Summer of Snow - Part 3: Work

So...after a good tip-off from someone in the Blue Pub (who later turned out to be a good mate, Ryan) and a day's skiing i headed to the staff room on the mountain to see about a job - i was in luck, the season was so-far considerably better than last year and they hadn't employed enough staff. The day after i began my training to become a Lift Operator on the hill.
Dan had been pre-accepted a job in the snowsports school, and we had our induction together on the same day - it couldn't have worked out better.

Being a 'lifty' involves most of the operational aspects of the ski field, from vehicle chain fitting to car park management, to snow clearing, to de-icing, to access road patrol, ticket checking, as well as operating the chairlifts on the slopes. My average day started at 7:30am, when the staff buses left in convoy for the mountain, then at 8:15 we were out on the field setting up the lifts. This involved full checking and running of main and backup electric & diesel engines for each lift, emergency stop testing and line checking. those lifties rostered to the top stations were whisked up on snow-mobiles or on a chair if their lift was operational, to set up unload fences etc. the field opened to the public at 9am, and our job was to keep everything running until closing at 4pm, when we did everything in reverse to pack away. Those lucky enough to be stationed at the summit got a ride down with the whole field to themselves, usually heading down long after patrol! Having packed everything away the day ended at 5pm when we took the staff buses down.

If the weather had been bad there was usually a lot of snow clearing to be done. At the start of the season we would frequently have 35-40cm dumps of snow, and this would leave a lot of drifting on the slopes and around the lift stations, along with heavy quantities of ice on the chairs and lines. a De-ice Start begins at 5:50am, and for most of the season i was on 2 of these a week. It was great fun - leaving the village and driving up the access road in complete darkness in sometimes waist high snow and ice for 15km about 3 feet from the edge of the road...and a very long drop off the side of the mountain. Driving on ice and snow was a skill i really mastered, although i never had to drive in the dark! By the time we reached the mountain the sun was about to start rising, and once we were in full deicing harnesses and slowly making our way through the waist high powder on the slopes to the summit on the back of a groomer we would see the entire sunrise - what a sight - worth getting up so early for!
Deicing is the highly technical process of climbing each pylon on each chairlift and hitting parts of the structure with a big wooden stick until the ice fell off. Not so great if you're afraid of heights, but i loved every minute. a Deice start could happen on a beautiful sunlit morning after a 50cm snow dump, or in the middle of a whiteout with 80kph winds and visibility down to about 2 metres. This was less fun, and remembering to hold on is quite important. The strong wind and low temperatures create rime, which clings to anything in it's path. When we reached the summit in these conditions pretty much everything was covered, and a lot of deicing was needed before we could get through the door of the lift hut, let alone run the lift! If the conditions were still bad we would end up covered in rime too, which froze everything - jackets, gloves and hats, and built up on our goggles as well, making work VERY difficult. On several occasions my jacket hood had frozen sufficiently that you could punch it much like a football and it remained solid. Also my gloves would freeze, and although my hands were quite warm inside, the fingers of the glove would not bend, making anything other than pushing and hooking things very difficult.

With this heavy snow the chairs would get stuck in the lift stations, and in teams we would push them through (6 people cannot pick up a single chair, they're very heavy), which was not easy in thick snow and zero-visibility and solid pants! The reward was usually a good powder run from the top once we were finished, although in 1 metre vis. it wasn't quite so fun when you didn't know where you were most of the way down!


The lift crew was about 35 strong, and we made a great team. Working in conditions like that requires teamwork, and it brought us all very close. I'll miss everyone, but most will be back next season