Hutch-Host

My Dad's counterpart in Canada is a gentleman called Dave Hutchinson, who lives in Medicine Hat on the other side of Alberta. He's been skiing in Sunshine before, but when he last visited I offered to organise a room, rentals, tickets and a lesson for him and his family. Over the last few weeks we'd been emailing each other, since he wanted to holiday at Sunshine and I said I could help him out. He decided on February 19th-20th-21st, so I booked him a family room in the terrace of the Sunshine Inn for him, his wife and two teenage girls, and booked snowboard lessons for the girls too. I also offered to guide them round the mountain on my day off, and arranged some lift tickets too. Now I know what it's like to be a tour rep!

On Wednesday, after work, the residents of Sunshine Village had a town meeting with our 'Mayor', General Manager Ken Derpak. Ken is well known for his drive to listen to staff comments, suggestions and complaints, and hosted this meeting for all the on-hill staff to voice anything they might have to say. Free beer and pizza too! We sat at our tables and consumed our freebies, then the serious discussion began. Now, as you might imagine, many complaints that the staff had were directly linked to the performance of other members of staff, who also lived on hill. This meant that occasionally the debates got a little fierce, but Ken calmed things down and every issue that was brought up was written down by a member of HR. We also had a forum at the end where we could submit any comments or requests that were not publicly voiced.

I went to the meeting with a few things I wanted to bring up, but as the night went past I mentally checked them all off, as others mentioned them. I offered a suggestion or two on how something could be resolved, but most of the time I sat quietly and ate my pizza. It has now reached the stage where those who live on hill are the people who either really want to (such as myself) or the people who have to (such as hotel front desk), so everyone was pretty passionate about changing things that 'ground their gears'. So lots of issues were brought up, and Ken promised to look into all of them. Except running the gondola late on Saturdays, since the $21,000,000 contraption only has a limited running life and few enough people use it on Friday to warrant the wear and tear... Mid way through the meeting, we were told to watch the lunar eclipse, which came above the horizon well on the way to completeness. I'd not seen one before, and it was pretty weird to watch the whole thing go gradually red. In the mountains, we are of course a lot closer to the moon (in fact, it's only half the distance away if I remember correctly) so we could see it pretty clearly. Or maybe it was the clear air and lack of any light pollution that helped...

I switched my days off around, so that I could spend Thursday skiing with the Hutchinsons. I met up with David at 8:30, and were at the top of Standish by 8:45. A quick run down to the bottom, then back up and across to Continental Divide Express to be the first people up at 9:00. At the top, you get the best views of the entire resort; you can see the village, Mount Assiniboine (the Matterhorn of the Rockies), the meadows of BC, and virtually the whole of Sunshine Village. On Thursday, there was not a single cloud in the sky or a single person on the mountain when we went up, and after a quick picture we enjoyed the runs which had not been touched since being groomed. Next, we cruised back to the hotel to pick up the women (who, of course, took longer to get ready....), then started our tour. The girls, Grace and Beth, had switched over to the Dark Side a couple of years ago and have now reached the stage where they're pretty confident on most of the Blue runs in Sunshine. Helped a lot by their lesson yesterday, we skied/rode as one big group. Kay, David's wife, is a pretty good skier and didn't have any trouble keeping up with David or I, who were leading the group.

After a couple of runs of Wawa, we headed to Goat's Eye Mountain (or 'Onion', as David kept calling it for some strange reason) via Jack Rabbit. Yet still, the resort was quiet, the snow was fresh and the sun was shining. We did Goat's Eye a couple of times, then stopped for lunch. Then we went up Wolverine, then to Tee Pee town lift (which was, for once, pretty pleasant with no biting breeze or snow), and then it was time for Grace to call it a day. We dropped her off at the Hotel, had a couple more runs up Standish, then dropped Beth off too. Kay, David and I continued up Strawberry before dropping Kay off, then us last two (who were also the first two) headed up Angel for a couple of runs with a few pictures and videos. By 3:00, we agreed on calling it a day, after skiing every lift on the mountain at least once. But also agreed to go the the hot tub before dinner...

While chatting in the hot tub, I noticed my watch (which had been getting some condensation on the inside of the screen recently) had flickering numbers. I didn't think much of it, but it wasn't long before segments of the LCD started disappearing... And the screen filled up with water too... I decided at this point to leave the thing out of the 38 degree water, but it continued to die and by the time I'd left the hot tub, the whole screen was covered in water droplets, yet through the water you could see that none of the segments were alive. I shook it, I apologised profusely to it, I kept it warm, and I tapped it frequently. But I couldn't bring it back to life...

I was invited to join the Hutchinsons for dinner in Chimney Corner, which was an interesting experience being on the other side of the service. Siobhan from Kent was our server, and I had the opportunity to try some of the dishes which I'd seen but never tasted. And was very impressed! I always try my best to be professional while porting, but the overall impression of the entire restaurant is very good and the food delicious. I recommended a few dishes, and I think everyone enjoyed their meal (although it was their third evening on the trot...). When we'd finished, we said our goodbyes, and the family returned to their room to pack up, since they were leaving the next day on the early gondola. I, on the other hand, went back to the room next to mine and watched the next episode of Lost with our Lost-Club. But Steve is uncannily good at guessing the ending, which in a program as unpredictable as Lost is a great achievement...

Thanks to the Hutch family, you certainly spiced up my week and I loved showing you round my mountain. You're welcome to come back any time you want...PS I didn't win the cleanest room competition... Much like home, we simply have too much stuff to be properly tidy...