Dear Bear Valley Snow Enthusiasts,

If you were here last weekend you experienced a disruption in lift service due to a power outage. In fact a PG&E power problem occurred Saturday around noon in Salt Springs resulting in a complete power outage from Dorrington to Bear Valley, lasting for most of the afternoon.

Our trained lift maintenance crew did an outstanding job of switching lifts to auxiliary power (diesel engines) especially considering the fact that we were running all 9 lifts at full capacity. While you might think this is nothing more than flipping a switch, transferring power from electric to the auxiliary requires several time consuming tasks such as warming up the diesel for each chair for several minutes.

For some of the older chair lifts such as Supercub and Bear auxiliary power is only configured to evacuate all passengers. However the majority of lifts have been upgraded to continue running on diesel, a bit slower and with some capacity limitations, but still performing.

Running on auxiliary power during this busy weekend created longer lines for our guests and we apologize for this circumstance, albeit out of our control. We do truly appreciate your business and patience during this power outage and tried to show that via some vouchers handed out by some of our staff members. However I want to reiterate that this is not an entitlement as the power outage and resulting lift capacity reduction was not caused by Bear Valley Mountain Resort. So if you received a coupon please enjoy it when you are here next time.

In an earlier blog there was a question why Grizzly Bowl was not opened right after our last big storm (super bowl Sunday). Reiterating an earlier answer, we had a significant avalanche risk on that Sunday plus the weather was inclement with periods of complete white-outs which made it not feasible from a staff and guest safety perspective to clear and open the lower mountain. As I am sure you understand safety of our guests and our staff is our first priority.