….and another one’s gone, and another one’s gone, another one bites the dust. (Queen….sort of)
For about a 100 years, Hilltop was the central location of Truckee’s winter sports happenings. Some of the remaining structures may not last much longer as this whole area is slated for major development….so check it out while you can. Drive to the south parking lot near Cottonwood restaurant, and walk under the old detachable poma lift, to the even older rope tow shed.
This area was first used in the 1800’s with ski jumping and cross country skiing, especially during The Great Truckee Winter Carnival which brought thousands of visitors by train to watch and participate. By 1910 a steam powered toboggan lift was installed (believed to be the first winter sports mechanical lift in the west). An ice palace was also built. During the 1920’s (and prohibition), Truckee’s wide open sales of liquor helped make the winter carnival boom. In 1929 the Pavilion opened (now Cottonwood restaurant....if open, check out the the old photos and history inside), and a 140’ tall ski jump was constructed.
The first rope tow to the top opened in 1940 with the clearing of ski runs. The detachable type poma lift was built in 1960, by Harry Herzog to hopefully capitalize on the 1960 Olympics at Squaw Valley. You can still see the bottom station, cable, and towers to the top, and also a ski run which now has 30’ trees growing in it. In 1981, I remember skiing down these runs after driving to the top, as the snows still covered the then smaller trees. The poma last ran in 1969, effectively ending most of the winter activities here. Today, the annual Great Ski Race, from Tahoe City to Truckee sometimes finishes here bringing back an old time carnival atmosphere to the site.
The cache is located in the old rope tow motor room. This tow was built in 1946, I believe. Check out the engineering…. basically a drivetrain of a 1920's era vehicle was used. It probably had the original gas engine driving it for some time, but then got switched out to the electric motor you can see here today. The three speed gearbox still shifts and note the original wire wheels on each side of the axle that the ropes ran around to transfer the power to haul skiers up the slope. Looks like they may have had a rope running off each wheel for side by side tows.
The cache container is made from a modified and shortened empty avalauncher shell. These shells are used by many ski areas and highway departments to trigger avalanches in known slide zones. They are propelled by compressed nitrogen, have a range of about a half mile, and contain an explosive charge. As of July 2012, the shack has been boarded up, so I had to move the cache. It is still in the building, and to access it now, you need to go the southwest corner of the shack, find the rectangular hole just above floor level, put your head in there (scary???....no, it's fun) and you'll see the cache shell to your hard left back against the wall tucked in the southwest corner. While in there peering about, you'll have a good view of the old school engineering.
It’s a shame that much of this may disappear. If I had several extra million bucks in my pocket that I wouldn’t mind ever seeing again, I’d buy all this land up, make it back into a small local ski and sledding hill, give it to the Parks and Rec to have a cheap and safe place for kids to learn to ski. And maybe a zip-line in summer……