“Harassment at Snowbasin” more indicative of a greater problem
Ok by now most everyone has had to have seen the Snowbasin vid that was released yesterday. What I’ve linked here is the new “longer/unedited” version which helps to show the “infraction” that our boarding buddy was stopped for. If you haven t seen it here’s the clip….
First let me address the video directly and then let me branch off into what the title of this post alludes to. As far as the video goes to be honest this sort of thing happens daily at almost every resort in the United States and probably the world. To have a knee jerk reaction and start spamming the Snowbasin Facebook page saying that you are going to boycott the resort is just silly. If that’s the case you better invest in a split board and take to hiking be cause you WILL run out of resorts to ride if you want to boycott every resort that has such an incident. Secondly yes the situation was heated at the onset but honestly that’s how these things need to go down. If you’re the power of authority of must assert that power from the get go to gain control of the situation. That’s what happened here and if you notice by the end its a much less confrontational scenario (language aside). Basin is far from my normal resort but I have gotten up there a few times in the past two seasons and I’ll say from personal experience I’ve never had any sort of run in with their patrol even in this area of the mountain. So yeah sometimes shit happens lets all learn from it and move forward and that brings me to the more important portion of this piece….
In watching the extended version above I don’t think there is any snowboarder on the planet that would think there was anything done here to call for getting “pulled over” much less getting a pass pulled. However that doesn’t mean that the ski-patrol was in the wrong. My point here is that if patrolman BELIEVED the kid was out of control or whatever then he naturally would pull him over. That’s not to say I agree with that but its a pivotal point you must understand to follow the crux of my following argument. Its no wonder that the patrol person was older or that the instructor was a skier. What this comes down to is that there is a huge portion of resort personnel that are totally clueless about how the younger generation of snowboarders and skiers ride the mountain. You can see here in the above clip all of the side hits and rollers that have obviously been sessioned by numerous people (believe me I know exactly where this is and these little spots get hammered daily ) yet both the instructor standing right on a small side hit and the one that flagged our skinny pant protagonist down obviously have zero clue as to its use. Perception dictates reality and if they perceive him as out of control then he is. Honestly you can see the amount of area it takes him to see the second instructor and then stop and it’s not that far so obviously he was not going very fast. Ive seen this all over my home mountain as well. Middle aged or at least “non-core” (for lack of a better term) instructors that teach their classes some incredibly dangerous tactics such as coming out of the woods at the bottom of a roller or going through the park “just to look” just to name a couple of examples. As more and more resorts move towards modeling their resort to attract a younger demographic ( that’s a real fancy way to say “build more parks”) instructors, patrollers, and other resort personal need to make the move to better understand the culture and the riding style of this younger generation be they skier or boarder (hopefully boarder haha) . First and foremost to understand that they as patrollers and instructors are engaging in dangerous acts (like stopping on the back side of rollers) and more importantly they are passing their lack of knowledge and dangerous behaviours on to those they teach. As the world changes we are faced with the realization that we must learn new things in order to “survive” the new world. Ski patrollers and instructors are no exception to this rule and it is time an effort is made by resorts to educate their personnel accordingly. If our patrol friend in the Snowbasin clip had such knowledge he most likely would have never engaged the kid to begin with. I’m not asking for patrollers to start learning switch fives I just want them to understand that just because I am trying to learn them doesn’t mean I’m out of control. As we can see from the Snowbasin incident failure to do this can have swift and dire ramifications in the court of public opinion.
Posted on December 28, 2011, in Opinion/Debate, Snow. Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments.
Dunno how you can say these guys were anything other than absolute lunatics who 100% deserve a boycott. He threatens to take a kids pass for talking back, why on earth should anyone ever give these people money ever again?
thanks for sharing your perspective. I will say the patroller seems to be pretty out of control at first. I’m a snowboard instructor and instructor trainer at a resort in VT and your point about instructors using dangerous tactics to teach is dead on. We try really hard to educate the staff about terrain selection and teaching methods, and also how younger skiers and riders are looking at the mountain. The relatively small number of instructors who don’t get this are incredibly frustrating to watch or run into on the hill! just my .02, good post.
