Casey Richardson
“It’s chaos, but there’s snow, and we love snow. So it’s a good-bad thing.
Challenging weather this past weekend resulted in frozen lifts and downed trees, but in turn, excellent conditions are creeping in at South Okanagan ski resorts.
Heavy snowfall caused over 200 trees to overload and fall at Apex Mountain Resort, knocking out power across the hill.
“We were able to maintain everything as far as the elevator infrastructure, but we had to close the restaurants and we had no power at the resort for more than half the day on Sunday,” GM James Schalman said.
Contaminated ice also began to form on chairs, cables, cell towers and power lines.
“It goes right over the cable that the chairs are trying to grab onto, so we can’t have that. So we have to clean the dirt from all the cable on our high-speed detachable quad.”
Apex area residents are also dealing with outage repairs to cell and internet service.
Baldy Mountain Resort saw similar complications on their hill when several mature trees fell from the weight of the accumulated snow, landing on critical power lines and causing a power outage to the resort and the entire village.
“We had several lightning strikes on transformers that came on,” said Troy Lucas, operations manager at the resort. “Where we struggled was obviously getting the parts that are needed when something goes down because of a power outage, something in the mechanism of your chairlift.”
A staff member drove to Vancouver and back to pick up the spare to get his main chair ready for work the next day.
Lucas said they have to clear all the trees that have fallen on the slopes to make sure it is safe for everyone and crews are working double the roads leading up the ski hill.
Adapting to changing conditions is part of the job of these resort operators.
“We’re in a high alpine environment where it’s 7,200 feet above sea level at the top of Apex and we’re in a mountain and the weather is happening and you’re going to see everything. Even in one day, we can see all kinds of different weather conditions,” Schalman said. “We are used to such things. But it was a weather event that was very unusual for a 75-year-old tree to snap.
Lucas said what’s great about this industry is that there’s a range of people to reach.
“So whether we’re contacting James at Apex, do you have that part? Do you have this part or do you have this one. Is this a kind of body of knowledge that everyone can help themselves to?”
And that much snow leads to powdery hill conditions.
“The mountain is still in fantastic condition. The snow is of incredible quality. So we’re just trying to make the best of it,” Schalman said.
The slightly warmer weather has helped harden the base that the Apex has and now fresh snow has fallen on top which makes it that much better.
Baldy also has several inches of fresh snow ready to be trimmed again and create better skiing.
Both resorts have been cleaned up and have resumed operations and are hoping the snow will continue to fall.
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