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KELOWNA ROCKETS close in on several team milestones as the team’s WHL regular season campaign has seven games left.
THE HORIZONS for women becoming a larger fixture among winemakers in the Okanagan wine industry are beginning to look a lot brighter.
THE ICONIC Hanson brothers from the movie Slapshot fame paid a visit to West Kelowna Warriors hockey game last Saturday night.
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83 serving our community 1930 to 2013
Winter slowly fading away
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KELOWNA NEW CAR AUTO DEALERS’ ASSOC.
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Showing off the latest technology that Kelowna’s Automotive Dealers have to offer in cars, trucks, SUV’s and alternative fuel vehicles
TUESDAY March 4, 2013 The Central Okanagan’s Best-Read Newspaper www.kelownacapnews.com
▼ CRYSTAL MOUNTAIN
Ski hill remains closed after chairlift mishap Kathy Michaels STAFF REPORTER
Kathy Michaels
STAFF REPORTER
If food analogies are your thing, then environment Canada meteorologist Doug Lundquist has the perfect way to sum up this winter. “It was a warm sandwich—the good stuff was in the middle,” said Lundquist, Monday, noting a few nearly balmy days in Kelowna mid-January broke regional records in the season’s centre. But winter started chilly and is ending even chillier, amounting to a slightly colder than average season. The seasonal average was -2.3 C this year, compared to the 10-year seasonal average of - 0.7 C. What was more remarkable in the grand scheme of winter weather, however, was precipitation. Kelowna may have spent the weekend buried under snow, but the season was a lot less wet than usual. For all of December, January and February Kelowna had around 44 mm of precipitation compared to the te10-year average of 100 mm. What that heralds in the seasons ahead remains to be seen, but Lundquist stressed that the weather See Fading A4
Crystal Mountain staff are still reeling from the fallout of a weekend accident that left four people injured and ski hill operations indefinitely stalled. Mike Morin, the ski hill’s general manager, said the skiers who were injured Saturday when three chairs from the lift plummeted to the ground are starting to heal from their physical injuries, which included bruising, broken ribs, a broken leg to a dislocated shoulder. But there are deeper laid repercussions just rising to the surface. “Once it sunk in and everything was settled, a lot of us really broke down,” he said Monday, noting three of the injured were employees of the mountain, while one was a customer. “I’ve been here 20 years and I have ridden this lift thousands of times, with no doubts for the safety, but I’m surprised about how it effects me.” He’s called in a counsellor to help the ski hill staff deal with the grief that’s starting to show, and he’s already had a couple visits with them himself. “Everyone deals with this differently,” he said, adding that he’s had staff members call and say they won’t be going to work due to stress caused by the incident. Anxiety is also being felt throughout the lo-
cal ski community, who is the core of the resort’s business. “I’d say 99.8 per cent of our business comes from the local area. And naturally, some people cancelled their lessons,” he said. “On Facebook, a small percentage of people are worried, but the support I’m getting from the public is unreal. “For every one person who badmouths Crystal Mountain, there are 10 people who are saying that they’re comment is out of context, and they’re not reporting the whole story.” One of the concerns gaining traction is pulled straight from the BC Safety Authority website, which reports that Crystal Mountain was issued an $8,000 fine in 2013 for failure to comply with a safety order relating to its passenger ropeways. Morin had little to say on that matter, other than the penalty has nothing to do with what went wrong over the weekend. The whole story, however, has yet to be pieced together. And until it is, the ski hill’s operating license has been suspended. What they do know, said Morin, is that the Saturday morning incident resulted from an oscillating empty chair on the Double Chairlift striking the second lift tower, which caused the cable to leave its track. Then the cable and
CONTRIBUTED
THE image projected by the Crystal Mountain resort of enjoying a day of skiing in the Okanagan winter sunshine
was dealt a setback last Saturday when the Double Chair cable left its track and plummeted to the ground, causing three chairs occupied by skiers and ski hill staff to crash to the ground. three chairs fell to the ground. What caused the chair to oscillate and the ensuing reaction is something
the B.C. Safety Authority is investigating, said Morin. “Right now, they’ve ruled out a whole bunch
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of stuff,” he said. “But why was that rope swinging? They have to be sure of the cause…this lift has been in operation since
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