The Mountain Knows No Expert. Mike Nash

In the event of an extended breakdown or stoppage of the lift mechanism, it is essential to be able get skiers down from the chairs as quickly as possible, especially in cold weather. Organizing and practising this evacuation was one of George Evanoff’s favourite jobs, and he was understandably upset when a real lift evacuation finally happened on a day that he was out of town, and he missed the big event that he had practised for. George had done his job well, however, and the other patrollers accomplished the task without incident. Notwithstanding his personal disappointment, he had met one of the essential challenges of leadership by ensuring that things ran well in his absence.

      The ski hill’s first president, Bob Buchanan, recalled how he first met George in the fall of 1969 on Purden Mountain as the operation was getting started:

      Some avid Prince George skiers had started building a ski area and it had struggled along for a year, but was unfinished and undercapitalized; there were no paid employees, and the lifts, ski runs, equipment, and lodge were unfinished. The company that supplied the ski lifts was owed a large debt, and was threatening to remove them as they had another buyer. George had organized a ski patrol for the hill, and he was out doing training and other things on the weekend. We introduced ourselves and I told him that we were trying to get things going, and that some volunteers who were to install the safety system and communications on the new T-bar had not shown up for the second weekend in a row. It was causing considerable problems since we needed a government inspection before we could use the lifts. George immediately decided to do the necessary work himself, and shortly the lift was up to Code, inspected, and ready for use.

      When the operational company required more money to continue, George became a shareholder, and was paid a token amount in shares for the many jobs he did on the ski lifts, equipment, and ski lodge. Being a helpful and concerned shareholder, he was also imposed upon to become a director of the Company. The ski area was a marginally profitable operation, existing as it does at a rather low altitude. It was kept going in the early years by shareholders who loved to ski enough to keep it operational through a series of financial crises while it paid off its early loans … Most of all, I remember George helping out at critical times: such as replacing a broken gearbox on the chairlift, working with only a few people for most of the night, to be ready for the weekend. We became personal friends, and I have many memories of skiing with him.

      Bob Buchanan has many other memories — a canoe-fishing trip on the Bowron, helicopter skiing in Valemount, and climbing a mountain one spring above the treeline. But it was George’s exceptional talent as a technician that stood out. Once, a rather large and expensive snow groomer and packer that cost $150,000 developed a glitch of some sort, and an aircraft technician who was at the hill examined it to see if he could find the electronic problem, but couldn’t help. Later, when Bob had George take a look, he found the problem in a short time, and corrected it. “You came to expect that of George, but sometimes it was surprising.”

      Craig Evanoff has recollections of his father’s intense involvement with the operating equipment at Purden ski hill: “If we were going hiking, for example to Sugarbowl Mountain,⁸ we always stopped at the ski hill on the way.” He remembered that, as kids, they would wait for what seemed like hours as George checked out some aspect of the lift system. I had similar memories of occasions when George and I were going hiking or backcountry skiing in the area; George would invariably stop at Purden ski hill on the way home to check on something. In the 1990s, George was no longer involved with the hill, and when a new chairlift was added, Craig, who was by then working as a forestry technician, did the layout of the new runs. He bushwhacked up and down the forested slopes about five times before settling on the eventual locations, noting that in the end, they were roughly based on what his father had already mapped out in anticipation of such an expansion.

      Both of George Evanoff’s children were involved in ski racing at Purden. To support this activity he organized a summer ski school at Smithers, for which he built and installed a portable rope tow on Hudson Bay Mountain each summer for three or four years, taking advantage of the snow that lingered there well into July. Craig recalled that the same portable rope tow also saw service at the Purden ski hill.

      The hill gave George an outlet for his boundless energy and many talents. The ski patrol helped him to develop his flair for leadership and mentoring. He acquired new skills through first-aid training with an emphasis on field improvisation, and he was afforded regular opportunities to put them into practice. It also gave him the impetus to develop the snowcraft skills that led to his avalanche work.

      George Evanoff sold out his interest as a shareholder of the Purden ski hill when he built his North Rockies Ski Tours lodge, and after that, he was too busy with his other interests to have much further involvement there. Yet only a few days before George died, the electrician who was working on one of the old ski lifts was having difficulty — there were no longer any drawings, and he wasn’t familiar with the old equipment. He asked if the electrician who understood the equipment was still around; he didn’t want to bother him with the actual work, but felt that it would be helpful to talk with him for fifteen minutes. George’s reaction was predictable. He drove the seventy kilometres out to Purden and spent the whole day helping the electrician work on the controls that he had designed and installed many years before.