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Show THE' Thursday, December 7, 1978 Page 7 4 IP" By Tina IMoeneh In the still of the night when Main Street is deserted and the out-on-the towners are long nestled in, a tiny bead of light inches up the black and featureless face of the mountain. Ahead of the illumination loom the shadowy forms of moguls and silzmarks. But after the light passes, the snow is smooth as velvet. The bacon and pastry smell of morning brings yawning skiers to their feet. The enthusiastic hurry toward dormant chairlifts and impatiently kick at the snow, as pristine slopes lie wailing for the first sharp edge to chisel away at the flatness. By mid-morning, hundreds of skiers will trundle trun-dle across the plaza and up the mountain, anticipating another fun day of tearing up the slopes. Literally. And as the late afternoon chill inevitably sends skiers to warmer spots, the encroaching en-croaching darkness closes I he slopes for another day. At its usual hour, the sun returns to the mountain, its rays exposing the battered j NIGHTLY SPECIALS &:WE& NIGHT BltfiFT BEER flc SCTUPS THURS. DANCE CONTEST riti. & SAT. mm T i tminn store on PREMISES was? im runs. Like the old fat man who spins the magic of Christmas in the hours before dawn, unseen hands smooth the wrinkles and scars that a thousand ski turns have etched into the face of the mountain. Snow cat drivers are an unusual lot. While skiers dream of sunny skies and linked turns, the snow eat driver maneuvers his hulking machine in the dead of night, leveling the devastation that the hurtling bodies and metal edges have caused. They don't wear the newest ski fashions or sport glowing tans. They hardly know or are known by the daytime resort work force. And they rarely are thanked by those who enjoy their handiwork. In short, they don't exactly fit the elf-like image their nocturnal sorcery sor-cery conjures up. They wear baggy overalls, thick boots and generally f; smell of 'the gas and grease that collects" on their hands from a minor midnight repair in the icy darkness. mm inn M ..rgr"?::-:; Sir ifF Loran Larsen smokes Camels and chews Copenhagen at the same time. He's home-grown Park City and the driving force, so to speak, of the snow cat crew. The black wad forces his lower lip out as he matter-of-factly recalls the time he rode a runaway cat sideways down Thaynes. "You get a ride once in a while. If you lose your brakes, you go all the way to the bottom. ...or hit a tree," he says shyly, as if the mention men-tion of the event would draw yawns from the average listener. His fifteen years in the Park City mines driving a truck didn't prepare him for manning a snow cat, Loran said. But he's been with the resort nearly that long now, and he's been hardened from the "old" days when the equipment was not as sophisticated as it is now. Like when there were no radios to let other drivers know you d broken down or lost 1 your way in ' a snowstorm. Or before mogul cutters, how the drivers would take a bucking bronco LARGE w SCREEN CI ADJACENT TO C0ND0LA PARK CITY RESORT ride through the perilous fields of mounds and valleys, the cat's rear blades raking the snow level. Grooming runs is slow and tedious work, since the snow cats cannot be driven up the face of the steeper runs. Instead, In-stead, the cats must return to the top of each run by way of the slightly pitched paths cut especially for the machines. So to groom Newport, for instance, the cats have to return to the top by way of Claimjumper. It's a fast ride down and a long way around to flatten twenty-eight twenty-eight feet at a time. As a result, the seven snarling cats that keep fourteen operators busy sixteen hours a day can clear four or five runs in a shift. They start with the easier runs to keep the less practiced prac-ticed skiers healthy and happy. But when the big ones get chopped up, they groom them, too. "We've packed Silver Skis,' Loran said calmly. "And vvhen you go over the top of that one, you just hit the fall line and go right to the bottom. You can't get a SAT. & SUN. SKIER'S BREAKFAST 9:00n.H iiOOP.M. ALL YOU CAN EAT 3 wmji lot of people to do that kind of work." And work it can be. Loran recalled '68 when there was a twenty-five foot snowdrift that spanned from the angle station to the top of the Pay Day chairlift. He said it took three weeks of digging and scrapping 24 hours a day to clear the snow. Despite the long cold nights, Loran says he enjoys the solitude of the dark and empty mountain slopes. "It's been a good job. No big accidents have happened and I've never hurt myself." Known as "Longbelly" around the resort, Loran is praised as the efficient and untiring backbone of the snow cat crew. The clean safety record is a source of pride to him and mountain manager Phil Jones, who says emphatically that Loran would be one of the hardest people in the organization to replace. 