We’ve surpassed 600 inches of total snow for the current season. All the snow we’ve received makes for excellent skiing and riding, but it also creates challenges in our parking lots and Village. We have a 12-foot base on our mountain right now. It must all go somewhere and that’s where Chad and Cody Elliott come in. They are two of our snow removal experts, working in the early hours to make sure our lots and pathways are clear.
The Elliotts have been working at Solitude for over 10 years and skiing and riding here for almost 50. It’s not just the brothers running the heavy machinery, Chad’s children are part of the snow removal crew as well.
Solitude uses plows, tractors, snow cats, snow blowers, dump trucks, and shovels to clear its sidewalks, parking lots, and pathways. We move snow by the ton up here! Fortunately for drivers like Chad and Cody, this means using state-of-the-art snow removal equipment with amazing traction systems and climate-controlled interiors.
If you’ve walked through Solitude Village, you’ve no doubt admired the massive snow walls on the sides of the pathways. Snow gets piled up early in the season and then cut through to make clean and impressive passages that are easy to navigate. This year we can’t even see over the top of them.
The snow walls in our parking lots and Village can only get so high before we must start moving snow somewhere else. We use heavy equipment to load tons of snow into trucks which are then driven to our lower parking lot where the snow can be dumped in the creek. It’s a huge process that’s essential to operating our resort.
With the arrival of spring comes daylight savings time. Love it or hate it, the clocks moved forward, and the operating times on our lifts adapt to the longer days. Beginning on Monday, March 13, we will no longer have 8:00 a.m. start times for any of our lifts. Instead, Moonbeam, Apex and Link lifts will close at 5:00 p.m., Friday – Sunday. Enjoy the extra daylight and avoid peak canyon traffic on the weekends by skiing and riding.
Spring also brings our Last Chance Beach Bash series. Join us outside Last Chance Lodge every Saturday through April 15 for live music, food, drinks, and fun.
To catch up on previous Amber’s Updates, visit: https://blog.solitudemountain.com/category/ambers-updates/