It took grit, teamwork, and lots of chainsaws to recover from a devastating March storm that hit northern Michigan and enveloped The Highlands under inches of ice. AFTER THE ICE BY KATIE BRINTON, SENIOR EDITOR, SAM
destinations—was one of the few to be in the zone of extreme impact. A surprisingly severe storm. “As the storm was happening, I don’t think anybody realized how big it was,” says The Highlands area manager Robby Ort- lieb. After a night of high winds and freez- ing rain, Ortlieb cleared a downed tree from his driveway and rushed into work to respond to a report of another downed tree blocking access to a homeowners’ association. It was still dark as he left home, but as the sun started to come up, Ortlieb says, “I quickly realized this is worse than any- body could imagine. It wasn’t just one tree on property. I was looking at every house I passed like, ‘Holy cow.’” Power lines were snapped in half, and branches hung low and heavy over the road. When Ortlieb’s car slid out and he hit some of the overhang, “I thought I’d shattered my windshield.” It was the ice on the tree limbs that shattered instead. Like a war zone. Between the downed trees and power lines, Ortlieb couldn’t reach his office, so he parked as
close as he could, 50 yards away. When he stepped out of the vehicle, “It sounded like a war zone, with the limbs snapping off from the trees.” It could have been mistaken for gunshots, or explosions. When Ortlieb got on his snowmo- bile to conduct a sweep of the property, he couldn’t find an access point on to the hill to check the lift lines. At one point, he thought, “I shouldn’t be here.” “I didn’t know what was going to come down on me,” he recalls. “There was all this crunching and snapping.” He returned home, and the storm raged for another two days. The aftermath. When staff was finally able to survey the property, it was grim. “Every corner had an incred- ible number of limbs and trees down,” says general manager Mike Chumbler. “The first 24 to 36 hours, we had to be mostly aware of the imminent danger of trees and limbs coming down, and it really made the working environment hazardous.” Compounding it all, says resort ser- vices director Mari Kissinger, was the
Ice storms are something of an oc- cupational hazard in the ski indus- try. Every operator knows the sight of glazed branches and iced-up haul ropes. Less than a quarter inch of ra- dial ice accretion is considered a nui- sance event. The 2 inches of ice accu- mulation in a small corner of northern Michigan at the end of March was devastating. The three-day storm, March 28-30, was local to the upper section of Mich- igan’s Lower Peninsula and a small sec- tion of the Upper Peninsula, with the most severe impacts felt in just a hand- ful of counties. The story never made national news, but even so, millions of acres of the region’s vast pine forests were impacted; 145,000 people were left without power, some for weeks; and the governor declared a state of emergency. Most of Michigan’s 40-odd ski areas, many already closed for the season, escaped serious, if any, icing. The High- lands Ski and Golf Resort—owned by Boyne Resorts and, with 435 skiable acres, one of the Midwest’s largest ski
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