Bigrock purchases new groomer

    MARS HILL, Maine — Officials at Bigrock say the facility’s new $260,000 groomer will not only cut down on the grooming time, but will use less fuel in the process.
“There are three important things that one needs to have in order to operate a ski hill appropriately — a lift to get people up the hill, snow to bring people down the hill, and a groomer to make sure that the hill is covered properly and in pristine condition,” said Bill Getman, general manager of Bigrock. “We had the first two things, but our groomer was in poor shape, so we had to replace it.”
The previous groomer was 12 years old.
“With that comes 12-year-old problems,” said Getman. “The life cycle of a groomer is pretty much 10 years, and then you’re looking for problems, which we found.”
The old groomer “died on the hill” three times.
“Within the last several weeks, there were three episodes. With episode one, it died on the hill while they were grooming at night, and they managed to limp it in. It cost us in the ballpark of $2,000 to fix it,” said Getman. “The second time it broke down was about 10 days later and that repair was around $4,000. The third time was going into February break — right before the state ski meet — and we determined that it was a $7,000 part. Unfortunately there was a 12-year-old $7,000 part on the other side just waiting to be replaced.
“Over the last three months, we put in an extra $20,000 into the old groomer that we did not anticipate,” he said. “Another $10,000 was spent on scheduled maintenance. We knew we were going to need to do something sooner or later.”
As luck — and forethought — would have it, the new groomer was onsite during the Feb. 16-17 high school Class B and C alpine state championships, which Bigrock hosted.
“We arranged through PistenBully to have a loaner, or a demo, onsite. It’s their hope that you fall in love with it and buy it,” said Getman. “That groomer arrived here Feb. 13, and our older groomer broke a day or two later. It was seemingly meant to be.”
Getman expects the new groomer to cut the grooming time by about 40 percent, and will use less fuel since it’s more efficient.
“New is obviously better than old,” he said. “It’s a very nice piece of equipment, and we don’t have to worry if we’ll make it down the mountain or not. We’re happy with it. We’ve always done a good job with grooming, but the skiers who ski here have noticed a difference with the new machine.”
The general manager said acquiring the new apparatus is the easy part.
“The most challenging part,” said Getman, “is paying for it. I went to the board and they agreed that we should purchase the PistenBully groomer. We will continue to maximize our revenue, minimize our expenses, and raise whatever we need to raise as best we can to pay for this. I’m sure we’ll be doing a lot of fundraisers.
“The board is obviously committed to make Bigrock run,” he said. “They’re willing to go down this road and invest in this very expensive piece of equipment that’s important and vital to the mountain, but at the same time, it’s a huge expense. We’ve got to bridge that gap if we’re going to be successful and maintain being viable.”
Andy McQuade, who Bigrock contracts to help with the grooming, said he really likes the new machine.
“It’s more efficient, has more horsepower, and allows you to do things uphill that you couldn’t do with the other one such as run the blade,” he said, noting that the blade on the front makes the surface flat, while the tiller on the back gives the trails a corduroy pattern. “It’s a little faster in terms of travel speed. Every day Bigrock is going to be open, the trails are groomed. Some of the smaller trails in the woods aren’t done every day, but the bigger, more popular ones are done regularly. The new groomer will make our jobs a lot easier.”