LIFE UNDER THE LIZARD RANGE
By Pierre Alleyn
February 13th, 2003
Through determined blue septuagenarian eyes, Heiko Socher points out Fernie’s new wilderness trail, eight kilometres away on the Three Sisters. Savouring the satisfaction derived from toil in the company of dedicated volunteers, Heiko feels “happy that I accomplished much this summer.” Known as Heiko’s trail, it accesses 20 kilometres of rugged terrain behind Mount Fernie and the Sisters.
Two years after selling Fernie Snow Valley – now Fernie Alpine Resort – in a multi-million dollar deal, Heiko needed a challenge. As he puts it, “it is a mistake to do nothing as it affects your health and happiness.” As steaming cups of coffee and lemon-cream pies appear before us, our conversation turns to the early days.
Heiko Socher first glimpsed the jagged Lizard Range in 1966, when Crowsnest Industries hired the young forestry graduate to oversee their timber holdings. His wife Linda – they met while skiing at Mt. Baker – accompanied him to Fernie.
“I was delighted to see a week-end T-bar operation here,” Heiko reminisces, “and since skiing was everything to us, I became involved.” He and Linda first ran the ski school, then Linda opened the retail shop that eventually grew into the current Ski Base store on 2nd Avenue. By 1973, Heiko was General Manager and “had purchased enough shares to have a substantial say in major decisions.The ski hill was my dream job,” he explains with a sparkle in his eyes. The challenge now was to fulfill the area’s potential.
In the 1960’s Fernie was a community where most people had neither money nor leisure time. Giving children an opportunity to ski was first on Heiko’s agenda. He initiated skiing phys. ed. classes that were “dirt cheap - $10 bought lessons and rentals for the season.”
No matter the quality of terrain and snow, Heiko knew “that a couple of T-bars wouldn’t cut it” in the competitive ski industry. He needed to build facilities to attract the Calgarians whizzing by in ski buses headed for Big Mountain, in Whitefish, and eventually, skiers from the world over.
Thus began a delicate dance which Heiko describes as “a matter of investment, of customers, of the basic ingredients of mountain, climatic conditions, and facilities–and then make it so that you don’t spend all the money on operations, so that you have money left over for development. It is a balancing game like everything else.” He would devote the next 25 years of his life building Fernie Snow Valley into a full-service vacation resort facility.
Heiko launched an expansion program that saw T-bars replaced by chairlifts or relocated to open up more terrain. The day lodge was expanded and made comfortable. Fernie Snow Valley made its first appearance at the Calgary ski show, people asking “I’ve heard of Fernie but where is it?”
It takes teamwork to operate a ski hill on the Lizard Range. One night, an avalanche took out two lift towers. “The staff had that lift rebuilt within five weeks,” he recalls with pride. Another challenge was the Griz Inn, a $3 million condominium that ran smack into an Alberta recession and 20 percent interest rates. Nobody was buying, and with the bank close to calling the loan, Heiko rented out the suites before auctioning them off in 1985.
Asked how often he skied, Heiko remembers that work “got in the way quite a bit, because every time I went out I saw things that needed doing or improving.” Linda got out more often. Their kids skied as often as they could; Ralf eventually raced on the national team while Elke taught in Switzerland.
People in town recall the work ethics of a man who never asked others to do something he wouldn’t do himself, a man who picked up litter and tossed rocks off ski runs. Heiko remembers when “I broke my ribs doing a job on a roof one time, and two weeks later a lift breaks down and I had to go see about that when I could hardly walk.”
Heiko had long dreamed of developing the resort into Currie, Siberia and Timber bowls. He explains: “When you’re at 3,500’ your base is vulnerable. With higher terrain, operations can withstand milder winters, be it global warming or the experience of having two weeks of rain in March.”
By 1995, “with our low debt and good earnings, I knew it was time to develop the new terrain,” he adds. With an approved $20 million development master plan in hand, Heiko shrewdly decides to hold off. “That’s a lot of money–we’re still a small company–at age 65 or better I am not going to loose everything, so why risk it,” he explains. “I didn’t look for a buyer,” Heiko continues, ”but then in 1997, lucky me, Charlie Locke came along–” Under new ownership, the ski hill was immediately renamed Fernie Alpine Resort.
Driven to keep busy, Heiko continues to take up new challenges, whether it is snowboarding with his grandchild, the completion of his epic trail or the revitalization of Historic Downtown Fernie. Honoured as Citizen of the Year in 2001, Heiko is determined to preserve Fernie’s heritage, for “we are one of the oldest places in B.C. and visitors set great stock on that.”
Part of what has formed this remarkable man, who was displaced as a child during the war in Germany, is that “growing up in tough times helps us make do with little and do the best you can with what you can get.”
Summing up a life of work and play under the Lizard Range, Heiko acknowledges “many days of worries and anxiety, but when things come together it is still worth it. I was fully devoted to skiing. At times I can be stubborn–I am determined, whatever you call it. I got to do more or less what I envisioned.”
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