Aspen Skiing Co clamping down on underground instructors

[markojp]

If you worked at our ski school, you would have access to all of our safety training material. I'm not going to post it here.

Apologist for PSIA? I just have never thought of it as the overall, overarching, omnipresent, omniscient, all encompassing entity that directs all scopes of actionables associated with ski instruction and management. It's but a single proverbial book in a larger life and ski reference library.

 

[LiquidFeet]

If ski areas had to be accredited, who might the accrediting body be? Or if they had to be evaluated and given a grade like health departments give restaurants, what body might be charged with doing that?

Making the results of such evaluations visible all over the buildings and web pages could be required so that the public could compare one area to another before going.

Accreditation could reflect multiple aspects under the control of ski area management. Safety for all involved, including those with lift tickets and passes as well as employees, would be at the top of the list. Deaths and injuries would be listed.

I'm not sure accreditation would have to include compensation to employees. But it should.

*Insurance coverage for a ski area requires ski areas to "teach" safety SOPs to their employees. But not to paying users of the facilities. Lift inspections are required. But not patrol choices of what to leave open and what to close, nor the usage of signage and implementation of gates to slow sliders down.

 

[Rich McP]

The notion that instructors are sent out without any basic awareness or training regarding safety is simply just absurd.

FIFY

 

[justplanesteve]

From activities I've undertaken where safety is genuinely the top priority—including aviation,

Not sure it is appropriate to this thread, but i have posted similar comparisons - makes the FAA ("we're not happy until you're not happy" ) seem benign and their materials & trainings scintillating, memorable, accessible, (and of course free). FSDO will send a Tech or Rep any mutually convenient time your group wants to schedule, on any Av related subject, safety especially, on their dime. My inbox receives webinar options for trainings several times/week as well as notices of on-site seminars at local facilities within about 100 mi radius.

Safety training has to be thorough enough that an incident - almost any incident - provokes a series of effective, rote responses.
Matrix for decision about reporting requirements.
Clear expectations supported by clear, routinely updated, and culturally reviewed materials and resources for same.

IME, the best safety enhancer would be an effective means to sort & prevent people who are out of control on most of their runs.
However, this would be antithetical to ski area financial interests. I don't think it is exaggerating to guess that close to 1/4 & possibly as many as 1/3 of skiers on black and steep blue groomers can't efficiently control their speed or turn shape and incidence . But nobody is going to want to ski at an area that makes skiing sedate, or gets a rep for being "fascist".

Again, necessary subject we all need to work toward. But a digression to the thread topic.

 

[snowtravel]

Since in context the industry-wide "almost total lack of emphasis on skier safety" is shamefully true, I'll employ the straw man fallacy and pretend the question is whether instructors are sent out without any basic awareness or training regarding safety whatsoever. Then I can ignore the real issue entirely!

FIFY

P.S. An astonishing 600,000 people get injured at ski resorts each year, representing a risk that hour for hour exceeds traffic injuries by roughly two orders of magnitude. And this is how working ski pros address safety in a public forum.

Does anyone really believe that independent instructors, properly vetted, can or will make this any worse?

 

[justplanesteve]

Does anyone really believe that independent instructors, properly vetted, can or will make this any worse?

Another comparison i have made with aviation; Ski instruction is way too expensive, and too difficult to arrange casually. By a whole order of magnitude compared to typical flying instruction/BFR's/etc.

(Arrange casually = "hey, what do you know, i ended up on the slopes today. Maybe i'll pop into the kiosk with my partner and get a 1 hr lesson for $50 solo +20 additional and see if i can make some progress shaping up those turns i've been working on"). What if the mountain offered low cost, focused "Get out of the backseat" tuneups (e.g.) as part of their safety enhancement program? It's all market driven (Economics) but when a customer base has real choice, the providers get creative and efficient. There is a big lack in the current retail model that compels any efficiency in terms of skill development/cost/safety culture imperative for other than high disposable income guests.

 

[snowtravel]

If you worked at our ski school, you would have access to all of our safety training material. I'm not going to post it here.

Reflecting on my teaching career: Northstar, Park City, Alta, Sugar Bowl...Mission Ridge?

(So tempting!)

Apologist for PSIA? I just have never thought of it as the overall, overarching, omnipresent, omniscient, all encompassing entity that directs all scopes of actionables associated with ski instruction and management. It's but a single proverbial book in a larger life and ski reference library.

An "apologist" in this context means someone who defends PSIA. You have an online presence here and on the PSIA-NW website that suggests you're invested in the organization at a high level. Nothing wrong with any of that: it's a free country (unless of course you're an independent ski teacher).