'It's been a And while there have been no major accidents, there have been many adventures. Charlie Wintzer, a Rossi Hill resident and former snow cat driver, remembers some hair-raising nights on the mountain. "I remember we were going to knock the cornice off the top of the men's GS run for a race one time." Charlie smiled slyly. "The ski patrol had set charges, but they didn't do anything. We got a cat driver who wasn't a skier, so he didn't know any better.-We looked over the edge and didn't see anything because it was so steep, but we told him it was only about fifty feet before it flattened out. He drove up - to the edge to break the cor-nice, cor-nice, but he started to slide, so he had to go off. As soon as he went over, we couldn't see him anymore, and by the after the last run, make Ski Films and other major sports events on a 7ft. Video Screen Backgammon & Darts Happy Hour 4- 6pm Folk Singer Claudia Appling providing live entertainment 5- 6pm Thurs., Fri., Sat.. Do Not Miss!! Monty Python & the Holy Grail, Thurs., Dec. 7, 9:00pm Beer-Set-ups-Chili 136Heber across from Utah Coal & Lumber 649-9939 time we skied over the edge after him, he was sitting sideways way down the hill. After that we decided to ski pack that run." Or there was the time two cats were going down Silver Skis and one of the huge tracks came off one of the machines, sending it spinning spin-ning down the mountain as the remaining track continued con-tinued to bite into the snow. It didn't stop until it reached the flats at the bottom of the steep and narrow run. The other driver tried twice to retrieve the heavy broken track, but slid past it, necessitating the long trip around and back to the top. On the third pass, the driver aimed right for the track and plowed into it to stop, then dragged it with a chain to the bottom. "We once had a lady cat driver," Charlie said. "And when we were first learning how to drive the cats. good job. 9 everyone new had to go with someone experienced. We were packing Newport once, and the trick was to position yourself at the top so by the time you got to the bottom you'd be where you wanted to be, because after a certain point you loose control con-trol of the cat. The guy who was with me learning to drive just didn't want to do it," Charlie laughed. "And then Cindy went right on down, so he had to do it ! " "When I learned, no one went with me," Charlie continued. con-tinued. "No one told me that once you started down Thaynes you couldn't control the cat. It slopes down and toward the lift towers. So many cats went off into the trees trying to avoid the lift that now they have a road there. "Some guys who drove the cats were real losers and tracks for the. vr -y if. ' i as j'5 . i m rfMlwnni. J' Loran Larsen' used to sneak off into the trees to sleep. So we'd take them over to Thaynes and let'm go without saying anything," he said, a sparkle of joy in his eye. Or there was the time a line of cats were driving toward what is now Dynamite, but what was then a cliff. The first in line, a rookie, drove off the cliff, followed by a second unsuspecting un-suspecting driver. The third saw what was happening and leaped from his cat, frantically fran-tically waving off the rest of the pack. Charlie said it took three days to build a tripod big enough to lift the cat off the back of the other. The Hoist, the bane of many skiers because of its several steep faces, caused problems to cat drivers for the same reason. Standard procedure among the operators required that the snow cat on top wait to see the lights of the other at the bottom before taking off, avoiding an uncontrolled collision somewhere on the slope. Charlie remembers the first time down the Hoist the snow was billowing up the windshield, wind-shield, so he unrelentingly pushed the two buttons he thought operated the wipers. It was a long while after he reached the bottom that the other cat driver started over the top. ...he was sure something was wrong because Charlie had been pushing on the horn all the Swiss & Crab Quiche $5.95 I r- Wmm f l- .it . If tls PI open daily 6pm-368 6pm-368 main St. 649- way down the run. At the dinner hour, food was gulped down to leave time for riding the cafeteria trays. Their slick plastic bottoms bot-toms careened down the slopes, one night leaving a driver with,. a broken rib when he unwittingly flew off a snow cat road. It took him the rest of the night to figure out a good excuse so he could collect on his health insurance. in-surance. "On the day shift, people think it's fun to piay chicken and come right at you," Charlie said. "But mostly they ski behind you where the groomed snow is. Once a guy was skiing toward the side of a cat and fell down and slid right between the pontoons. The driver skied right over him. He felt the bump, but thought it was a mogul. Luckily, he just skied over his thigh and ripped his ski pants." It's the adventure and the contrast of quiet nights and full moons shimmering on fresh snow that keeps them crawling tirelessly to the top of the mounlain every night. So tonight, when you pull the down comforter up to your nose and dream of the smooth runs that await you in the morning, think of the unsung heroes of the .snow cot crew bundling up for the dark and lonely ride to the top. And then smile in relief that it isn't you. ' Special WHK. 8981 |