Our morning sky finally arrived without a cloud floating in it. I woke up happy and feeling very upbeat. For the first time in a number of days, it was not snowing, and the sky was really clear. The only question was the wind at the top of Summit Chair. NOAA appeared to be indicating it was blowing strongly at the ridge. The winds seemed to be clocking between 45 to 52 mph. The early morning temperature of 20 degrees was on the cool side, but the forecast indicated it was going to warm up nicely.
Our first ride up Summit at 9am was a bit of a shocker. The winds were obviously blowing vigorously, and it was just darn cold. I admit that I had dressed for warmer weather. The shock of the cold air blowing in my face sent me, and my two friends, lower down the mountain. We took a couple runs on Roundhouse enjoying the chalky snow on God’s Knob and Rolls and Knolls and the lovely corduroy available on other trails.
Everything was going just perfectly until we arrived back at the base of Roundhouse where we stopped to look around. There was not a lift operating. Summit, Roundhouse, TLC and all the other lifts were stopped dead in their tracks.
This was a very unusual occurrence. After a minute of thought it became obvious that the power was out. A small group of friends were now standing around wondering what happened and asking how long the power would be out. One or two of our friends made calls to family members. They discovered that the power was out throughout the valley, as well as along the Westshore of Lake Tahoe
Many, if not all, of the chairs hanging silently on Summit, Roundhouse, TLC, Kangaroo, and others were filled with skiers and snowboarders. We stood waiting for the power to come back on, but it did not return for an extended time. Eventually we returned to the locker room and headed home. Slowly, but surely, each chair returned to movement as the backup diesel generators were activated. This allowed those hanging, for perhaps 20 minutes, in non-moving chairs to be removed from the lift. Summit did not appear to return to movement for longer than 20 minutes (at least that is what it appeared to be to me). The people that were stuck on Summit beyond Sunspot must have been extremely cold as they sat on a non-moving chair with a strong wind in their faces.
Editors Note: Some lifts went to backup power and were evacuated in about 20 minutes. I sat on the Roundhouse lift and that wait was about 35 minutes before they went to diesel backup and we slowly went to the top. Summit took more than an hour, as did Sherwood and Scott. Unfortunately there was almost no communication during that time, almost like there was no useful tool for communicating with guests like Twitter or the Palisades Tahoe app.
I never found out what actually caused the power shut down, but a friend mentioned that it might have had something to do with utility work underway on the Westshore. This is totally unconfirmed.
The B 2 B Gondola actually was operating because it has its own large backup generator, which also seemed to power TLC for evacuation. The power was not out on the Squaw Valley side of the mountain. Of course, a long line of people stood wanting to ride back to the other side. They had a choice of taking the gondola or a bus. At one point, only people that had parked on the Palisades side were being allowed to use the Gondola to return to Squaw. Others had to use a bus.
Editors Note: The reason for disallowing just anyone to ride the gondola to the other side was that there was no guarantee how long it could run on the generator, and the demand to just get over to the other side could have been overwhelming.
An hour to two hours after the shutdown power was restored, or perhaps a limited amount of power. Summit and Roundhouse returned to operation, but many of us had left with sad faces well before the power returned. I do not think Sherwood, Lakeview, or Scott returned to service at any point during the day.
Editor’s note: Those lifts have power sourced from a line in Sherwood, where the power was out until about 2 pm.
My understanding was that those stuck on the lift were handed a coupon good for a free lift ticket to be used in the future.
Editor’s note: This was not universal. A patroller never made it to the top of Roundhouse as an example.
It was a very short ski day for us. Anyone who hung around probably had a very nice afternoon of skiing once the power was restored.
It was such a beautiful day that we ended up talking a walk along the lake in the afternoon.
Enjoy your day,
Andy
Editor’s Note: We took a break and went home a bit to make sure the power was stabilized. We headed back to Alpine Meadows at 1:30pm and it took some circling before we located a parking spot where someone had left deep in the Subway lot. We then stayed out on the mountain until 4pm, skiing mostly Roundhouse due to the shorter line. Overall a good day but the fact that all Palisades lots and the upper lots at Alpine were full on a Friday tells you about the weekend.
We have to keep this in perspective. The power outage was not the fault of the mountain, that’s on the energy provider. There were some very significant delays in getting all guests off of all of the lifts. The lifts at Alpine Meadows range in age from just a few years old to decades old and represent a number of different manufacturers. It’s not just a simple matter of flipping a switch in the lift shack to switch to diesel backup power units. From what I have been told, it’s a mechanical process of moving drive belts that typically gets done by lift maintenance. With 10 chairlifts in operation this morning, some, but not all, of the delays were to be expected as they don’t anticipate all of the lifts needing an evacuation at once.
I am not at all prepared to talk about any possibility of having backup generators capable of powering more lifts for evacuation. In the 25 years I have been skiing Alpine Meadows consistently, there have been very few power outages lasting more than just a few minutes. Fortunately this was not a super cold and stormy day other than the unfortunate ones that were stranded bewteen the top of D8 and the top Summit terminal.
I do feel like the biggest failure today was the lack of communication to guests. In the old days, it was done by sending patrollers down the line with a megaphone. Communication via Twitter and the Palisades Tahoe app is so much easier. Hopefully conversations will happen about this topic.
I’m sure it was a stressful day for mountain ops folks. The next two will likely be challenging too. Thanks for your work.
-Mark
YES, those who hung around were rewarded. Wasn’t even that crowded. The wind on summit even died down a bit. The late comers were rewarded with close up parking spots.
