Columnist Susan Snyder: Bijak delivers cold truth

Monday, March 3, 2003 | 8:20 a.m.

Normally, we would be leaving town in this spot today.

But it rained all last week, which pretty much barred anything short of combing the desert for a guy building an ark. We didn't need to travel for a change of scene. It seemed as if Seattle came here.

The world always comes to Ed Bijak -- especially when it rains. That's because rain for us typically means snow for Bijak. He tends bar at the Mountain Springs Saloon that's in, well, Mountain Springs.

Mountain Springs is on the north side of State Route 160 about 10 miles west of State Route 159. (Oh, for pete's sake, buy a map. How long have you lived here, anyhow?)

By the time Bijak showed up for work at 8:15 a.m. Friday the saloon phone was ringing off the hook.

"It's the usual, 'Is the road clear yet?' It starts when I hit the door, and it never ends," Bijak said.

He launched into his description, sounding more like a recorded TV weather guy than a bartender.

"The plows have been through, but it's still very slick. The snow's still coming down, but lightly at the moment."

The saloon lies just west and a little downhill from Mountain Springs Summit ("the hump"), which sits at 5,500 feet. When rainy winter mornings down here bring snow up there, Bijak's first challenge is just getting to work. He's not the only one navigating the highway west from Las Vegas at that time of day. A fair number of Pahrump workers live on this side of the hump.

"There were people stuck, and I about got stuck too. That was mostly because the guy in front of me stopped," Bijak said. "You can't do that. Once you stop, you better be prepared to stay where you're at."

Snow levels typically start a mile or two past State Route 159. Bijak said he has seen as much as two or three feet of snow at Mountain Springs. But less than that is more typical. Snow left by Wednesday's storm was gone by Thursday afternoon.

Still, people head up to the saloon to see it, winter-driving advisories be damned. Actually, Bijak said the saloon is a big draw in any kind of weather, any time of day.

Firefighters from the station next door are there first thing for coffee. Tourists trickle in throughout the day. Regulars hang out on weeknights.

"Weekends are nuts," Bijak said. "But we get regulars, commuters from Pahrump to Vegas, and we get a lot of tourists. They're from all over the state and all over the world. I've had them from Europe, England, Canada."

Before last week's deluge, he also entertained a fair number of customers from Minnesota, Michigan and other sleety, slushy locales. Friday morning his only visitors were the firefighters and a refrigeration repair guy.

"I don't really need a refrigerator," Bijak laughed. "It's so cold back there right now, you could just leave stuff out on the counter."

Bijak has lived in Las Vegas since 1979 and worked in a few neighborhood bars before taking the Mountain Springs job in October. He was laid off when the bar in which he worked was sold.

"I took a day off from job-hunting and came up here, and I got a job," he said. "It's the best bar I've ever been in. It's great to get out of Vegas and away from the hustle and bustle."

Take your mittens, and whatever you do don't stop until you get to the top.