Big Bear’s Mountain High Resort was saved from the Bridge fire’s flames when a team of employees made the quick decision to turn on the snow machines.
Videos taken Tuesday and obtained from Dennis Nadalin, the resort’s video production supervisor and longtime employee, show crew members racing to turn on more than a dozen snow machines.
Screenshot from Mountain High resort live camera recording showing the base of Mountain High West with snow machines turned on and operating in an effort by crew members to save the resort from the Bridge fire. (Courtesy: Dennis Nadalin)
“They basically saved the buildings because they wet down the buildings and the fire would have come roaring through,” Nadalin said.
The courageous group effort by Mountain High employees might have also saved the upcoming ski season.
The ski resort’s investment in automated tower gun snow machines played a crucial role in the employees’ efforts to save the mountains, said Nadalin. He said back in the old days the process to hook water hoses up into the snow-making guns would have taken too long.
Mountain High invested more than $1 million into seasonal improvements in 2022, including upgraded snow-making machinery.
This isn’t the first time resort employees have turned to idle snow machines, Nadalin said. Resort crew members turned to the snow making equipment during the 2020 Bobcat fire.
“If they wouldn’t have turned on the guns there’s a very good chance we would have lost the main building with the resort and then we’d have no chance of opening,” Nadalin said.
No major damage to Mountain High’s three resorts have been reported from the Bridge fire, which started about 2:15 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 8, in the East Fork area of the Angeles National Forest above Glendora. It had grown to 52,801 acres by Friday evening.
More than 400 personnel were assigned to the fire. Earlier in the week, the Bridge fire became the largest active wildfire in the state. Two other large wildfires in Southern California, the Line and Airport fires, have also been slowed in part due to the change in weather conditions.
The fire’s cause was under investigation.