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SNOWBIRD - The tunnel and its people-mover conveyor had been open only an hour or so Tuesday when skier Bernd Schlickeiser slid out its back side into cloud-enshrouded Mineral Basin.
"That is something new in my life," he yelled back to his trailing partner, Yves Harel. And that is saying something. Schlickeiser is 61, hails from Germany and has skied most of his life, often in Europe, where the concept of moving from one side of a ski mountain to another through a tunnel is not commonplace, though not unheard of.
But this tunnel is in North America. At 11 a.m. Tuesday, Snowbird Ski & Summer Resort became the continent's first resort to incorporate a tunnel into its system for transporting skiers and snowboarders.
And to Snowbird mountain operations director Jim Baker, who oversaw the excavation and development of the 600-foot, $1.4 million tunnel, bringing that system online is creating the kind of buzz about Snowbird that Schlickeiser's comment epitomized.
People will want to come to the Bird just to try the tunnel. They'll want to see what it is like to ride a conveyor belt through a gray-walled tunnel, 200 feet beneath the ridge that separates Peruvian Gulch, on Snowbird's main Little Cottonwood Canyon side, from Mineral Basin, on its American Fork Canyon backside.
On this day, too, the tunnel also showed its practical nature. Although there was a whiteout at the tunnel's exit point in Mineral Basin, there was little wind to whip the new-falling snow. But a few hundred feet higher on Hidden Peak, steady winds in the teens and gusting to 25 mph made conditions much more physically challenging.
"It is nice not to have to go to the top and suffer the wind and just enjoy the slopes," said Harel, 71, of Montreal.
When winds are even stronger, the Tram cannot operate. But with the tunnel and the new Peruvian Express high-speed quad lift, which empties out a few dozen yards from the tunnel's entrance, skiers and boarders can still get back to Mineral Basin's mixture of intermediate groomers and powder shots.
Known technically as the Peruvian Tunnel, the passage has quickly picked up the nickname "The Basshole." That is a play on the name of Snowbird owner Dick Bass, who Tuesday christened the high-speed quad by breaking a bottle of champagne on one of its chairs, and then presided over a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the center of the tunnel to open it officially.
Bass pledged that his resort and up-canyon neighbor Alta "do not intend to rest on our laurels. We have a responsibility [in a high-pressure society] to provide our fellow man with the opportunities to enhance themselves in mind, body and spirit."
Snowbird President Bob Bonar praised the designers, miners, construction workers and planners from Salt Lake County and the U.S. Forest Service who aided in construction of the project, and the legislators who supported it. Many were among the crowd of 125 that packed into the tunnel for the dedication.
Once the ribbon was cut, Bonar gave the word and lift operations official Rich Taxwood flipped a switch to turn on the conveyor belt that moves riders from one side of the mountain to the other.
"Looks like fun to me. Let's go play," said John McGee, a Salt Lake Valley real estate agent and part-time ski instructor at Alta, as he stepped aboard.
Helga and Herb Lloyd, longtime friends of Snowbird ski legend Junior Bounos, flew back from South Carolina on Monday night just to be part of the historic occasion. "It is a real milestone," said Helga, 65-plus a few years old, and a Snowbird regular for nearly three decades.
While officials milled around at the embarkation point, a season-pass holder named Judd Cool, 43, of Sandy became the first "real" person to reach Mineral Basin via the tunnel. Not far behind were Lars Morris of Draper and his 13-year-old daughter, Tiffany, who was allowed to miss school for the experience.
Misty Clark, 33, a special events manager for Snowbird, was the first snowboarder through. It was her day off and she had to try it because it was so noteworthy. "I just went to Phoenix to buy a car," she noted, "and the salesman knew about the tunnel. And he doesn't ski."
Just another example of the kind of chatter Ski Utah President Nathan Rafferty likes to hear.
"It helps Utah's whole industry when a resort does something as unique as this," he said. "Mostly, it is all about the buzz. It's another thing for us to talk about."