Cell service restored in Southern Trinity

Customers new to cell phone service in Southern Trinity County found themselves back out of touch for three days last week when service from the Pickett Peak installation was temporarily cut due to power failure.

Located at 5,774 feet in elevation, the Pickett Peak tower installation, completed last summer with grant funds to the county, runs on solar energy with a generator for backup. Last week’s problem was attributed to a low fuel supply for the generator and the cause of that has not been determined yet.

The vault holding most of the equipment is almost completely buried under six feet of snow, according to county Director of Transportation Rick Tippett whose road crews helped open the route last week for technicians to reach the site.

It took a snow cat following a road worker with a chain saw two full days of effort to reach the mountaintop through deep snow and numerous downed trees.

After a three-day outage, cell service was restored to customers by Friday evening.