Top of the Hill Tom

Snow.

If there is anything more beautiful in nature than the first drifting snowflakes on an early winter morning in the high mountains, I really don’t know what it is––except maybe that perfect sunset at a perfect beach or that perfect rainbow hovering over a perfect waterfall or…

Well, you know what I mean.The first snowflakes of winter are awfully pretty!

We were making the final touches to the brand new Lassen ski lift—checking out the motors and machinery and making sure all was safe and sound when the first flakes began to fall in what was to be a long, snowy winter—one of the snowiest winters on record for the Mount Lassen area.

We were cleaning up one of highest foundation sites as the first snow fell when Little Joe made another demonstration of his amazing strength. He picked up a hand-powered cement mixer under one arm and two eighty-pound sacks of cement under his other arm and carried both armloads uphill for about 20 yards to a waiting pick-up truck to the accompaniment of the truck’s radio blasting rock and roll music. (I know it sounds incredible, but this really happened.)

On our last morning as a working team, the big boss called us together in the Lassen Chalet parking lot and handed out the last pay envelopes––and he asked those of us who lived nearby if we wanted to work when the lift started operating.

I jumped at the chance to work for pay on the mountain and he hired me to be the “Safety-man” who would sit in a heated glass booth at the top of the lift all day to make sure the skiers exited the lift and skied away safely.

My job was to push a STOP button which would stop the lift if there was any problem at the top.

This meant I would be the first person to ride up the lift every morning to visually check the shiv trains to make sure they were operational, to sculpt the snow exit ramp for skiers to slide off the lift and do some other morning chores, and I would be the last one to ride the lift down every evening—unless I wanted to ski down with the ski patrol who checked to make sure no one was left on the mountain after the lift closed.

After just a few days of snow there was enough on the ground to open so in November of 1982 I started working full time at the Brand New Lassen Ski Lift and I had never been on skis in my life!

...