Next Level Ops Report | May 2025

Some of you might know me, others perhaps not.... As the Operations Manager for Waterville Valley Resort, I oversee the crews that create the product for our guests: snowmakers, groomers, lift mechanics, electricians, facilities and all of those back-of-the-house crews that live in the shadows. In the winter, you may catch glimpses of us as you start your morning at the lift or hear whispers of us as you depart. Our work is mainly behind the scenes and outside of operational hours and open terrain: We are making snow on the next trail to open, grooming when it's twilight, and wrenching on lifts not spinning - always preparing for the next day. 

Summers on the mountain are when you are most likely to spot us out in the wild - 230 days, give or take, to maintain, build, perfect and prepare for the coming winter season. With regular seasonal maintenance that must be completed and multiple capital projects to complete, this summer will be full to brimming with work to be done by our Ops crews. 

I am passionate about this resort and the work it takes to create a great experience for our guests.  And I am exceptionally proud of my team. The work they do matters and I'd like to share a glimpse into our summer with weekly reports. Welcome to the World of Ops....

OPS REPORT: THE MONTH OF MAY

RAIN. We can't say the "R" word during the ski season, but during mud season, it's fair game. It feels like its been raining for weeks - There are ducks swimming in makeshift ponds in the base area and mud pits opening up on the mountain work roads. We are blessed with freedom of travel when there is snow on the mountain. If a lift can't get you there, a snowcat or a snowmobile can. There are always a few weeks in the spring when you realize you can't get there from here and you have to shift your plan. So during the month of May, we found ourselves constantly shifting to work that could be done in the base area or indoors when we couldn't access the top of the mountain.

T-BAR PROJECT 

With all of the new pipe pulled up the Chute and Chute Caps to the Booster Pump House, we have been focusing on welding sticks down by the shop. It is far easier for our welders to weld long lengths of snowmaking pipe together in the base area than to weld them one by one out in the field. They are currently working on the sticks that will make the run up Lower White Caps. Once we dry out a bit, we will pull them up the mountain and put them in place. 

Towards the end of the winter season, our snowmakers cut the trees that would interfere with the new t-bar. They piled them strategically on the trails so that when the weather was right, we could burn them. Well, rain makes for GREAT burning weather. If you saw the smoke from town, that was just the boys having a bonfire on Utter. 

Early in May, Lift Maintenance started our farewell to the World Cup T-bar. They kicked on the motor one final time to pull the T's from the haul rope in preparation for dismantling the lift. Following a brief USFS inspection for bats, our Ops team took the bucket of the 330 to the bottom terminal and promptly dismantled the towers, sheaves, bull wheels and put the concrete foundations to rest under soil and seed. If you have a chance to hike up World Cup, it's as almost if it never existed. Farewell World Cup! You were good to us and our racers - Go in peace! 

I love to pay homage to the old lifts we have taken out over the years in subtle ways. Did you know that the wire in the Baselodge deck railing is actually the haul rope from the J-Bar? My children, like generations before them, learned to ski on that lift. The J-bar was such an integral part of Waterville's history; I just had to make sure at least a part of that lift was still here to greet the next generation of skiers on their way to the slopes. You will find parts from the old High-Country Double on the walls of Freestyle and chairs from White Peaks at the top of Snows. How will we pay our respects to the World Cup T-bar? I'm not sure yet - but look out for her next winter when you come visit, hidden in plain sight. 

NEW TRAIL SIGNS

Whoever thought installing trail signs would be a big deal? Not this girl. But let me tell you - what a complicated project to undertake. In the fall, our snowmakers teamed up with our facilities staff to do a survey of all trail signs on the property. From this survey, we identified 270 trail signs that needed to be replaced. Once the signs came in this winter, our team was out on skis and snowboards with drills and ladders affixing these signs however necessary. It turns out that not ONE sign post is the same. Some are 3" pipe, some are not pipes and are tree mounted. Some are on pipes in the woods that new trees had grown up, around and in. It took roughly 6 weeks to replace all of the signs and I am happy to announce that the last sign went up this week! Accurate and readable trail signs are a really important part of the guest experience and I am proud of this team for completing this project.  

SUMMER MAINTANECE AND TRAINING

While many of our team members worked on capital projects, the rest of the team focused on the tasks that must be done each summer. One of our ongoing and central tasks in trail maintenance is erosion control. This is cleaning out silt catches, clearing drainage ditches, reestablishing water bars and installing culverts. The trail crew goes around the mountain weekly to maintain these items. Running water can be detrimental to the mountain both in the summer and the winter. Keeping our water runoff management systems clean and well established is a huge part of what we do. Last summer, we did a large revamp of our drainage system at Lower Meadows and we kept snow in that area until closing day! I can't remember the last time we were able to spin Lower Meadows that long. It seems like a small thing - drainage - but it always amazes me how big the payoff can be. 

One of the foundations of our organization is training. We encourage all of our employees to take advantage of the training opportunities available within the ski industry. This May, our grooming team and parks team went out to Mt. Hood to attend Cutter's Camp. This elite on-snow camp is an opportunity for our employees to learn about park building from the best of the best, to engage with others in the industry and collaborate on the future of terrain parks nationwide. Our snowmaking team took part in the Low Voltage Seminar put on by SkiNH at Loon this May. They learned about Compressor house maintenance, fan gun maintenance and all of the different electrical systems that make our snowmaking come to life. I firmly believe we have the best snowmaking team in New England and they continue to learn and grow each year as a team and as individuals. 

ALL ABOUT LIFTS

Ohhhh Lifts: Both the love of my life and the bane of my existence. Lifts are a pure science that look remarkably like art. My favorite place in the world is standing on the platform of the bottom terminal of Tecumseh, watching and listening to the chairs fly in and out at 6 meters per second. It's a marvel of engineering and a complex machine. TEX, as the Tecumseh Express is affectionately known, is my baby: the first lift project I cut my teeth on. Our lift maintenance team has been working very hard on getting every last bug out of this lift (and don't be fooled - all new lifts, no matter the brand, come with nuances that must be tamed). The crew just finished a major alignment project in the top and bottom terminals. This involved pulling all the belts, checking all of the tire assemblies, replacing any bearings showing signs of wear (28 in total), moving and realigning the tires and rails - All to make sure that the detachable system and anti-collision system are in perfect working condition. Being the only one of her kind in North America, our team has put their hearts and souls into learning how the systems work: what fails, what needs annual maintenance, and what needs to be done in the summer to improve our winter experience.

Lift maintenance also spent the early part of May doing the necessary maintenance tasks at Snow's Mountain and Tecumseh to get our summer licenses. From NDT on the grips, checking and adjusting brakes, installing signage, and chair migration, the team was busy getting ready for our State inspection. I'm happy to report that both lifts passed and have been spinning for public and conferences this spring. Up next: New bubbles for TEX, upper mountain line work, and electrical troubleshooting on High Country and Northside. 

Between the operation and maintenance of lifts, I could regale you with stories of overcoming impossible odds, heroes and villains, heartbreak and hope - but this blog is already long, so I'll save that for the next post...

As I sit and type this message in my office above Tecumseh lift, I am happy to hear her drive purr - a hum I hear all winter as I work. I was lost without that sound after we closed. Can you tell I miss ski season? 176 days until we open again. But who's counting?

Marissa P., Operations Manager