This was not an isolated incident with a vehicle — George was well-known for a series of driving mishaps that likely began with the picket-fence incident that took place while he was working in Toronto. In fairness, he spent decades driving in severe winter weather on back roads and mountain highways where problems were inevitable, but his scrapes became legendary nonetheless. As a pipeline coordinator, George was provided with a succession of company cars for business and personal use, and more than one of these vehicles did not survive unscathed. On one occasion George was returning from an avalanche course and skidded on a slippery mountain road; the rear end of the car landed in a snow-filled ditch after surmounting a concrete barrier. Apart from its compromised position, everything seemed to be fine with the vehicle, so he gunned the engine and tried to drive out. Nothing happened. George got out of the car to see how badly his wheels were mired, and discovered that they were not just stuck, but were missing altogether, along with part of the drive train.
George was a skilled driver, but like many of that ilk, he sometimes pushed his skills to the limit, usually on unpaved forestry roads while negotiating snow, ice, or loose gravel. Paradoxically, on paved highways he drove with meticulous attention to the rules of the road, rarely speeding or overtaking incautiously. On one occasion, George and I were driving back from the Cariboo Mountains along an ice-covered forest road. The road surface was smooth — seemingly better than pavement — and we were cruising along easily at over a hundred kilometres per hour. It was a case of blissful ignorance, because upon exiting the vehicle when we stopped to relieve ourselves, we both fell flat on our backs on what proved to be an impossibly slippery surface of meltwater on smooth ice. On another occasion, one of George’s friends was driving home with him after a day of skiing in the McGregor Mountains. Turning the car around to start the trip home, George backed hard into a snowbank, and unknowingly plugged the exhaust pipe with snow. A short while later while cruising along, the muffler system blew up.
George’s misadventures with vehicles were not limited to the wheeled kind, as evidenced by the time he put one of his heavy ski-boot-clad feet through the bubble of a Jet Ranger helicopter during one of his avalanche patrols. I had joked with George after that incident that it was a good thing he didn’t have a pilot’s licence, as aircraft are much less forgiving than cars — he readily agreed. George’s neighbour, Bob Wiseman, summed it up after relating how George’s car rolled backwards out of his driveway, crossed the street, and banged into the back of Bob’s car, which was parked in his own driveway: “George just didn’t have any respect for vehicles, they were just there for him to use, as hard as he could.”
Purden Ski Hill
A few years after arriving in Prince George, George Evanoff turned his attention to a new ski hill that was being developed at the western end of the Cariboo Mountains, close to his new home. In the late 1950s, the grade for the future Highway 16 east of Prince George to McBride was being cleared, and by 1966 the new highway had been completed between Prince George and Purden Lake, sixty kilometres east of the city. The road initially had a gravel surface, but people quickly saw the recreational potential of the Purden Lake area. One such man was Joe Plenk, who later worked on the new ski hill development above the lake, blasting rock and clearing brush and trees. Joe also became known for his volunteer efforts a few kilometres east of Purden, where he worked alone, cutting and maintaining trails to and around the historic Grand Canyon of the Fraser, now a provincial park, for many years.
Joe Plenk was not a stranger to the Purden area. As early as March 1962, he travelled from Sinclair Mills on the CNR right-of-way to ice-fish on Purden Lake. Then, in 1967, a group of Prince George residents decided to pursue the prospect of a ski hill development above Purden Lake. It would be located in the first really high country east of the city on the new Highway 16, at a spot where the land nearly reached subalpine elevations. In the winter of 1967–68, a snow survey was completed on Purden Mountain; three and a half metres of snow were measured in the Purden Bowl at the heart of the proposed development. In 1968, construction of the ski hill began. The plan was to put in a road from the highway up to the intended base of the ski hill, and from there to install the towers for the chairlift. Unfortunately, that summer was very wet, and although the road was completed, Joe Plenk remembers that it was mostly eight inches of mud, and the towers had to be assembled down below. At first, not much clearing was done for ski runs, which were mostly laid out in alder glades.
The first season of 1968–69 was nearly a total loss. In March 1969, an unseasonable early rainfall caused the established ski hill on Tabor Mountain, closer to Prince George and at a lower elevation, to ice up. It was unable to open. The new ski hill at Purden was just above the snow line, and Joe remembers that somebody on local radio announced that Purden had six inches of powder snow. Within two hours, carloads of people started to arrive, and soon afterwards the food concession ran out of supplies. The Purden ski hill didn’t look back after that, although its financial viability still hung in the balance. A man named Bob Buchanan took over as president in 1969, and he was able to persuade one of Prince George’s iconic business establishments, Northern Hardware, to provide building materials on credit. This provided timely relief, and helped leverage further bank support.
That was also the year that George Evanoff got involved with the new ski hill. Lillian remembers that once he had heard about the ski hill being developed near Purden Lake, the couple was “there constantly.” George had earlier joined the ski patrol at the Tabor Mountain ski hill, and within a year of Purden opening, he became the ski patrol leader there. It was a position that he held for eleven years, until he turned his attention to planning a backcountry ski lodge. Because of the cash flow situation of the new ski hill, many people who worked there during the first few years, including Joe Plenk and George Evanoff, were paid in small numbers of shares. In George Evanoff’s case, most of his contributions outside of the ski patrol involved electrical work on the ski lifts and generator.
Right from the start, George demanded that things be done correctly; for example, he insisted on adding a transformer to the generator after the first season. “Whenever George spoke,” Joe said, “Bob Buchanan was full attention; no nonsense.” Joe Plenk, who was a steam engineer by profession, worked on clearing trees and brush at the new ski hill, and putting in cement forms and steel. He also did some dynamiting, for which George loaned him his blasting book that showed him how to set the charges for desired effect. Joe described one incident that demonstrated George’s proclivity for doing things right.
It was in the early 1970s, and Joe was using dynamite to lower a rocky ledge that was being used as a natural ski jump near the top of the hill. After he had set the charge under a rock, lit the fuse, and retreated to cover, he realized that the telephone line that was part of the chairlift’s emergency stop system was directly over the rock. Too late, he watched in dismay as the debris from the explosion severed the line. Joe’s attitude was that since he had broken it, he would fix it. The next day, he hauled ladders and equipment up to the site, rigged a scaffold to reach the line, and spent many hours meticulously replacing telephone wires, individually wrapping them with electrical insulation tape. He thought he had done a pretty good job, but later, when he described the work to George Evanoff, George replied bluntly, “Not good enough!” So George hauled his own equipment up to the top of the hill and laboriously replaced Joe’s work, this time putting electrical sleeves on the wires.
George’s concern for safety was always paramount. He once told me about a tragic accident that occurred at Purden, and his immediate response to it. Joe Plenk also described what happened: A skier had gone over a natural jump and had collided with another skier below, and both of them hit a lift tower. One of the skiers died at the scene, from major chest injuries