i can only hope that the right person will see this and those two employees get “let go” from basin. Ski patrol need to learn their place. They wear a jacket with a big white cross because they are medics, not police! Ambulance drivers and EMT’s don’t pull people over for speeding, because that is not their job, and they are too busy saving lives. Plus, even if ski patrol want to try and be cops, they need to learn to respect the people that employee them, their customers. If those who they are out to “bust” weren’t there and paying for a pass, the mountain wouldn’t make money, and thus they would be unemployed. Ski patrol need to learn some respect for those they are “protecting”………. just say’in ……. On another note, how come Ski & Safety Patrol are the ones who get to decide who’s “Going too fast” ???????? There are multiple points i can make here. First: speed is not so much a problem if the person “going too fast” is an expert rider/skier. Fast or slow, it’s the people out there who suck at riding and can’t control where they are going who are a real danger to others. Second: there are no speed limit signs on the mountain, nor are there speedometers on snowboards/skies. It’s just some Patrollers judgement of us that determines if we get in trouble or not for “going too fast”. Third: if the people in charge of the mountain want to make it safer, there is a way to do that. Instead of letting Patrollers make judgement calls, they can require different passes for each level of rider/skier determine what parts of the mountain they are allowed to ride. Now, would this suck? Maybe, or maybe not as much as letting some old Patroller who is bias against borders, and young people in general, getting to make the call. Some resorts across the country are already doing this in the Parks, using the PEEPS Program. Now, make that mountainwide. It could work. The higher the level of skill, the more areas your allowed to go and speeds you may travel at. If they stop you for “going too fast”, and then see you are an expert (as indicated by your Pass), and not a novice, then they simply say “have a great day”. But Hey, this is just an idea! From the looks of it (what others out there on other websites are saying), some people actually think that this ski patroller should keep his job. WHAT??? If any of you out there who have worked in customer service, like i have for the last 14 years, know what will get you fired, it’s telling a paying customer to “shut your f#$*%ing mouth”. I don’t care how many lives he has saved over the years (if any). Ski Patrol are part customer service. They are the face of the company, since they are dealing directly with the paying customers face to face every day. If anyone out there in customer service said something to this affect, even once in their entire career, they would be fired from their job. That’s life! I know he’s trying to keep the mountain safe, but there is a line he was not ever supposed to cross, but he did. If Snowbasin expects to keep customers coming back, this guy needs to lose his job.
And, since most of what i have stated here is just reposted from what i have said on other sites, i’d like to add a few things. If Patrollers and other employees are to old, or “out of touch”, with what “kids” (or Adult, as i like to be called since i’m 30) are doing these days and can not adjust, then replace them with someone who knows how to actually do their job correctly. I’m not going to pay money to be treated like that. That’s why i stopped riding Brighton. I have had very poor experiences at both Brighton and Snowbasin over the last 17 years i have been frequenting both resorts. And while i was not always in the right, depending on your perspective, i know that i was not always in the wrong either. And until these resorts can let go of their “seasoned” (or as i like to think, prejudice) employees who treat paying customers like an out of control kid in a bad 80′s movie about skiers against boarders, i’m not giving them my business. NO ONE should be treated poorly by the people they are providing jobs too!!!! i don’t care how out of control a customer gets, kill them with kindness. I’ve had jobs where customers go off on me, threaten me, and even stock me. But like a good customer service representative, i never lost my cool like so many resort employees have and continue (obviously) to do. It’s just that simple. The attitudes of the people that own and operate these resorts needs to change, like you have stated, but sooner and much more dramatically than you realize. thanks for reading my rant, that is all.
This is a total judgement call. He is he going to fast? I don’t know. To a random guy on the hill maybe not, if I was there and saw maybe/maybe not, but ski patrol obviously seemed to think so. I have no issue with that, rider safety is #1 priority.
I do take issue with the way it was handled. Paying customers do need be treated like dirt, especially when the so called “bandit” in question was pretty respectful to ski patrol in handling of the situation. I know it sounds cliche but you should treat others as you want to be treated. Even more so when your job is to be an ambassador for the resort. The hostility and unprofessionalism coming from ski patrol is embarrassing. You don’t tell paying customers “shut your f#$@ing mouth”. Unless of course the “bandit” in question is rude and out of line and then you can go all Patrick Swayze Roadhouse on them.
What does not show in this video is that a skier had just come within a foot of being hit in the head as the boarder flew over him doing a 360. This was not the first time that day that this boarder had been called on his reckless behavior. Kudos to the Snowbasin employees for stopping these boarders. These boarders displayed reckless, irresponsible, and out-of-control behavior. Harassed? No. These young men are spoiled, not held accountable for their behavior and lack respect for rules. (Nice parenting job, Mom and Dad).
The boarders should have immediately had their passes revoked and escorted off the mountain. Snowbasin should fully back their employees as they challenge this reckless behavior. If not, they will be opening themselves up to The Mother Of All Lawsuits when (NOT if) someone is killed or seriously maimed on their mountain because the behavior of reckless boarders is allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged