Next Level Ops Report: Lost & Found-Slopes Edition
Ops Report 6/29/25: Line Work, Early Season Prep, Blasting and Lost Children
When heatwaves hit the Northeast, the mountain becomes hot, humid and unforgiving. It doesn't matter if you were working in the shade of the trees, in an office, or out in a machine - the humid muggy air found its way into every crack and crevice of the mountain. Even the black flies, our ever-present pesky companions, had to take a short break from tormenting us in the dead hot middle of the day. When it gets this hot, we still have to get work done - Sometimes we just push through it and other times we pivot to tasks that can give us a little respite from the heat.
Prepping for Early Season, mtn Maintenance, & Blasting!
It's never too early to think about winter, especially when you are a ski resort. We have 110 days until we turn on the snowmaking system for the coming season. We start making snow in mid-October so that we can prepare the summit for our early season alpine, freestyle and boardercross training. Last season, we had National teams, college teams and local clubs up on High Country training in their respective sports weeks before any resorts had opened in New England. The High Country Early Season Infrastructure Project was an initiative we took on several years ago and it is one of our greatest accomplishments. For someone like myself who spent the majority of my career working for competitive ski clubs, it was an honor to create this training space for these athletes with my Ops team.
One of our Ops goals every year is to get as many guns fixed, moved and in place as early as possible. I'm happy to report that, as of this week, we are now ready to fire up High Country! The mobile fan guns are back up top, fully functioning. The hoses are staged in the High Country barn. The hydrants are in good working order. The pedestals are ready to power up the guns. Unfortunately, this week has brought us temperatures closer to 128 degrees than 28 degrees wet bulb, so snow will have to wait. But fair warning, if we get a cold night in early October, summer will be officially over on the summit of Mount Tecumseh... and winter will have begun.
While we wait to turn on the system, our trail crew focused this week on general mountain maintenance. We worked on our drainage system on the work road and rebuilt water bars lower down on the mountain. Our welding team took a little break from welding sticks and started welding caps on the pipe for pulling up the mountain. We took a little time at the top of the mountain to beautify the wedding site for the next lucky couple - if you look at the public summit camera on the website, you can see their wonderful work.
Our next step in the t-bar project is to blast several of the locations where we will install tower foundations. Our blasters were on site today to make plans for the materials and equipment they will need to blast the towers. It is no small feat to get the blasting mats and equipment up the hill, staged and ready. Our highest priority is to blast the return bull wheel at the bottom of the chute. Currently there is a MASSIVE boulder right in the way of where we need to dig and an undetermined amount of ledge behind it. If the odds are in our favor, we will blast that location and the mountain will provide us with a perfect 14 foot retaining wall of ledge, ready-made to hold the earth of the Chute back from sluffing off onto the bull wheel. If the mountain decides to challenge us with soft earth and no ledge behind that boulder, we will pivot to create a plan to build a retaining wall... on the side of a mountain, with a 50% grade... Stay tuned on that one!
LIFT MAINTENANCE BEATS THE HEAT
This week in lift land, the maintenance team enjoyed the muggy heat over on the Northside. They took some time in the work chair to finish up line work and diagnose some electrical issues on that side of the mountain. The electrical grid on the mountain is a fascinating thing. Just like at your own home, we have electrical service from the Co-op that ends at a meter near the Snow Factory. From that point up, the resort has its own electrical infrastructure running up the mountain. This powers snowmaking, the lodge, all our maintenance facilities, the lifts and even the cell tower site up top. We own and maintain all of this equipment at the resort. We have primary power the runs all the way to the very top of High Country and branches out across trails to reach the furthest corners of the mountain. As you can imagine, maintaining an electrical grid on a mountain is no easy task. Mother Nature sometimes has her own plans when it comes to whether we will have power or not. Over on the northside, our lift maintenance team found this week that fuses popped continually with no easy explanation. Sometimes fuses pop due to issues with the lift, but tracing it out this week, we found that we have an issue with the line that runs from Fort Billy to the Northside transformer. You're going to have to stay tuned on this one as well, as we problem solve and dive into what is really going on.
In the shop, the lift maintenance team rebuilt the microspacer for Valley Run. Many detachable lifts have micro spacers and macro spacers - Valley Run is no different. The macro spacer has the ability to move chairs large distances and usually by manually manipulating the chair spacing using the technology of the lift. The micro spacer is what continually adjusts a chair's position as it goes through the terminal. This is especially important because a number of factors can cause chairs to change position as it goes through. Ice in the rails, bad tire pressure or loose belts can all affect the position of the chair. The micro spacer's job is to either hold up or speed up the chair as it goes through this clutch system to make sure it is perfectly placed each lap around. That's a lot of work for a small piece of equipment! So Valley's microspacer got some love this week, so that each lap is a perfect lap next winter.
Being an Ops Manager - It's not for the faint of heart
While sharing updates with you for the last few weeks, I have talked a lot about what my mountain teams do. My role as Operations Manager is to support them, first and foremost, and to help plan out the projects, tasks and schedules that will eventually lead into the winter season. I try to spend as much time as I can going site to site, checking on my teams and supporting them where I can. But from time to time, I have to work at the other part of my job that is tied more to strategy and operational improvement. This summer, two of my main goals are to create and implement a leadership training program and improve our crisis management training and planning. If you watched the news at all this winter, you saw that crises do happen at ski areas, whether it is a lift failure, a power outage on a busy Saturday, or critically injured skiers. And every ski area must have a plan and each plan is unique to the structure of the resort.
The crisis plan I am thinking about most this week is our plan for lost children...
I moved to this area from Park City many years ago and before I had children of my own. I moved here for the beauty of the forest and the mountains, the quaintness of the town, and to work for our local ski club. As I had children, I have appreciated that Waterville and the surrounding rural towns are a place that children can be feral. They can walk to the store to get a candybar and soda on their own without worrying that they will be abducted. On Halloween, kids and parents alike roam the streets by the hundreds, neighbors letting you in for a hot cider, no worry of crazy traffic or tainted candy - Just a good old fashioned Halloween. On the mountain, it's not much different. Parents feel safe letting their kids off the leash to explore nature with their friends, roam the lodge and tray sled in the courtyard. I would never want to give up those freedoms for my children, even though there is always the risk with skiing that something could go awry.
Every year, we have a number of children who get lost on the mountain while skiing with their families. Whether they are off exploring on their own, took a right instead of a left, or decided it would be a really good idea to play an impromptu game of Hide and Seek in the Lodge, 99% of the time, when a parent reports their child missing to one of our staff members, they are found safe and secure. However, each and every time we are given the report of a lost child, we take it seriously - because minutes matter, seconds matter on a mountain.
A few years ago, right after the build of Tecumseh, I was in my office and heard the all-mountain radio call go out that there was a missing child. The skiing that day was kinda that tough New England stuff - a little icy, a little patchy, challenging. The lifts were spinning and there was a moderate crowd. We have a fabulous patrol here at Waterville and as soon as the report came in, they went into action. It was a misty, foggy day with some wet weather. At the time, when a missing child call went out, Patrol did a sweep of the last known, reported area he or she was seen, the description of the child is announced over all radios so staff in the buildings and at the lifts can help in the search. As the minutes ticked by, I felt that sense of dread - that rock in your stomach when you know something is not right. As reports from all the buildings signaled that he was not inside, it became clear he was out on the mountain somewhere, alone. As patrol continued to sweep, I called to every one of my employees and sent them out on the mountain to search - by snowmobile, on foot, on skis.
With the build of Tecumseh, we had installed new technology at the main lift - security cameras, RFID trackers, and computers that we had never had before. In the middle of this crisis, our head of IT divined a plan to use this tech to find the child. She was able to find the child's last scan at a lift (bottom of Tecumseh), capture his image on the security camera, and send it out over the Teams App to all resort users. Within minutes, every team member had this child's photo so they could easily identify him. From the mountain top camera, she was able to see him get off the top of the lift and head down Oblivion for his last known run. And she was able to convey all of this information directly to Patrol.
Oblivion is our most skiied trail. I'd challenge you to name a day when you found yourself alone on this trail - it is always populated. But apparently, on this day, at this time, there was no one. No one saw him catch an edge, no one saw him shoot over the side, no one saw him land down in the trees below. But knowing that was the last trail he was on was enough information for our Patrol to target the area where he fell. They skied slowly, they called his name, and sure enough, he answered! Our amazing patrol used every skill they had that day to get this child, who had sustained an injury, off the mountain and into hospital care. In this instance, and in many instances of skier injury, minutes matter, seconds matter. And what we were able to do with our technology that day, our staff who care deeply about the people who ski here, and our very capable patrol - all came together to save this child's life.
It is formalizing these crisis management plans, training on them, and empowering our people to be leaders in a time of crisis that is on my mind today, what I am working on. Most days at a ski resort are seamless - the lifts open, the guests ski, the lifts close and the groomers come out. But just in case, one day this next winter, we find ourselves in a moment of crisis - I want my people to be prepared to tackle whatever might come with confidence and with skill.
Last season, we had a handful of children get lost. But with what we learned, every child was found happy, healthy and whole. My Ops team was dedicated to supporting patrol through all these instances - From our snowmaking manager who found a lost child in the parking lot to our electrical systems manager who found a child who got trapped in a gulley - That's what being a part of my Opsland is about: teamwork, supporting each other, and coming together in times of crisis. I don't think I'll ever stop holding my breath when I hear that all-mountain radio call go out. But I know we will be prepared, ever-ready for action, to find that child as if it was our own.
- Marissa P., Operations Manager