ice age

During the winter of 1972-73 there was a storm that dumped six feet of snow. The snow turned to rain that lasted for three days. Then the weather cleared up and turned cold, and stayed that way for six weeks. There wasn't a mogul anywhere, just smooth ice that glittered in the sun. We called it "The Ice Age". Not a lot of skiers ventured out, but those that did tended to slide whenever they fell, until they hit some obstacle like a tree, rock outcrop, or a lodge building. The small fleet of Snow Cats and Thiokols we had in those pre-Piston Bully days was mostly unable to do any grooming. We treated a large number of impact injuries and edge cuts, but not many broken legs. Edges wouldn't bite in enough to twist anything. Accessing accidents was usually pretty easy since the victims tended to be located all the way at the bottom of the run, even on the beginner runs. The ski patrol strung out maybe a mile of snow fence above rock outcrops on both the upper and lower mountain. We would roll out a fence on the top, hold on to the upper end and side slip it down to where we had hammered steel posts into the snow. Pretty dicey work up in the bowls and chutes off the top of the mountain. We were sharpening our edges three times a day. That fencing prevented a lot of serious injuries. One guy did manage to break a leg at the top of Christmas bowl, off the top of Chair 3, and surprisingly, managed to stay in place. I splinted his leg, got him in the Cascade toboggan, and covered him up with the tarp, including his face. I tried to side slip, but the brake chain was useless and I was quickly pushed up to a speed to where I had to abandon the effort and let it run. I shot down Christmas Bowl and Center Bowl and over to Broadway. Later on the top operator of T-Bar 2 told me I went past the tower doing at least 60 mph. Maybe. I know I was going a lot faster than I ever wanted to go. I had directional control, but zero speed control. There was no problem with any bumps. When I got down to the Main Lodge the area had been chewed up enough by cat traffic to enable me to get the brake chain to bite and I got the toboggan stopped before we blew out into the parking lot. I opened up the tarp and the guy looked around and said, "Where are we?" I told him the Main Lodge and he said "WHAT?!!" He thought we hadn't even started the run yet. That run was really smooth, and didn't take very long.

Bob Wood