Nevertheless, apparently I struck a nerve, elsewhere having wrongly accused you of treating PSIA as "the overall, overarching, omnipresent, omniscient, all encompassing entity that directs all scopes of actionables associated with ski instruction and management." Please point that out and I'll post a sincere apology.

When we're done with all that, maybe we can focus on the issues, such as the industry-wide almost total lack of emphasis on skier safety. Use of the word "almost" logically means that there is some emphasis on skier safety, as well as implying some skier safety but without adequate emphasis.

(Plenty of room there for Mission Ridge's unpublished, secret yet excellent skier safety materials and programs.)

 

[snowtravel]

"Get out of the backseat"

Don't get me started.

 

[Seldomski]

An astonishing 600,000 people get injured at ski resorts each year

What is your source on this?

Regarding safety emphasis... there's a lot of barriers to skiing as is - financial, time, gear, weather, etc. I suppose harping on how dangerous things can be may be a bit of a downer to customers and discourage future visitation.

I don't think safety consciousness among skiers in general is going to improve without there being some sort of license process for skiing. License would have to require some amount of continuing education (ie pass this test about safety) to maintain. Lift tickets would be sold only to licensed skiers. In other words, not going to happen.

Scuba cert is an example of this. If you misbehave enough or don't dive enough, you lose your cert.

 

[snowtravel]

Another comparison i have made with aviation; Ski instruction is way too expensive, and too difficult to arrange casually. By a whole order of magnitude compared to typical flying instruction/BFR's/etc.

(Arrange casually = "hey, what do you know, i ended up on the slopes today. Maybe i'll pop into the kiosk with my partner and get a 1 hr lesson for $50 solo +20 additional and see if i can make some progress shaping up those turns i've been working on"). What if the mountain offered low cost, focused "Get out of the backseat" tuneups (e.g.) as part of their safety enhancement program? It's all market driven (Economics) but when a customer base has real choice, the providers get creative and efficient. There is a big lack in the current retail model that compels any efficiency in terms of skill development/cost/safety culture imperative for other than high disposable income guests.

These ideas are thought-provoking, though not specifically what I had in mind… Which only shows the value of open, meaningful discussion.

Given some freedom, the possibilities here are limited only by our knowledge, skills and imaginations!

(600k/year injuries: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/health/injury-prevention-cold-weather-sports-wellness/index.html)

 

[Chris V.]

Question I commonly ask in lessons: "Do you know what the Skier Responsibility Code is?" Common answer: "No." Hmmmm.

 

[Seldomski]

These ideas are thought-provoking, though not specifically what I had in mind… Which only shows the value of open, meaningful discussion.

Given some freedom, the possibilities here are limited only by our knowledge, skills and imaginations!

(600k/year injuries: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/health/injury-prevention-cold-weather-sports-wellness/index.html)

600k figure makes no sense. The same article says:

Nearly 200,000 people were injured in 2018 while participating in winter sports, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. These injuries largely came from snow skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, sledding and tobogganing.

How can there be more than 200k?

 

[snowtravel]

600k figure makes no sense. The same article says:

Nearly 200,000 people were injured in 2018 while participating in winter sports, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. These injuries largely came from snow skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, sledding and tobogganing.

How can there be more than 200k?

The 200k appears to derive from a subset of data sources, i.e. medical as opposed to insurance, ski patrol, etc.

(Be good to dig into the data sources; I'm game if you are)

 

[DerKommissar]

Another comparison i have made with aviation; Ski instruction is way too expensive, and too difficult to arrange casually. By a whole order of magnitude compared to typical flying instruction/BFR's/etc.

(Arrange casually = "hey, what do you know, i ended up on the slopes today. Maybe i'll pop into the kiosk with my partner and get a 1 hr lesson for $50 solo +20 additional and see if i can make some progress shaping up those turns i've been working on"). What if the mountain offered low cost, focused "Get out of the backseat" tuneups (e.g.) as part of their safety enhancement program? It's all market driven (Economics) but when a customer base has real choice, the providers get creative and efficient. There is a big lack in the current retail model that compels any efficiency in terms of skill development/cost/safety culture imperative for other than high disposable income guests.

Vail may be working on something like this. I've participated in some marketing research aimed at determining if there is interest in shorter, more focused lessons of about 1 hour in length. I personally think its a great idea- I'd love to get 1 hour lesson without having to give up a whole afternoon to focus on one thing, but I have little faith that vail will price it low enough to be attractive. I'd do a $50 1 hour lesson every time I flew west if they existed.

