Idea #1: $25 Kiddie Water Slide
Many of the young children visiting Wild Mountain, Minn., with their parents were too small to enjoy the area’s summer waterslides. Not wanting to leave the kids out (hey, this is a family resort), Wild Mountain’s owners came up with a solution. Using ordinary 24-inch diameter by 10-foot long PVC pipes, they built kiddie waterslides by cutting the pipes in three parts, from end to end, in order to make three equal-sized troughs. Each section was then elevated about two feet and, with added water from a garden hose, the kiddie slides were ready for the little ones.
Use is limited to kids 40 inches or less, with one attendant in charge and with parental supervision required. Kids love it.
Idea #2: Apple Picker Ladders
Ski patrols at Shanty Creek, Mich., and Kissing Bridge, N.Y., have found that apple picker ladders make excellent rescue equipment for evacuating ski lifts and rescuing chair hangers. It is an old and clever idea. Apple picker ladders have a wide stable base and a single pointed top where a hook can be added for catching the haul rope. This arrangement places the ladder firmly on the ground while enabling a patroller to help someone from a chair high above.
This photo shows a 28-foot-long ladder stored at Shanty Creek where it can reach most of the chairs on the 1,100-foot quad chairlift. Kissing Bridge uses a center leg support on many of its apple-picker ladders because some chairs are close to the ground requiring the ladder to be in a more horizontal position. A source for picker ladders could be local orchard supply companies or Baldwin Apple Ladders, Brooks, Maine., (207) 722-3654, which sells a 22-foot ladder for $195.
Idea #3: Spray Concrete
The piers holding up the sun deck at Massanutten Resort, Va., repeatedly washed away until Mike Mueller, mountain manager, decided to spray the banks with concrete. He got this idea when he was driving to work one day and observed how the highway department was repairing an old culvert by spraying concrete on the stream banks.
The Massanutten project was accomplished by laying four-inch wire mesh over bricks and stones on the creek banks. A swimming pool contracting company—a business familiar with this type of concrete application—sprayed the area with a layer of concrete, three to four inches thick. A year later, the concrete has been successful in protecting the creek banks and the deck piers. No signs of a wash out. The project cost approximately $5,000.
