Life at a ski resort certainly knows how to keep things interesting. I have been passing things off as ‘probably not too out of place here’ since the middle of the season, but then I stop and think back, and realise ‘no no… that was odd’. Let me start off with the events of Thursday 17th March (St Patrick’s Day).

I was working on the Summit lift. The day had started painfully early (for me, that’s anything before 10:00) as per normal. The morning meeting was filled with tired Lifties and blissfully short of obnoxious ski racers. We’d had our staff hot chocolate, helped out the Champagne Express Lifties on the way up to Summit. All was set up, and guests started being loaded at 9:30 (without any beligerant guests yelling at Tim at 9:15 because he had to wait 15 whole minutes). Quiet mid-week day, so we immediately started on ride breaks. When I returned from mine, I headed straight up to the top so that Dyson could take his break, leaving Rattles at the base to save him having to change into and back out of his ski boots.

At approximately 11:30, I was in the top hut melting the ice from my bindings, when the heater turned itself off in an unusual manner (the fan dropped it’s speed considerably but didn’t actually stop and the heating element started to cool down) and the lift did an emergency stop. I checked my stops and the safety gate, and it wasn’t at my end, I assumed that it was either Rattles or a phantom stop. About a minute later, while I was fiddling with the heater and coming to the conclusion that something wider was amiss, on of the guys from the Summit Hut popped his head in the door to ask if we had also lost power. Hmmmmm… this could be affecting more than just my heater!

The radio (all 3 Summit Lifties have radios) started to go nuts. All lifts on the mountain had stopped! Pretty much everything that required mains electricity at the resort had stopped functioning. The guests nearest the unload ramp were actually staff, so I was keeping them up to date with what was going on, as well as other concerned guests who were at the Summit Hut but came over to ask. The guys on the chair were about 20 feet away from the ramp, and 30 feet off the ground, and were asking me if I reckoned that the snow drift under them was close enough and soft enough for them to drop into. As a Lifty, I couldn’t let them do that, and encouraged them to stay put. One of the summit Ski Patrollers came over to chat and hypothesise, which was helpful.

Around 11:45, we were told that we had lost a phase on our power supply, and it was actually BC Hydro’s fault. They had a faulty power station (we wondered if the beavers had succeeded in their dam building, depriving the power station of it’s water), and their estimate for switch-over to another power station at 11:45. Not much hope on that time-line. It was reported that Invermere had also suffered power loss. Ski Patrollers were assigned to lifts to await instructions for potential evacuation of the lifts, and to advise guests who were not on the lifts, to not head down to the Sunbird chairlift (it’s at least a 20 minute walk uphill to the resort from there when the lift isn’t running).

None of the staff had experienced this situation before (for some, that’s in 30 years of working at the resort), where every single lift on the mountain had stopped at the same time, could not be started, and had to be evacuated. It’s fortunate that it was a mild, sunny, and calm spring day, and not -33C with snow and biting winds. All lifts were equipped with a backup diesel motor for just such an occasion. However, getting these up and running was not a simple case of flipping a switch, and required a lift maintenance staffer (or someone high up in Mountain Ops who knew how) to get it running. There were 5 lifts that needed evacuating, but only three maintenance staff on duty. This obviously presented a few difficulties. The maintenance guys couldn’t just get it started and move on to the next lift, they had to complete the evacuation of the lift, and shut the engine down, before moving to the next lift. Something tells me that Panorama will be reviewing its contingency plans and countermeasures after this.

Some Ski Patrollers had to ski down the lift lines to advise the guests on what was happening, and others to stay at the top to check on guests’ well-being as they got off and to advise them to head down to the village. The lifts moved painfully slowly on the diesel engine, the Summit lift was the last one to be evacuated, and it took quite a while for the evac of the Summit lift to be started. I think it was 12:30 by the time the Summit lift was evacuated. With guests being stuck there for about an hour, we were certainly appreciative of the mild weather. If it had been really cold, we would have had a serious problem on our hands! A Ski Patrol rope evac takes about 20-30mins per chair, and with approximately 250 chairs (not including the chairs heading downhill) stopped, the task would have been monumental, and I imagine a number of people would be suffering some serious health complications.

