SANDPOINT - Manmade snow and creative grooming techniques are credited with keeping Schweitzer Mountain Resort's winter season from evaporating any sooner than it did.

"It's been a season of extraordinary measures," said Dave Rowe, the resort's grooming manager for the past 11 seasons.

The winter season ended on Sunday afternoon.

During typical seasons, rock outcroppings, road cuts and other impediments get filled with snow and effectively disappear for the rest of the season. Manmade snow usually helps smooth out those wrinkles, but it was the stuff of life this season.

"This year was completely different. It was a battle the entire way, the entire time," Rowe said.

Rowe likened this year's grooming efforts to "Groundhog Day," the comedy in which Bill Murray finds himself in a time loop where the same day is repeated again and again.

"We were covering the same rocks on the same runs with the same snow every day," Rowe said.

The resort has eight snow grooming machines, which smooth and finish runs with a corduroy surface that's perfect for laying edges into. The machines' blades flatten the surface, which is then chopped by the groomer's tracks and finally prepared by a rotary snow tiller.

Two of the groomers are fitted with front-mounted winches that are used to tie into permanent anchors on the mountain or other groomers for high-angle work.

"It's been kind of the year of the winch. We did a lot of really creative stuff with our winch cats to keep things open," Rowe said.

Some of that fancy footwork was accomplished by groomer operator JB Brent, who managed to keep the steep and rocky face of Pend Oreille passable for skiers and snowboarders.

"He kind of took that one under the wing. He did a lot of stuff - he was hauling snow, basically, from the top of the Quad down and putting it on that middle face, right above Teakettle Trail," Rowe said.

Brent also cadged snow from White Lightning and pushed it to Pend Oreille.

The resort's winch cats were also vital in sustaining Stiles, Sundance, K-Mac's, B Chute and Upper Kaniksu.

"It's an individual sport, but it's a team effort for this crew I have. Everybody involved has done a really good job and put a lot of effort in this year," Rowe said.

Between the costs of diesel and the wear and tear on grooming machines from traversing bare ground, keeping the slopes on life support for the last two or three months did not come cheap, Rowe added.

Grooming crews put a lot of effort into keeping the cat track passable. They used a sled pan to transplant snow and cover thin spots.

Rowe estimates that as many as 200 man-hours were spent over the course of two weeks to keep snow on the cat track from burning out and going away.

"It was real slow going and labor-intensive, but it's what it took to keep it open," he said.

This season is comparable to the woeful season the resort experienced in the 2004-'05 season, although the resort didn't have the benefit of as much snowmaking capacity as it does now. Both seasons were marked by above-average temperatures and rain.

"It was really quite extreme this year. The warm came quicker in the storm cycles and produced more moisture than the snow could make up for," Rowe said.

Rowe - who has logged 20 years at Vail in Colorado, in addition to stints at Sugarloaf in Maine and Stevens Pass and Mission Ridge in Washington - is seen as something of a miracle worker, according to Dig Chrismer, Schweitzer's marketing manager.

"He is absolutely amazing," Chrismer said. "We've been joking around the resort for months, 'Can we just give him the employee of the year award? He's already won it.'"