Next Level Ops Report: Snow’s Epic Race
Do you like a good story? Beyond what the Ops team accomplished this week, I wanted to share a few stories of the spring: heroes and villains, impossible odds and a race against time. No, it's not a Disney movie - It's a day in the life of our Ops departments.
The Prep for Wedding Season
Our snowmakers are multitalented - they cover the mountain in snow during the winter, maintain our trail system during the summer AND they can transform a dreary spring landscape on the mountain into a dreamy wedding venue. The snowmaking team built a beautiful walkway from the Freestyle Lounge Deck to the Tecumseh Express with natural materials that blend into our already breathtaking scenery. With some help from the Grounds team, who mowed the base area and planted flower barrels, the walk to the lift was transformed from ski corral to an enchanted bridal walkway. Just in the nick of time, they will be finishing the ceremony site at the top of Tecumseh. Our first wedding party will be delighted to know that we still have a nice stash of snow on High Country if they want to have an impromptu snowball fight!
Our lift maintenance team finished up Tecumseh's tune up last week and moved onto Valley Run terminal work and Northside's annual maintenance. Lifts are such a fascinating thing - So many moving parts and pieces - From giant AC motors to PLC cards to bearings, bushings and some of the tiniest set screws I have ever seen - All working together in perfect harmony on the side of a mountain in all weather conditions. All lifts have maintenance plans, but detachable lifts have a much more extensive maintenance schedule than fixed grips. This week, lift maintenance tore apart the top terminal of Valley Run to inspect the pulley and tire assemblies that move the chairs through the terminal. We found 20 deteriorating bearings in total, so these assemblies got brought down to the shop to be rebuilt. What happens if you don't replace these bearings when they are starting to go bad? Well, worst case scenario, they can seize while spinning. This means that a chair, as it detaches off the rope and moves through the terminal, may stop completely as the tire won't spin to move it through. With a stuck chair, the lift goes down and guests are stuck on the lift as we either do an emergency repair just to get guests off or, worst-case scenario, have to rope evac. This is a bad experience for the guest and a stressful situation for our staff. That's why we take the time in the summer to get down to the nuts, bolts and bearings of these beastly machines, so your trip up the lift is flawless.
Because lifts are always a little finicky when they have been at rest, the team loaded the chairs on TEX and put her through her paces, just to make sure she would spin perfectly for the first wedding. It was beautiful to see the chairs moving through the terminal smooth as butter with not a fault on the board. She is ready to take the bride and groom up to the summit for their vows and views and potential snowball fight.
Ok... Storytime!
Snow's Epic Race Across the Country
All lifts are equipped with a back-up motor, generally gas or diesel powered, in the event of power loss or failure of the electric motor. Snow's Mountain lift is no different - this Stadeli lift was equipped with a 1972 Ford 391 gas motor, generally used for farming equipment. Last fall, this motor finally said she had enough and went to that motor heaven in the sky. So during the winter season, we prepared by ordering her twin from a motor shop in Spokane, Washington (my home town, I might add) that specializes in these antique motors. We expected to have this motor in plenty of time to install prior to the opening of Snow's Mountain given that we ordered it months in advance. As the days and weeks drew closer, it appeared that we would not have this for opening day and would need to make alternate arrangements. Now, I don't know if any of you have ever called an antique motor shop and explained that getting that motor was an emergency, but I could hear the technician looking cross-eyed at me through the phone. They promised it ready for the Friday a week prior to open and I had a shipping company all lined up - like an Uber for a motor - that would drive it straight across the country so we would have time to install. At about 3pm EST on that Friday, that all fell through....
As the motor shop crated it up at the end of the day, the shipping company called to say that we had missed our shipping window and it would have to wait until next week. I don't know what you all know about installing an antique motor but it's not exactly plug and play... My lift maintenance team needed at least three days to get it running. As the clocked ticked closer to closing time for the motor shop, I had a terrible, horrible, BRILLIANT idea.... And when I have one of these "Hold My Beer" moments there is only one person to call: Bacon.
Nick, our snowmaking manger (also affectionately known as Bacon), would go to the ends of the earth for this resort - to make sure you have snow to ski on and in this instance, make sure you have a lift to ride for scenic hikes.
"Bacon, " I said when he answered the phone, "I got this little problem with the Snow's motor. Do you happen to have a snowmaker that might want to fly across the country tomorrow, pick up this motor and drive it across the country as fast as possible?" All Bacon said was "I got you. I'll make some calls and we'll get it done." Click. Next problem? Pick up the motor before the shop closes at 4pm. Crap, I have an hour to figure this out....
