OFF SEASON
Slow, but steady growth
Pombo says his company enjoyed slow, but steady growth over
the last decade. All Mountain has grown from a one-machine
operation to two, and Pombo now has a handful of employees.
All of this has happened despite the fact All Mountain had
done little to advertise its presence.
“A lot of it is word-of-mouth from customers we’ve worked
with over the years,” Pombo said. “A lot of it comes down to
reputation and recommendations. That’s the big thing; we try
to keep the quality there.”
All Mountain’s reputation has been built, in part, on
the company’s adherence to its environmentally-friendly
principles. In addition to using machinery that creates far
less ground pressure than conventional tracked equipment, it
uses biodegradable Panolin hydraulic fluid and biodegradable
grease in all of its excavating machines.
“We try to use earth-friendly lubricants whenever we can,”
Pombo said. “The hydraulics are the big thing. You are talking
about machines with 50-gallon capacity. If you spill that out in
the middle of nowhere, the fact it’s biodegradable can make a
huge difference.”
While there is no shortage of challenges when it comes
to major excavation projects, Pombo says one of the biggest
challenges for his company is planning. Most of the work
they do has to be wrapped up in a short period of time, which
requires intimate knowledge of the terrain and knowing
which areas can be accessed and which ones can’t.
“It’s a very short season to get all the work done. That’s why
planning for an expansion is such a big thing,” he said.
Continuous learning
Even though All Mountain has worked on hundreds of different
terrain-based projects, Pombo says he and his crew are
constantly learning new things.
“It’s always a constant learning curve with the machines
because you don’t know everything about them all at once.
You are always finding ways to be more efficient and be
creative with the way you are moving them,” he said.
Most of the work All Mountain does in the ski industry
happens during the summer months, but planning for a project
often begins months or years before any ground is dug. In the
case of Arapahoe Basin, preliminary discussions with the ski
area’s management began nearly four years before the start
of construction.
The scale of these projects makes planning “sooner rather
than later” critical in order to ensure successful completion,
Pombo says.
“Planning is just crucial in terms of how you are going to
go about it and get supplies in, especially to remote areas,” he
said. “How are you going to get in and do some of the work?
And when you are in a high alpine environment, the weather
can change in a heartbeat. Those remote projects are definitely
a challenge…you’ve got to have all your ducks in a row.”
PHOTOS COURTESY OF ALL MOUNTAIN CONSTRUCTION
“It wasn’t an easy project. Co-ordinating what everybody was doing
took a lot of work. It took a lot of communicating, a lot of patience, a lot
of understanding the outcomes. Brian and his team did a great job.”
– Alan Henceroth, Arapahoe Basin Ski Area
snowopsmag.com | SnowOps 11
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