What’s going on here?
Poll results are in. A clear majority of SeniorsSkiing.com respondents have never seen a ski patroller lift a ticket from a speeding skier. One out of five have seen that happen only once. Interestingly, early results from our Subscriber Survey 2016 suggest that speeding skiers are a problem for seniors. Your thoughts?
Credit: US Ski Team
They taught us in the service to never give a command you suspect won’t be obeyed. Most of the patrollers I know don’t want to get involved in police work or squabbles on the mountain because they work alone. The miscreant is almost always a teenaged boy with friends and scenes can get ugly.
The owners of ski areas pressure managers and presidents of ski areas for return on investment and cash flow. Consequently you see raised ticket prices and cutting costs to achieve stretch targets. Visits are key. Do nothing to restrict visits. Do nothing to restrict reckless behavior. Programs are pushed and flaunted to ski safe but no enforcement. Do nothing to get a reputation of taking “fun” out of skiing.
Answer: write, call, email the top owner, explain the problem of fear, accidents, injuries, dropping out of the sport, losing revenue. Crippling injuries to innocent children or adults hit by reckless riders and skiers. Then make the ski area publish specific statistics on enforcement. Publish skier vs skier, boarder vs skier, skier vs snow . Patrollers don’t want to be policemen, they want to do first aid. But risk management is their new task if management tells them and supports them. They carry radios and can call for backup. They can be taught diplomacy.
Some areas have “rangers”, separate from ski patrol, who are authorized and expected to pull tickets of miscreants. Ski instructors generally do not have the authority to pull tickets, either.
It simply is a problem and hopefully this group will have a loud enough voice to get the resort managers to act
As a ski patroller, I have pulled tickets for skiers ducking a rope and going into closed areas. Speeders, we usually just give them a verbal warning.
Working at Mammoth, back in the 70’s, instructors could pull tickets. A kid crashed into my ski school class (Domino effect)… Luckily, nobody was hurt and I told him I would ‘pull’ his ticket and that he could get it back from Ski Patrol. The ticket was attached to the suspenders of his warm-up pants and as I grabbed the ticket, he pulled back, telling me I would not get his ticket. Well, the suspenders ripped in the seams and the pants fell down over his (Long-John covered legs)… I had the ticket, he skied down, got a talk from Ski Patrol and the mountain seamstress stiched his pants back together.
Today, I don’t see tickets being pulled, but many should be… Not only from teenagers but increasingly also from “middle age” men, on wide ‘backcountry’ powder skis, going too fast on crowded ‘groomers’…