I'm from a big Italian family in Washington State. I don't see them often living on this coast, but I know that when I call, they will answer. So I call my cousin Laura - oldest of the myriad cousins and the Godmother of all things Spokane. "Hey Laura..." I say when she picks up, "Do you have anyone who can drive to Spokane Valley in the next hour to pick up an antique motor for my ski lift in New Hampshire? It's an emergency. And I know that sounds CRAZY, but it's the gods honest truth." No questions asked, hands down the girl I would always call in a crisis. "Yeah, no problem! Let me make some calls!" Laura says with a smile and hangs up. Not 15 minutes later, she has got her friend Kathy and her son in their SUV headed through rush hour traffic to go get this motor. No word of a lie, they get there right at closing, grab my motor, load it into an SUV and drive it home. Well, one crisis averted - the motor won't be locked in the shop all weekend. Phew. Bacon calls back, "Yep, I got Barrett ready to go. When does he leave?" And in a flurry of ticket bookings, truck reservations and some money for incidentals, we get Barrett set up to fly out the next morning, pick up a truck at the airport and head to Kathy's. And as all cross-country races go, we're checking the clock, checking the progress and prepping for arrival. While Barrett drove the motor east on I-90, we prepared here for its new home at Snow's mountainl. It would be an all-Ops, all hands on deck installation. Lift maintenance, Vehicle Maintenance, Snowmakers all working together to get the motor here, get the lift prepped, get the parts ready, get the motor installed and tuned. I think you already know the end of this story - Snow's is spinning pretty, ready to whisk you and your family up the mountain for your next hiking adventure. Next time you ride up, think of my team and their incredible adventure to make sure this lift spins.
Green Peak Shenanigans
We had a windy winter. For anyone who spent a significant amount of time in the White Mountains this winter, you will remember we had more wind than we have had in three years. This spring was no different. Sometime between closing day and the middle of May, we had a storm that blew through that took out trees on Green Peak AND managed to blow so forcefully, it whipped one of the Green Peak chairs up and over the comm line where it came to rest with the safety bar wedged on the carrier wire, hung up sideways, helpless. When our trail crew was out doing their spring clean-up rounds, they saw the stranded chair and tried to game plan a way to get it freed. Have you ever had one of those tasks should be a five minute job... but when you get into it, there are 20 other things you have to do before you can even start the task and then once you start the task you realize, it's a WAY bigger job than you thought? Yeah.... that was this. The wind decided to strand this chair above a 50-foot cliff, 20 feet past a horizontal run of snowmaking pipe that was four feet off the ground, 15 feet from the nearest tower, on a peak that still had snow on the road up. When I say you can't get there from here, you literally couldn't. And when you have a mountain job that seems impossible, there is only one man on our team to puzzle through it and that man is Wally. Wally is an all-Ops wonder who can fix cats, wrench on lifts, pull pumps and build t-bars. If you needed a man to put a track back on a cat that detracked on Lower Bobby's at 1am, Wally could do it and he could do it standing on his head, wrenching lefthanded with a blindfold on. That's Wally.
As Ops managers, we spent what felt like hours talking through all the options of getting this chair off the wire: sending people out on the haul rope on gliders, using poles attached to the excavator bucket, throwing ropes - you name it, we thought of it. But in the end, I asked Wally, "How are we going to get this chair off the line?" And Wally said, "We have to use the lull." And after all of our crazy ideas, I knew Wally was right - but that meant plow the road off with the cat, bring up the excavator to cover the snowmaking pipes with dirt to get the lull over them, position the lull on the narrow patch at the top of the cliff, put the man basket on the lull, send the lift maintenance guys up to dismantle the safety bar and pray to God there was no damage to the comm line else we would be doing this all again. With a little bit of luck and a lot of skill, the snowmakers and lift maintenance teams got it done with no damage to the comm line or the chair. Green Peak is free to spin again.
And for those of you who silently curse me when I call a wind hold - This is one of the reasons why. The winds can be so strong they can de-rope a lift, hang up a chair, or catch one on a tower. Before we ever spin the lifts, first thing in the morning, lift maintenance does line checks to make sure all is clear before we spin - Imagine if I had turned this on without checking? That would be one broken comm line and a LOT of downtime. I HATE the wind as much as you do - but I do respect her power. And I will always put your safety first.
Well that's enough of storytime for now....
And today, what is Mtn Ops doing? Well, hold on to your hats Town Square, we are coming down the mountain with truckloads of new furniture and equipment for our Town Venues, but THAT is a whole 'nother story...
- Marissa P., Operations Manager