That was quite a weather event. If you followed the news, you heard there were tremendous winds in Colorado. Saturday night /Sunday morning was particularly brutal on the ski area. We lost electric power from about 3 AM until about 9 PM Sunday. Personally, I got stuck Saturday night in Idaho Springs with the I-70 closure. While we were able to keep the lifts running on auxillary power, there were significant impacts to the other services. Essentially all of our behind the scenes stuff, credit cards, email, e-store, phones, wifi, heat, etc., have some link to electricity. Part of what makes The Basin cool is that we are a funky ski area tucked in a high mountain valley between 10,800' and 13,050'. Part of what makes The Basin a challenge is that we are at the end of a long, above ground powerline and are susceptible to these big wind storms. The mountain pine beetle outbreak has excacerbated these problems over the last few years. Although most of the time it is easy to either acutually or virtually visit the Basin, we are still a remote place way up in the mountains and susceptible to some of the challenges of remoteness. So....I apologize for the headaches this storm caused to many of you. We frequently discuss a bigger auxillary power system for these occasions. You can be assured we are trying to improve this difficult situation and will be doing a lot of talking about this.Thanks to all of you that made it up Sunday and endured the limited base area services and I am sorry to you folks that tried to communicate and work with us in one way or another with limited or no response.
