, help to maintain consistent snow depth, and help improve the overall skiing and snowboarding experience.
How Snow Grooming Benefits Skiing & Boarding

At Perisher, we take pride in delivering the best snow conditions for our guests, from beginners to advanced skiers and boarders. Here's why snow grooming matters: 



1. Smooth, safe slopes: Grooming helps ensure slopes are free from large, dangerous bumps or ice patches, creating a safe and enjoyable environment for skiers and snowboarders of all abilities. 

2. Optimised Snow Conditions: Grooming ensures snow is evenly distributed across the slopes, maintaining consistency and providing the best possible riding surface. Fresh snow or existing snow is compacted to provide a better, more reliable surface.

3. Season Longevity: Nightly grooming and snow maintenance ensure that Perisher's slopes remain in good condition for longer. Guests can enjoy smoother, more enjoyable runs all season long.

How Does Snow Grooming Work? 

A snow grooming machine has two large rubber and steel tracks that disperse the weight of the machine evenly across the snow surface and cut into the snow to assist with climbing. Mounted on the front is a multi-directional blade that cuts and levels the snow surface before driving over it. A powerful tiller on the rear churns the snow to an even consistency before a large, heavy comb then drags across the surface leaving a corduroy finish on the snow.

The ultimate snow grooming machine can climb steep slopes, push heavily compacted snow and leave a seamless trail of corduroy in its wake. Specialty machines can winch on extremely steep terrain and have attachments for carving park features.The blades, which are mounted on the front of the machines, have twelve movement capabilities which allows difficult-to-access snow to be groomed on the slopes as well.

The Perisher Grooming Crew

The grooming team have one of the most important jobs on the mountain. They are responsible for turning lumps and bumps into turn-tastic corduroy, moving and farming snow, building, maintaining and reshaping terrain parks, and constructing competition standard mogul and downhill race courses. 

At present, the Perisher grooming crew has 225 years of experience between them. Perisher operators are among the best in the world in this highly specialised field, and are often specifically sought out for their expert skill.

The Perisher grooming team also have round-the-clock mechanics working alongside them, who support our operators by keeping the fleet operational throughout the winter season. 

The Mountain

It’s all about the corduroy! (Well, sort of) The Perisher Grooming Team can groom / maintain a huge amount of skiiable terrain in a single night including: Over 100 trails, 5 parks, 1 mini pipe, 2 rider cross courses, 1 world-class mogul course and lift tracks inc. uploads and unloads, PLUS more across the 4 resort areas of Perisher Valley, Blue Cow, Smiggin Holes.

During a winter season, the grooming fleet can log up between 12,000 and 15,000 hours depending on the season and groom approximately 33% of the 1,245 hectares of skiable area most nights (about 412 hectares)

Fun Facts: 

• 1 Snow Cat can cover up to 100km per night.
• Perisher groomers winch up to 20 runs per night..
• The Perisher Express Way takes up to 2 days using 4-5 machines to open.

The Work

Grooming is predominantly a night operation consisting of two shifts - 4 p.m. to 12 midnight and 12 midnight to about 9 a.m. In some circumstances grooming may also occur during the day, however this is kept to a minimum for safety reasons

A daily grooming report is available to the public each morning on the online Snow Report or via the Perisher App.

GROOMING REPORT