Alone in the White Silence: How a Volcano Caretaker Lives in California

UFO, artillery fire and wind at a speed of 300 km per hour. The unusual life at the top of a Californian volcano is reported by Los Angeles Times.

Photo: Shutterstock

For most of the past 18 years, Vincent Valencia has lived alone atop Mammoth Mountain, a frozen world regularly visited by some of the worst weather California has to offer.

At 61, he is one of the few people with the extraordinary skills required to oversee the operation of the cable car at Mammoth Mountain, which withstands blizzards, winds of 300 km per hour and temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees.

“I may not see another living soul for five days or more,” Valencia said recently. “I’m alone and I don’t do anything stupid.”

A confident man with tousled gray hair and an easy smile, Valencia was busy preparing for a major snowstorm - the second to hit the eastern Sierra Nevada in less than a month.

“A social person won’t like this work,” he said. “But this is not about me.”

At the top of the mountain, a person is visited by a deeper understanding of life, the absence of conversations on an extinct volcano is compensated by the sounds that catch the slopes of the mountain like sails in a storm.

A simple accident, such as slipping on ice, is not just a minor inconvenience.

But like all living things in cold climates, Valencia has adapted to the cold and snow that covers the last stop of the cable car on the mountain.

It attracts over 1 million skiers annually, most of them from Southern California.

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When a violent storm subsides, the cable car stops and Valencia retreats to its lair, hidden under massive blocks, gears, steel beams and 5cm cables to warm up by the heater to the sound of Talking Heads from a tape recorder.

He taps his boot on it, scans digital displays of wind speed, wind direction and outside temperature, and wonders if his mother's frozen homemade tamale can be reheated for dinner.

Given Valencia's enormous responsibilities and years of experience, his recent decision to retire in two years - as he put it, "while I'm still healthy and strong" - has horrified ski resort officials.

“The big question now is: What do we do when Vinnie leaves?” said Chris Bulkley, vice president of mining operations at the ski area. “The answer is we don’t know.” It will be difficult to replace him."

“Vinnie is dedicated, responsible and almost superhuman during colossal storms,” he said. -I never heard him say, “I can’t do this.”

“We may have to replace it through a collective effort,” he added.

In the meantime, the center of life in Valencia during the ski season is its free apartments of 65 square meters.

“I have all the amenities, including a generator when the power is out,” he said.

There are no photographs or posters on the walls inside.

No guitar in the corner.

He only uses an old telescope when the weather allows him to admire the planets and stars - sparkling diamonds, rubies and sapphires.

There is no mailbox outside.

Just a sign for what Valencia calls "my world": Mammoth Mountain: 11,053 feet above sea level.

He said that once the aurora borealis danced across the night sky and shimmered on a huge ice and snow cover.

Of course, Valencia has a lot to tell about UFOs.

Once in the dark before sunrise in 2009, he said he watched in amazement as "a bright white ball flew low from the northeast at treetop level, maneuvering through valleys and ravines before disappearing behind the ridge line."

“It was one of those things you can’t explain,” he said, shaking his head. “And something that I will never forget.”

When the snow blown by the wind reaches its peak, as it did early in the morning recently, Valencia is in its element and is as alert and attentive as possible.

With energy and concentration that seem inexhaustible, he examines the machines; confers with members of the ski patrol; listens to messages on two-way radio communication, attached to a belt loop; helps to load and unload skis; sweeps snow from stairwells and emergency exits.

Valencia knows when travel post-pandemic beckons, passengers boarding the $ 39 round-trip suspended carriages looking for excitement as they soar over icy forests, granite abysses and escarpments.

Depending on the weather, it can be either a light breeze or a terrible ordeal.

“Many people are literally crying with joy, amazed by the beauty of the mountains they see from all sides,” he said.

"But some others find they are afraid of heights and need to be pulled down the mountain in a snowmobile because they feel bad or scared to get back the car."

"Vincent runs a tight ship," said Ralph Byrne, 53, a longtime ski patrol member. “He’s a risk manager on top of the world.”

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When strong winds become unsafe for the cable car to operate, Valencia has the right to close it and send employees home until conditions improve.

It was like this one winter day under clear blue skies, recalls Valencia, "when the hurricane side wind was so strong that I had to crawl on all fours from the snowmobile to my apartment so that I would not be carried off the mountain."

In addition, there is a ski resort's time-honored approach to dealing with unstable avalanches: it detonates them with a 105mm WWII howitzer leased from the US Army.

Before the formidable cannon fires at carefully calibrated targets, including popular avalanche-prone ski slopes, Valencia said, "I got a call and was reminded to hide in the room because of the shrapnel."

Valencia grew up on Redondo Beach and surfed along the coast.

As a young man, he traveled the eastern Sierra Nevada and went skiing on Mammoth Mountain with friends.

In the early 1990s, he was attracted by an ad in the weekly newspaper: “Mammoth Mountain is hiring workers for all positions. Live this way of life! "

He was hired by Dave McCoy, the late pioneer of the California ski industry, who, through vision, hard work and skill, has made the remote summit of the Sierra a legendary destination.

“I started as a salesman at a sporting goods store,” Valencia said, “then worked my way up to a cable car operator and eventually a supervisor.”

His wife and daughter lived with him on the mountain until 2011, when he said they moved to live with her parents in West Los Angeles.

“My wife didn’t like winter,” he said.

Valencia is now making plans to descend the mountain and resume a fulfilling life with his wife and daughter in his hometown.

“This is a young man’s job,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

“If one day I'm left here alone with a sore knee, well, that might not be very good,” he said.

But after nearly two decades of making a living keeping people safe and satisfied in an alpine desert swept by wildly unpredictable winds and stormy weather conditions, will Valencia be able to adapt to a new life in the tranquil palm latitudes of Redondo Beach?

Looking at the snowfields and glaciers covering the High Sierra's rough wilderness, Valencia admitted that the question was difficult to answer.

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