Mount Sima’s area manager hopes to open by December 17

It was a beautiful sight for the eyes of Mount Sima's newly hired acting area manager Monday morning when the fan guns and snow sticks were fired up for the first time this season.

It was a beautiful sight for the eyes of Mount Sima’s newly hired acting area manager Monday morning when the fan guns and snow sticks were fired up for the first time this season.

Greg Meredith said Monday marked the beginning of what he hopes is a two week snow making process in preparation for opening the hill on Dec. 17.

“Everything has checked out great,” he said. “We have some returning crew leaders that have done this for a number of years in the past and we just have great confidence in the crew that we have. The quality of individuals is first rate.”

Mount Sima has had all ski operations shutdown since last January as a result of mechanical problems with some of the facility’s equipment, as well as financial issues.

As a result of the hill closing for the season in January, Mount Sima will honour all of the 2007-08 pass holders for the upcoming year. The total value for the amount owed to last year’s season pass holders is approximately $70,000.

Earlier in the year, the hill’s operator the Great Northern Ski Society (GNSS), with financial support from the Yukon Government, was able to commission Kirk Duncan for a study on all areas of the hill.

The Duncan report addressed the current status of the hill as well as outlined what is needed to reopen for 2008-09.

Duncan, the area manager of the Eaglecrest Ski Hill in Juneau, Alaska, visited Mount Sima in May and evaluated the hill’s facility, making suggestions on how to improve operations for the upcoming season. The report was commissioned after a two day review of the ski hill.

Based on recommendations from the Duncan Report, the board expanded and now includes both elected individuals from the community, as well as nominated members from various levels of government and user groups.

The user groups include Parks and Recreation for the city, the Alpine Ski Association of Yukon, the Yukon Freestyle Ski Association, the Canadian Ski Patrol - Yukon Zone, Snowboard Yukon, the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce, the Tourism Industry Association and the Yukon Government.

The current GNSS board was announced at a special meeting held on July 9.

Its members included four who were elected, and eight members that were appointed. The former board had nine members.

Since the July meeting, the GNSS board has been working in the areas of financial, marketing and human resource planning.

In August, the City of Whitehorse provided an initial amount of $25,000 in funding, which was needed for the GNSS board to have an inspection done on the hill as well as ordering the parts to do the necessary repairs.

In order to complete the repairs, the GNSS contracted two mechanics for the month of September, which is what the majority of the $30,000 was needed for. The mechanics were from Summit Lift Company, which is based out of B.C.

In addition to the money, the city also provided two workers to help out with the mechanical problems with the the snow making system as well as three lift systems. The three lift systems, include the T-bar, chair lift and handle tow.

Meredith, who was a member of the Mount Sima board and has more than 20 years experience as a tourism and business consultant, was hired as acting general manager in mid-October.

Meredith was hired to get the ski hill opened for Dec. 17 and said that the board will revue his position as area manager in January.

Mount Sima also hired level four ski instructor Marc Boulerice as its outdoors operations manager and Clint Sauter as its lead mechanic. Both Boulerice and Sauter were present during the repairs process by Summit Lifts. 

Monday’s snow making came after a busy weekend at Mount Sima, which had training days on both Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday included the first lift evacuation training session of the season that was attended by ski patrollers and mountain staff.

The evacuation is an annual event at Mount Sima, which teaches rescuers the proper procedures in evacuating hill users off of the failed ski lift.

“It went really well,” said Don White, the on-hill training officer with the ski patrol. “For the new people it’s just to show them basically the equipment and the methodology and for the ski patrollers it’s just to remind them how cold it’s going to be, how uncomfortable. There is a lot of communication that has to go back and forth between the people that are on the ground and the people that are up in the chair to get rescued.”

White said all of the participants on Saturday each had a turn at being both the rescuer and the person rescued, so that they all know what it feels like to be up in the chair.

White said he is hoping to hold one more lift evacuation training day at the end of November.

Sunday’s training session was geared towards the snow making, which this year will include four teams of three people. An individual team will work a 12 hour shift from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., before being replaced by the next group in the rotation.

Meredith said early bird passes are on sale until Saturday.

“To pay off an early bird pass is only 13 ski days, which from an industry standard is pretty good,” he said.