Thursday, April 5, 2012

Power Outage - Behind The Scenes

If you were here yesterday, you probably noticed we had a partial power outage towards the end of the day. We had a power line fault on the mountain just below the bottom of Lenawee Mountain Lift. We got the lifts running on auxillary and managed to operate the last couple of hours without too much inconvenience. We had some serious issues and concerns about opening and running on Thursday.

I wanted to share a little bit of the "behind the scenes" action to fix this. An Xcel crew responded very quickly and within a few hours determined just where the problem was. Three of our guys, Bill Miller, Rob Ware, and Rick Gustafson worked closely with the Xcel group to fix the problem. That involed getting an excavator, a backhoe, and a bunch of other gear to the scene. They had some brutally frozen ground to dig through to get to the problem. They spent 11 hours digging. The Xcel gang then spliced in a new section of wire and we backfilled the hole. They are literally just finishing up now at 8 AM. I am about to join Bill, Rob, and Rick for breakfast to get a full debriefing. It was a very long and tough shift for these guys.

Much of the time around here our jobs are pretty fun, but sometimes they can be really difficult. Bill, Rob, and Rick went way above and beyond to make sure the ski area opened today. I know many of you are friends with these guys. Be sure and thank them for what they do every single day to keep this place running.