The day opened with easy parking and 50+ MPH winds up the 9am gondola. I had placed each of my fat skis in their own slot, which is typically not a big deal, except for mega wind gusts caused my boards to flap in the wind so much so that I opened the window and held on to them for the ride up. That's when I knew that the day held potential for being a kluster...
Very nice cut pow through GV and back up. Then out to Snort's lake and back up. Then out through Right Angle, through the Hole-in-the-Wall gate, through the trees and out under Waterfall - and back up. Pretty windy getting off the top -- but hold on -- was that Rex not moving for 20 min??? Back out through Left Angle and made a brief rescue to pull out a laddie out who was pretty stuck, in over his head almost literally, but I found his ski -- a 5 min efficient maneuver if I say so myself.
So now it's about 10:30 ish -- but hold on -- why wasn't Chinook running? But hold on some more -- and the Gondola was closed. And inside the main lodge there was no power and no lights. Crystal had lost primary electricity and the power company's diesel generator on the Blvd could not kick in. So the resort had no electricity and had closed. Vouchers were being offered for you to come back and a local TV station was on the grounds conducing interviews (but how did they know in advance???) It seems that the batteries in the battery-backup emergency lights were not maintained??? (maybe the battery checker had Tuesday off also). But enough folks had their phone's turned up bright so as to avoid tripping over other folks, etc.
So we ate our packed lunch next to a window. Alerts popped up on my Samsung Galaxy S7 via the Crystal app. The resort was trying to restore power and run the chairs but it was unknown if they could be successful. It seems that Android alerts pop up but disappear when you touch the pop-up. And they are devoid of date and time. Signing up for email and text alerts on the web site fails to produce any alerts at all via normal channels. Hmmm....maybe the resort is putting out RSS feeds and only their app can pick them up? Any help here?
Of course rumors were flying. The most popular was that 250 gal of backup diesel was not delivered to each chair Tuesday night, thus explaining why the chairs could not run in the absence of electricity. Maybe the Tuesday night guy had a night off? It does take all night to transport the fuel to top off the tanks. Grrrr...
So we bailed around 12:15 pm. Back Greenwater about 12:45pm, where an alert said they were going to back in operation so stay tuned. About 1pm-ish, IÂ noticed that Chinook, GV and FQ were up but with sustained winds >50 and gusts >70 MPH. That's when I knew that my kluster was over.
Read the Facebook comments for the most entertaining version of what happened today. I thought the turns were excellent, only a tad scrappy on every other lower E bump, and never got to go out South or North to check on my stashes. That is what Friday will be for.
) Looking forward to a more normal day tomorrow.