Palomar Mountain News

When the plows at the State Park and the Christian Conference Camp both broke down, Jim McCarthy and Don Phelps answered the call for help. There was a group of 80 people at the camp. About 60 people flew in from out of state so were to get on a bus as they had airline flights to catch Sunday afternoon. Plus, there were about 10 vehicles to get out.

After a few hours of not seeing camp cars covered in snow go by, I went down to see how they were doing and make sure the Plow Guys made it down to the camp. Of course I took pix for you and they’d arrived just in time for breakfast. Three days of plowing got the road open enough for the vehicles. The bus with chains could have made it but branches were so low with the weight of the snow and turns were pretty tight. The toughest part getting the bus up might have been trying to get through the tangled traffic jam at the Summit. CHP was wise and kept the huge bus down by Oak Knoll, so the bus folks were shuttled.

So what does that have to do with our power still being out today? A repair was promised for midnight. We saw trucks go by last night about 9pm. This morning Don drove down to chat with the the crew. The outage is up at Boucher Lookout. But that big loop road hadn’t been plowed. SDG&E brought up a D5 cat that worked through the night to open the road so the repair crew could get up there. The cat finished up about 7 am and was sitting there idling. Don asked the operator when our power might be back on and he said, “I’m just the cat crew, you need to talk to the big boss over there. Those guys walk on water!”

According to the Big Boss, power should be on about noon. We are so thankful we didn’t get more promised snow last night and hoping plowing won’t be necessary before the mountain has power again.

Bonnie Phelps, enjoying the Views

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