Summit was probably the worst I’ve experienced this year on a non-powder weekday. The lines were definitely affected due to the fact Scott, Lakeview, and Sherwood weren’t spinning
We were out about tower 3 on Roundhouse when all the lifts stopped. About 20 minutes later, we could hear the auxiliary engine start up behind us, then shortly thereafter, we got a slow ride to the top. When exiting the top of the lift, a ski patrol person told us that we could get a free ticket for the future, but when we arrived at the base area, they told us that since Roundhouse was only stopped for about 30 minutes, we would get a 50% coupon instead. Glad we weren’t stuck near the top of Summit in those freezing winds for an hour or so. We later talked with a elderly gentleman who was stuck near the top of Summit, and he told us that he was so cold that his legs wouldn’t support him when he finally unloaded and ended up falling on the unloading ramp.
Power came back on in an hour or so, but the auxiliary engine at Summit was still not running!!?? An employee told me that he heard the auxiliary engine being started several times, but didn’t keep running. From the deck, I finally saw the lift start to spin, but still couldn’t hear the auxiliary engine and assume the people stuck on that chair got to start unloading under electric power. Hmm, a question I would have is, when they started loading Summit again later on, was there a non-functional auxiliary engine to back up the lift in case of another power failure. Just wondering.
I was stuck on Sherwood for over an hour. I am the last one to defend management (don’t get me started on parking) but I agree there wasn’t much more they could have done. A patroller skied down the chair line yelling up to each chair that they were working on getting the lift running on backup power about 30 minutes in. We saw staff on snow machines ferrying those in the sherwood lift line up to Return Road. It was definitely an unpleasant morning. I was underdressed and even a 10mph wind starts feeling pretty cold after you’ve neen sitting on the chair for an hour.
But I’m not sure how much more they could really have communicated. Another patroller skiing down the line saying “we’re working on it” wouldn’t have made it any warmer. Would have been nice if they could have gotten backup power started sooner but all lifts going dark at once is both unusual and challenging.
I did 2 runs on Roundhouse before power out. Luckly I wasn’t on a chair. a ski instructor, Randy, had volunteered to show 20 of us around. That ended quickly. I waited at top or Roundhouse for stragglers at 9:30. Run 2 they did was on Summit was down Sunspot. It was frozen , ungroomed & was awful. 6 hours later (still frozen ) Did not warm up as predicted today. We all got in different cars over next hour or so to head to the other side. Several did 2 or 3 runs there. The road backup was a hour and PT App said parking full. The PT app worked. They said RoundHouse and Kangaroo reopened an hour or 2 after the outage so we all turned around and went back to Alpine.
On return we found no other lifts open.
Except possibly the B2B looked restored
A half hour later yellow & TLC (midstation only for rest of day) opened
After another 30 min Summit opened. Line on Summit stayed 10 – 20 min till closing bell.
They won’t open TLC to top if Sherwood is closed as it’s hard to keep people from wandering off into Sherwood. Scott,Lakeview & Sherwood never reopened.
Not a good last day for our National Gathering of 60 people from all over the country. It’s an informal online ski group: Skitalk.com that anyone canJoin. Each person makes their own motel & air reservations. Some only come for 2 or 3 days. Group is run by Phil & Trisha in Reno.
Yes a strong east wind will put the chill on just about everything on Summit. Even Sunspot is not immune.
After the power outage people who had just driven up AM road had turned around and were creating more and more traffic congestion (B2B) aka Bumper2Bumper all the way to NAW mtn. A friend told me that it took him an hr to drive to NAW Valley from Dollar Hill due to such change of plans of those not skiing AM and all the added oversold ikonned you pass nonsense these days. Then of course Oly Vly all backed up and parking lot became full so people were being turned around. Go figure.
I knew better to not even bother, xc skied instead, most wonderful cardio vascular workout on skinniest of the skis and no overweight chubby chair lift loads to be seen, fit and happy people. Doesn’t get any better avoiding the circus show of traffic etc., too.
And the chutes at Mt. Rose have been firing with less crowds too. Whooo Hoooo
Mt. Rose seems like the call for downhill skiing these days in the Tahoe Area, especially since so far as I can tell it’s not owned by a hedge fund or vassal thereof.
I would assess the resort communications about the Big Power Outage as poor, except there was no communication about it unless you approached a Mountain Host, who did not know anything useful. What’s below “poor”? Non-existent. This is called a Teachable Moment. There’s a PA playing some good, recorded music–can anyone use it for, you know, a Public Announcement?
Further confusion came about the Shiny Boxes. You could load or not load depending on where you started/parked? What is that? Not that I care.
Let’s not let Liberty off the hook here either. Their site was saying power expected back by 5pm (same with Optimum for those with internet/cable from them). They just put out a generic, end-of-day estimate and let the chips land wherever–like last week.
The Bottom Line is a regular refrain: “We can blow $100 million on Shiny Boxes, but modern back-up power well maintained, upgraded chairs (lookin’ at you Granite Chief and Scott), or emergency comms protocol training? Meh.
There is no mention anywhere of a band on the Sundeck Saturday. That’s just ludicrous. Plenty of local musicians could use a $300 gig. Ludacris probably left a bigger tip on his bar tab last week.
Just a thought: Maybe in a situation like this it *would* be better to have patrollers on snowmobiles with megaphones communicating with the unfortunates stuck in the chairlift chairs. Cell phone batteries maybe out, reception may be spotty in mountainous terrain even on a good day, and if the power outage hits the cell towers, then it’s game over for the cell phones. No?