No more Face Lift??

Have you seen the avalanches around there? Year after year the whole lift hut gets swept away with them. They have to go searching for the pieces to put it back together. But I am sure you're right. Nothing to do with "safety".

How many times was Polar Peak open last year? About the same amount of time the Face Lift was open. They wern't worried about staffing Polar Peak. To staff the Face Lift is about $8.25 an hour. So staffing is not a problem. If patrol says they want it, patrol gets it. Never taking staffing into consideration. Two years ago when patrol wanted the Face but they were short lifties, Disco Stu (a patroler) worked it all day. As far as pieces going everywhere after its hit by an avalanche. Before it even snows they "put it to bed". Putting all the signs and safety gate inside the hut and dragging the hut over to the Bear Top. Every once in a while it doesn't go down as planned but I assure you this makes no difference whether the Face opens or not. Whitey says "Year after the hut gets swept away with the avalanche. Really? That happened only twice in the 12 years I've worked there and it was 1998 and again in 2000. You can only blame us for not moving it before they blasted. The reasons the Face Lift is open or not has to do with amount of cornice build up on the ridge, visibility and snow pack. It really comes down to safety. Believe it or not.

What about all the times that the facelift was open just for hiking? Seems like a staffing issue to me.

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Well take my word for it or not.. when its open for hiking its because patrol had all their stuff ready (ie. avalanche control, signs in place) before maintenance or the lifties (ie. line profile, shoveling) were ready. So they open it to hiking. It's usually only hours of hiking or sometimes minutes before the lift is actually open. I do remember a couple times when the line profile was so out of wack that they had to wait until 4:00 so a cat could come and rework the profile, so decieded to open it for the day to hiking. Ryland if you knew how many Cat hours, shoveling hours, and maintenance hours went into running that thing for one single day you would know when its not open its not because of staffing. I'm done arguing that fact with you, because you don't seem to get it. p.s what with posting under Sanook and still posting under rnelson?

thanks for the explanation mikes. I just hope the rumour isn't true.

and to answer your questions, i have two accounts, and a few computers and sometimes im logged in as rnelson, other times im logged in as sanook. Seems everyone loves making sure to point out that sanook is Ryland... especially folks who remain unknown to their real identity.......

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you don't know who I am? I'm Mike S. duh...

are you scared to let people know your last name?

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Didn't you leave out a few names ryland?

I shall be running tour groups hiking up Face Lift, whether it's open or not. Come and join my tour group. Tour groups, anyone?

First Off I think it is very unlikely that RCR would remove the Meat Hook. If they did that they would have to remove all the terrain above the two traverses either side of Bear Top from their "acreage served by lifts" figure. This is a factor people take into account when choosing a vacation destination and at a time when other hills are increasing their acreage it would not make sense to reduce the figure for Fernie.

Certainly with this being a one person lift operation and lifty wages running at 9 bucks an hour I don't think cost is a factor. As has been pointed out much more imoprtant is the avi risk as in a high snowfall year like two years ago and profile in a low snow year like last year.

In any event it's no big deal. You can still access way out to the Fish Bowl with a little hiking from Bear Top and Going the other way you only miss out on a few turns in the top of Lizard - there are much better places to go in Fernie on a powder day in my opinion.