Fire at Mount Snow

[drjeff]

Looks like from the base area webcam during the daylight that the mountain ops building out in the main parking lot area caught fire around dinner time this evening...

[drjeff]

Some pictures both from friends up there and pulled from screen shots16968.jpg16966.jpgMVIMG_20190604_212712321.jpgMVIMG_20190604_211610561.jpg

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[Zand]

That sucks...is there anything housed in there like groomers or snowmaking equipment or is it just mainly offices? I see garages but doesn't look like theres any big machinery inside. Hard to tell from that angle.

[ss20]

Equipment and machinery can be replaced well before winter. A temporary pre-fab structure could be up within 90 days. Luckily it's only early June.

The real shame here is that loss of Walt's classic architecture with the large windows and simple sloped roof.

[sull1102]

Those shops do have groomers during season, but this time of year they are likely pretty quiet. More interesting will be if the building is a total loss. The long term plans had the shops moving to Sundance area in the future so maybe a temp structure for a few years before they start up that plan. I doubt this will have any impact on next season, but hope everyone is okay of course.

[drjeff]

Read on a friend's FB page, a friend who has multiple good friends within the Mount Snow employee network and the greater Dover/Wilmington fire and law enforcement crew, that the preliminary cause was propane explosion. When I went back over the time loop of the base area webcam yesterday, that would make sense as 1 minute there's no smoke, and then when the camera pans back from it's other pre set angle looking up Exhibition roughly 1 minute later, there's a clearly noticeable, decent sized column of smoke billowing up from the mountain ops buiilding.

That building houses a wood shop, the maintenance facilities for their heavy equipment (snowcats, excavators, plow trucks, tractors, etc), a wood shop and the snowmaking control room.

Most of the cats this summer they were storing out in an outer parking lot (adjacent to the main access road where the line of flag poles are when you drive in) plus this time of year, you're way, way more likely to find a tractor they use for law mowing purposes or some type of excavator they use for mountain bike trail work in the shop than an actual snowcat. As for the snowmaking control room, as I understand it, that's way more of a computer control room than actually pumps/etc to run the system, so that's likely a relatively easy fix, especially with 4+ months until their typical snowmaking window begins.

Sucks to have a fire for sure, however, this in the big scheme of things in the Mount Snow world is a relatively low impact building and happening at a time on the calendar with ample time to solve any logistical challenges it causes before ski season begins

[deadheadskier]

Propane?

That's not what I heard. FBGM heard from his sources it was a meth lab exploding.

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[Smellytele]

now they can use the insurance money to build the new one at Sundance. hmmm?

[Newpylong]

Heard from a firefighter it's likely a complete loss, or close. They'll have their hands full this summer.

[drjeff]

Heard from a firefighter it's likely a complete loss, or close. They'll have their hands full this summer.

Going to be some serious logistical strategizing sessions going on once they get a full assessment of the viability (or not) of the building for sure!

The "good" thing seemingly is that with 4+ months until the winter operations window starts, there's time for the office space to be relocated, a plan (permanent or temporary) for the maintenance facilities to be addressed, the woodshop on a short term basis at least may end up sharing some space with the sign shop down across the street from the base of the tubing hill, and the Snowmaking control room relocated.

Additionally, with other resorts in their portfolio, some short term "sharing" of equipment/staff from other Peak Resorts properties will likely be available as an option to get past this and back to as normal as possible sooner than later

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