It seems a couple of staff did actually drop from the Summit chair without injury. I didn’t find out who they were though. We kept receiving revised power on times from BC Hydro, which kept slipping past. All Lifties were told to stay where they were in case the power returned. Unfortunately, as I was anticipating returning to the bottom station before Lunch, my bag containing my sandwiches and my wallet were at the opposite end of the lift to me. The guys at the Summit Hut kindly let me put my lunch on a tab, so I did get something to eat and drink. I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with the Ski Patrollers, in the sun. It’s a hard life! The power didn’t return till after 4pm, by which time only the Mile One Lifties remained, since it is the only lift left running after 4pm (for night skiing). Two bus loads of guests had to be picked up from the bottom of the Sunbird chair.

What a day! Plus it was St Patrick’s day, so a number of people made up for being let off work early, by starting drinking early.

Today I had a family on one chair (at load) ask me at least 5 times if I could slow the chair down for them. I said yes each time (actually more than just the word ‘Yes’ that would have been unfriendly), and it got quite annoying quite quickly (there’s 14 seconds between chairs at Summit). I responded affirmatively to the first couple of requests, just trust that I know how to do my job after 3 months. It’s not exactly difficult. I’m also not going to slow it down the instant that you ask, as that is a waste of everyone’s time, including yours as you wait on the line for nearly a minute. It seems that until they see you actually slow the lift down, people assume that you either a) didn’t hear them (despite having responded to their question), b) didn’t understand what they meant by ‘could you slow the lift down for us, please?’, or c) that you weren’t actually going to slow it down despite having said that you would. A lack of trust I feel.

Had a group of teenagers on snowboards today, who hadn’t quite grasped the complexities of loading a lift. Insomuch-as, waiting at the ‘Wait Here’ sign, checking that the Loading area doesn’t already have people waiting for the next chair, and that the next chair isn’t about to swing round and treat them to a free game of skittles. The four of them paused briefly before proceeding down the ramp, just ahead of the chair that was coming around for the people in front of them. There’s not a lot of time for me to do anything in these cases, and nowadays I normally let them learn from their error of judgement in a way that means they are unlikely to repeat said error. In this case, it may have resulted in people who had done everything correctly being knocked over as well, so I managed to slow the lift down in time, yell at the muppets to get out of the way, and load the preceding guests safely. I then told them off when they managed to get back onto the ramp correctly.

I was told that they didn’t all know how to unload the lift either. One of them tried to skate off the ramp, which meant she expended significantly more effort than was necessary, and wasn’t going fast enough down the ramp to clear the chair as it went around the bullwheel. I’m told it smacked her in the head, catapulting her sideways through the safety gate, triggering an e-stop. Bet she’s glad she wore a helmet. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can really do in time if they do this. By the time you see they aren’t moving quick enough (and this very rarely happens at Summit, I’ve seen it once all season and they were only clipped, not a full on blow), no matter what button you hit, the lift just doesn’t stop that quickly. She was shaken, but not really hurt. So my colleague told her how she needed to unload in order to prevent a re-occurrence. Later, in the same group (different people),  a snowboarder and a snowblader managed to trip each other up, and they faceplanted in a tangled heap on the ramp. Set your board straight, and stand on it, let the chair push you forward and don’t slow down till you are on the flat, away from the chair.

Every now and again, we have a paraplegic skier out on the hill. This guy is amazing! It’s a seat on a single ski with a damping system, and a pair of crutches with little skis on the ends. He’s really good at it. First time to the summit for him though (he has a couple of able bodied friends with him), and as he was arriving at the top station, I wasn’t sure if he wanted it slowed down at all (the other lifts he manages at normal speed), and they gave no indication that they wanted or needed it. Turns out he did need it. He got stuck on the chair, and sailed around the bullwheel. I hit the e-stop, and a split second later his ski tripped the safety gate. I ran over and helped get him off the chair and lower him to the ground. He was fine, no tempers lost, all was ok. My colleague had asked him if he wanted it slowed at the top several times, and would have phoned it through to me, but the guy said he didn’t need it. If I see him again, we will be slowing it, whether he wants it or not. He’s awesome!