 

[snowtravel]

Question I commonly ask in lessons: "Do you know what the Skier Responsibility Code is?" Common answer: "No." Hmmmm.

Exactly.

As to PSIA's relevance in a milieu in which participants don't even know the code, an anecdote:

Late in my career I worked intensively with NSP skiers, and our mission focused on specific terrain and skills. To speed things along, at our initial meetings in the lodge I'd ask: "Is anyone familiar with PSIA or say, rotary, edging and pressure?"

Most of them had full-time professional gigs; several were engineers in the Silicon Valley.

"Um, pressure and PSIA, you mean pounds per square inch absolute?"

 

[mister moose]

Yurp has a different culture and history. They've never had the entrenched local monopoly that is typical in US resorts.

The US won't adopt the European model because local monopolies maximize revenue, and regional monopolies maximize better.

The State leases I've been party to seek to maximize revenue to the State as well. Percentages of gross sales are paid to the State as part of the rent package, and those percentages are not competitive with the private sector. That's why airport food is so expensive, and why turnpike rest stop food is so expensive. Not sure about the Feds (but I can guess) but the State of Vermont gets a piece of the action. It's not just the private sector at work.

Vail may be working on something like this. I've participated in some marketing research aimed at determining if there is interest in shorter, more focused lessons of about 1 hour in length. I personally think its a great idea- I'd love to get 1 hour lesson without having to give up a whole afternoon to focus on one thing, but I have little faith that vail will price it low enough to be attractive. I'd do a $50 1 hour lesson every time I flew west if they existed.

$50 for a 1 hour lesson? There are guys that mow lawns that charge more per hour than that.

 

[snowtravel]

Vail may be working on something like this. I've participated in some marketing research aimed at determining if there is interest in shorter, more focused lessons of about 1 hour in length. I personally think its a great idea- I'd love to get 1 hour lesson without having to give up a whole afternoon to focus on one thing, but I have little faith that vail will price it low enough to be attractive. I'd do a $50 1 hour lesson every time I flew west if they existed.

Next time you’re out here, hit me up and we can ski heavenly, northstar, or Kirkwood, no charge for the session.

(That would be illegal.)

 

[markojp]

Reflecting on my teaching career: Northstar, Park City, Alta, Sugar Bowl...Mission Ridge?

(So tempting!)

An "apologist" in this context means someone who defends PSIA. You have an online presence here and on the PSIA-NW website that suggests you're invested in the organization at a high level. Nothing wrong with any of that: it's a free country (unless of course you're an independent ski teacher).

Nevertheless, apparently I struck a nerve, elsewhere having wrongly accused you of treating PSIA as "the overall, overarching, omnipresent, omniscient, all encompassing entity that directs all scopes of actionables associated with ski instruction and management." Please point that out and I'll post a sincere apology.

When we're done with all that, maybe we can focus on the issues, such as the industry-wide almost total lack of emphasis on skier safety. Use of the word "almost" logically means that there is some emphasis on skier safety, as well as implying some skier safety but without adequate emphasis.

(Plenty of room there for Mission Ridge's unpublished, secret yet excellent skier safety materials and programs.)

I think it's best we add each other to our respective 'ignore' lists.

Best of luck on your quest.

 

[justplanesteve]

$50 for a 1 hour lesson? There are guys that mow lawns that charge more per hour than that.

And golf pros, etc.

However, the comparison was ski instruction vs instructor rates in aviation.
The 5 hrs aviation instruction i availed myself of during 2023 included a BFR and some time sharpening up conventional/TW skills over 3 sessions, cost less than $125 total and one sub sandwich with beverage. (Which the instructor tried to pay himself). Actually, i'm embarrassed how much less, but that is approximately his regular rate. Instructor background - retired after full military flying career, current captain on major airline. Younger/newer instructors in the area sometimes charge as much as......$40/hr! Major schools in the area charge $40 - $50/hr for instruction.

Don't get me wrong, i have a personal interest in increased ski instructor pay

However, the "big monopolistic resort on public lands" model being discussed in this thread is partly about how little of the ski-school income at major areas passes down to instructors and benefits citizens (who own the property), as opposed to fattening management bloat and income, boards, and disinterested investors. To re-hash 22 pages for you, we all agree investors should make as much money as they can. However there is disagreement about to what level public property should be monopolized to subsidize it; and where some of the cogs in that wheel ("certified" trained, insured, instructors) might better benefit. As well as how competition improves capitalism and benefits for consumers.

 

[Philpug]

22 pages. Every thing that could be said has been said … and then some. /closed.