In the midst of its biggest maintenance overhaul in at least five years, Mt. Bachelor ski area’s new top executive says the changes may not be visible to the public, but should result in better service for the upcoming 2008-09 ski and snowboard season.

That’s expected to be welcome news for people who expressed frustration last season with lift breakdowns and questioned the ski area’s investment in the mountain.

“We’ve got a reinvigorated focus here because of some past issues,” said Dave Rathbun, who took over as president and general manager in June after three seasons as vice president of sales, marketing, reservations and golf at Killington Resort-Pico Mountain in Vermont. “This isn’t sexy stuff that we’re doing — it’s just stuff that needs to be done.”

Mt. Bachelor is spending more this summer on maintenance than in previous years, replacing parts that show any sign of wear, and using more-expensive replacement parts from its original equipment manufacturer, Rathbun said. The effort is necessary to reduce the chances of lift breakdowns this season, he said.

The work includes changing many of the parts on Bachelor’s 10 lifts, installing fiber-optic cables, paving parking lots and replacing wiring and heating systems under heated sidewalks at the ski area’s guest lodges.

“Because of the past circumstances, we’re being more aggressive in the pace and the focus on those parts that tend to wear,” he said.

“If it’s at all a question, we’re changing it this year.” Rathbun said. “That what’s really different.”

The ski area’s parent company, Park City, Utah-based Powdr Corp., invested $3.4 million this summer on capital improvements, including about $2 million for three new snowcats and a new snowblower, and building a new in-town park-and-ride lot, Rathbun said. The lot is adjacent to the former lot at Simpson and Colorado avenues, which was sold.

As part of the $3.4 million investment, Powdr earmarked $500,000 for lift maintenance and repair at the beginning of the season, but the final tally will be more by the end of the season, Rathbun said.

The summer maintenance blitz

The heavy equipment is expected to arrive by the start of the ski and snowboard season.

Throughout the summer, though, maintenance crews have been busily trying to prevent recurrences of lift incidents, delays or shutdowns — possibly caused by a combination of faulty parts and nasty winter weather — that have challenged the ski area the past few seasons. A couple of highly publicized incidents last winter, including a lift shutdown during the busy Christmas holiday season, raised public questions about Mt. Bachelor’s commitment to its lift operations.

“People care about this issue because the success of Mt. Bachelor has enormous importance on Bend both from an economic standpoint and a quality-of-life standpoint,” said Doug La Placa, president and CEO of Visit Bend, which markets tourism for the city. “There’s too much at stake for them to fail.”

La Placa called this summer’s improvements at Bachelor “an extremely encouraging sign.”

Mt. Bachelor started work immediately after the ski and snowboard season ended May 18, replacing all the rollers on the Summit Express chairlift, Rathbun said. The goal is to reduce the variables of things that can go wrong on the lifts next winter, he said.

The ski area has replaced at least 3,000 of the wheels that carry the chairlift through each of the terminals on all of its lifts. The wheels often get worn down by ice, wind and snow, Rathbun said.

The money has been well-spent and part of a shifting management philosophy that is needed to properly maintain lifts over the long haul, said Mark Bee, president of Salt Lake City-based Doppelmayr North America, which sells and services the ski area’s lift equipment.

Mt. Bachelor has spent $460,000 in new lift parts this summer, about four times the amount the ski area has spent with Doppelmayr each of the past five years, Bee said.

“Based on our sales records, there seems to have been a change in philosophy over there,” Bee said.

Doppelmayr has sent a chief technician to Mt. Bachelor twice already this summer — to adjust the terminals and bring everything back to its original design specifications — and will send him out again later this month, Bee said.

The cost of the technician’s visits will be about $35,000, he said.

“It’s, ‘Pay me now or pay me later,’” he said. “If they keep their lifts well-adjusted, they will work better in the long run because the components don’t wear out.”

A proactive approach

In the past, Mt. Bachelor has bought its replacement parts from other manufacturers instead of Doppelmayr to save money, Rathbun said.

Buying from Doppelmayr costs more but could eliminate problems this season, he said.

“We’ve been getting better the last few years, but we keep having these one or two big things that put the question back in people’s minds: ‘What’s going on up there?’” Rathbun said. “My approach is that if we reduce the variables, we’ll get to the root cause of what’s been happening.”

Mt. Bachelor and other ski areas are shifting from a reactive mode where they fix equipment when it is broken to a more proactive mode, Bee said.

If everything is adjusted annually, the equipment will last about 20 years, Bee said. If not, it could wear out in five years.

“These are kind of normal maintenance things that need to be done annually,” Bee said. “Within the industry, people are realizing how critical it is to make adjustments. This isn’t just related to Bachelor. Things will run better if the terminal is adjusted.”

A chief source of Mt. Bachelor’s lift challenges is a perennial Northwest nemesis: rime ice.

The ice affects mountains such as Mount Bachelor in maritime climates at higher elevations where frozen fog, sometimes more than a foot thick, clings to lift equipment and can delay lift openings.

The ski area plans to tackle rime ice next season by hiring five additional maintenance employees who will split into two crews and open the chairlifts on the west side of the mountain — Outback Express and Northwest Express — starting the lifts the night before if necessary and running them overnight so they are ready to go in the morning, Rathbun said.

However, the ski area’s detachable lifts, including Outback and Northwest, are among the oldest of Powdr’s six ski areas and need continuous adjustment, Bee said.

One of the oldest lifts at the ski area, Outback Express, got significant attention this summer, Rathbun said.

The lift, built in 1987, was expected to last 25 to 30 years, but weather conditions have made it susceptible to breakdowns, Rathbun said.

“We’ve gone through and tweaked everything (on Outback) meticulously,” he said. “We’ve done everything short of replacing the entire lift. We get external conditions here — the wind, ice and snow — so that things may wear out faster.”

Within the next two years, Mt. Bachelor plans to replace Outback altogether or completely overhaul its terminals, Rathbun said.

An overhaul would cost $3.5 million, while a new lift would cost between $5 million and $7 million, he said.

Some of this summer’s maintenance, such as replacing worn-out parts on all lifts, is occurring to ensure last season’s problems aren’t repeated, Rathbun said.

Other improvements include replacing outdated microwave lines underneath the Pine Marten chairlift with fiber-optic lines. The equipment will give Mt. Bachelor more reliable communications throughout the winter, Rathbun said. Microwave lines have been used for phone, computer, Internet and other data connections within the ski area and into town.

Mt. Bachelor also is replacing wiring underneath the “hot walks,” which melt snow and ice on sidewalks that skiers and snowboarders use at the West Village Lodge and fixing the heated water system underneath the walkways at Sunrise Lodge, Rathbun said.

“By the time we finish our summer maintenance program, we will be in better shape than we’ve been in years,” he said.

Other improvements include new bathrooms at the Nordic Center and an exterior coat of paint at West Village Lodge, he said.

Mt. Bachelor also worked with the Oregon Department of Transportation to order a new $500,000, state-of-the-art snowblower, the kind ODOT uses to clear snow on mountain passes, he said.

The new snowblower, used for clearing parking lots of ice and snow, will arrive in time for the season, Rathbun said.