Washout at Marble Mountain causes flooding in Steady Brook area

Heavy rains across Newfoundland's west coast on Saturday caused a large washout at Marble Mountain ski resort Sunday and flooding on the roads in the surrounding area.

"Mother Nature definitely threw us a curveball when we woke up this morning," said Marble Mountain general manager Richard Wells on Sunday afternoon. "Sadly, water finds its way downhill."

The weekend washout is disappointing, he said, especially coming on the heels of great conditions on the hill.

"Friday was such a great day on the mountain for us and all kinds of smiles and whatnot. So to go from that to this, yeah, certainly it hurts," Wells said. 

"The mountain did not hold up very well. We lost some key beginner runs that maybe didn't have a ton of man-made snow.… A lot of our infrastructure still held up very well."

A lot of our water ended up down in the base area, Wells said. "We're going to have to rebuild here now."

Steady Brook Mayor Bill Dawson said the town was able to clear up the situation relatively quickly Sunday morning. 

"There was a tremendous amount of water that came down through Marble and jettisoned across roads and came into the front part of our community," Dawson said. "It came in maybe half a kilometre or so. We barred the road off and brought the equipment in this morning and cleared it up."

Dawson says there was no significant damage caused by the flooding. 

"We didn't see any flooding of basements," he said. "It was mostly just roads. Most of the water has run away through to the culverts and brooks."

The mayor fears the impact it will have on the ski hill. 

"That is terrible for Marble, actually, absolutely heartbreaking," Dawson said. "We just had the carnival week and Marble was booming, it has been doing great, the hill was in great shape and now they've got to deal with this situation." 

However, Dawson has faith that the team at Marble will fix the situation quickly. 

"I'm sure they'll get it back up to scratch," he said. 

Wells said work to repair the hill has already begun. 

"We've got a lot of infrastructure on the ground there today, excavators and bulldozers and we've got to transport a lot of earth that was deposited basically at the bottom of our terminal," Wells said. 

"Assessing the entire damage of the mountain, that actually hasn't been done yet.… Once we've identified those key critical areas, the next step for us is getting some people on the mountain, groomers and patrol and snowmobile operators, to figure out what terrain exactly we lost."

However, Wells remains optimistic the ski hill will recover before the winter season comes to an end. 

"We are a resilient bunch at Marble Mountain and some may call it resilience or stubbornness, but we're going to bounce back," Wells said. "Looking at some of the weather here later in the week, it's certainly not favourable for, say, snowmaking or natural snowfall, But we're optimistic and we're confident.

"Have faith, guys.… Winter is not over yet."

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