*Guest post by Dave Mau… be sure to check out Dave’s other writings at http://blogs.ocweekly.com/stickaforkinit/, and http://www.dinnerwithdave.com
There’s a lot of history as you meander along Kaiser Pass road, if you know where to look for it. A not-so-hidden gem is the network of telegraph towers that relayed signals from Big Creek to Camp 64, near the inlet of Ward Tunnel at what was to later be Florence Lake. You can see them along the rockier parts of the road, especially the stretches between Tennessee and Blacksmiths points and the stretch between Ward Lake and Florence itself.
Communication in the backcountry has always been a sticky proposition and in earlier years the only way to communicate was with CBs or Forest Service radios. The technology in our lives changes at a lightning fast pace and the same is true at VVR. Although, up here, the pace of change is more like a glacier and just at relentless.
My first season (18 years ago now!) working the VVR kitchen under the Wiggs was interesting, to say the least. Back then we got a few minutes of KMJ news radio out of Fresno when the ionosphere was cooperating and we could get what is called a “skywave” signal bounced to our radio. It usually crapped out by the time the restaurant opened so the fresh off the trail hikers couldn’t get any firsthand updates. We’d do a town run once or twice a week and we’d always grab a Fresno Bee or, if an incoming guest remembered, they would as well. Believe me, we swooped on that newspaper like a pack of hungry jackals.
The first cell phones of any use back here were those clunky bag phones that looked more akin to a Korean War era walkie-talkie than anything else. Stony O’Neill had a VVR-issued phone he called “The Brick” since it felt as heavy as one in his shirt pocket. We had a weak signal at best; having to call the answering machine at the Wiggs’ ranch to take reservations and call in credit cards hoping the transactions went through. Prior to Butch and Peggy, the only phone was located in an SCE lockbox at the dam, definitely for emergencies only. The second year they had the resort, Butch started hammering the phone company for better service. That was when he put the first cell antenna high atop a tree near the main building to bounce a signal off the dam. Steve Sturgis, one of our outside guys and one crazy SOB, free-climbed that tree to install it and he was up and down a few times that first year adjusting it. You don’t wanna know where Butch got the roll of very expensive coaxial cable to run up that tree.
Our spot to get a clear signal and call out from VVR is located on the vista point at the east end the Edison Lake dam. Aptly called God’s Phone Booth, you get a solid signal and a spectacular view of Silver Divide, Vermilion Cliffs and the whole drainage of the South Fork of the San Joaquin River. Truly a spot from which God himself would make a phone call. The punch line about the repeater on White Bark vista is I get five bars on my phone while hiking and/or fishing the far reaches of upper Mono Creek but can’t use my iPhone in my bedroom at home in Orange County.
Butch’s Mom, Betty, wanted to watch her afternoon soap operas in her Airstream (at that time parked directly behind the store). Since I had some experience with video, Butch enlisted me to put in the first satellite dish. Up the hill came a giant box filled with all the necessary parts and I was off kitchen duty and on cable install for two days. (You can still see the original mounting block on a tree by the front corner of the patio). That changed everything at VVR considerably – we now had live news, movies and, most importantly, Monday Night Football on the patio! Later, under Jim’s ownership, we got real satellite internet access and now we no longer use cell service for our phones at the resort.
I was actually on the ferry when the very first email was ever sent from a phone at VVR. There was a hiker, who’s name I can’t remember, who came through with what was basically the first smart phone ever and Butch took him out on the lake so he could get a solid signal. But a real watershed moment was last summer when I was able to FaceTime wifey from my cabin via VVR wifi.
Time and technology march on, even here at our humble mountain home, which can be both good ad bad. But at VVR you can always turn off your phone, power down your laptop or just pretend there were “technical difficulties” if you wanna take a zero-technology day off.
*Note from the VVR: While we acknowledge the improvements in communication we still caution our guests to be careful about bandwidth… we pay by the gigabyte and it ain’t cheap!
Behind the Scenes at VVR 