One of our shuttle buses is flexing its muscles! Kudos to Ben James from our Vehicle Maintenance crew for putting his auto body and painting skills to work on this bus. It’s now looking sharp and ready to rumble for the season.

Each fall we conduct a bit of mowing on some of our easier trails. This knocks down the taller vegetation and sets us up for early season track packing once the snow starts to fly. When trails are covered in tall grasses and underbrush, they require deeper snow accumulations to evenly cover the slopes. By trimming back these naturally tall…

The Slope Maintenance Crew recently reseeded areas that were disturbed with the construction of the tubing hill a few summers ago. We initially reseeded, mulched, installed blankets and wattles after construction. Re-vegetation and erosion control is a constant project up here due to our granitic soils and extreme runoff events. We added some amendments and used a targeted seed mix…

The Lift Maintenance Crew has finished getting all the chairs back on all five of our aerial lift lines. Each summer, 20% of all chairs and grips are removed from the haul line and undergo a detailed inspection. The guys are finishing up their projects in preparation for our annual licensing inspection with the CPTSB later this month.

I recently had an opportunity to check out the timber operations across the highway on Monarch Ridge. The work is coming along utilizing the winch assist machines. There were several decks stacked along the upper road and the machines have worked their way towards the mining claims located adjacent to the Madonna Mine. Once they reach this northern boundary, they…

As described in an earlier post, one of our planned summer projects was to relocate an historic cabin. Today, we moved the cabin from the vehicle maintenance lot up to Pano flats across from the bottom of the Panorama lift. We worked with Terry’s Crane & Rigging to relocate the cabin. Definitely was not their first rodeo! All went well…

A few of us went up to Ski Cooper today to visit our friends there. Earlier this summer, they stopped by Monarch to see what we were up to. Just like we are doing at Monarch, they are also making preparations for operating in a COVID landscape this season. This is one of the great things about the ski industry.…

The Lift Maintenance Department conducts a lot of work behind the scenes each off-season getting our lifts ready for winter. In addition to the numerous maintenance projects completed each summer, the crew also periodically performs what is known as “dynamic testing” on our lifts. In accordance with the federal regulations for passenger ropeways under ANSI B.77.1 2017, each lift undergoes…

Last week’s storm brought a lot of snow, but it also unleashed some serious wind on the mountain. The storm event started out with warm ground and rain which then transitioned to heavy, wet snow. Trees were loaded from the snow and the roots loosened up by the moist ground conditions. Oftentimes, during these types of heavy storms later in…

With the first snow of the year, we got a sneak peak at what Monarch Ridge will look like across the highway from the ski area. The plan is to continue thinning dead spruce trees along the ridge to the north until they reached the private mining claims down near the Madonna Mine. As time and conditions permit, the USFS…