People of the hills

People of the hills
An inside look at the people and professions behind the scenes at our local ski resorts

(Note: This is an unedited version of this article.)

There’s a lift attendant at Blue Mountain who does his job so well that I know that day will be a good day when he’s on duty. I’ll see him as we near the front of the usually packed lineup for the lift, directing traffic in a pleasurable, professional manner, making sure each six-person chair is filled to its capacity and no empty seat is left behind.
He does his job so well, in fact, that sometimes I wish he worked at every resort we go to. I don’t know his name, I’m not sure what he does for a living when he’s not attending to lifts, but I do know this: he alone can make the difference between a patience-testing, achingly slow line and one that keeps you zipping up the mountain all morning.
That kind of dedication to what seems like a mundane task—organizing a line—got us thinking: who are these unsung heroes of the local resort scene? Skiing and snowboarding drive the local winter tourism industry and it relies heavily on the professionalism and goodwill of the hundreds of people employed in it.
So, we set out to find them: the liftees, the coaches, the groomers, the ski schoolers, the ski patrollers and the food and beverage experts. They are, when you think about it, as important to ski resort life as the Escarpment itself. In their stories, you can peek behind the scenes at our local ski resorts and what it’s like to keep people happily carving down the slopes all winter long.

Giving guests a lift, every day
Clayton Barrett, lift operations manager, Beaver Valley Ski Club

They stand there in the cold, all day, every day, making sure you make it on to the lift safely and securely. They help little kids on their first chairlift rides and beginners master the art of getting on (and sometimes off) a chair. They influence every chairlift ride you take—they are the liftees.
Being a lift attendant is more rewarding than you might think, especially if you bring the right attitude to the job. At least that’s what Clayton Barrett has found over the past seven years a head lift attendant at Beaver Valley Ski Club. He’s on the front lines of the members’ lift experience every day and loves it.
Barrett, 43, hasn’t always worked in the resort business. In the ‘90s, he worked with TD Waterhouse as an investigations officer and did his job from home. However, when the bank asked him to return to an in-house position, he hesitated. Did he really want to go back to a life of commuting, cubicles and office politics? The answer was no, so he and his wife packed up and moved north. Barrett wanted to work outside, to use his hands and get more out of life—something he felt was possible here.
He views his work at Beaver Valley—which now encompasses supervising the entire lift-operations department—as no different than his previous profession. He worked hard at TD Waterhouse, and he works hard here. The perks are numerous: meeting people, getting to work outdoors and keeping his waistline nice and trim. Best of all, he gets to mingle with the same peer group he did before, only now it’s in the great outdoors. Getting to know the members is one of his favourite things about the job.
“That’s one thing I really try to get the other lift attendants to think about,” he says. “They sometimes think of [the work] as a grind, but we have a real opportunity to get to know people here. And the kind of people we get here are really interesting.”
The trick to being an effective lift attendant, he says, is to a) keep yourself busy (and warm!) by shovelling and moving about as much as possible, and b) trying to provide the guests with a good experience as they wait their turn in line.
“When you do the math, the guests are going to be in line or on the chair more than they are going to be on the hill. You want to make sure that time goes by as enjoyably as possible for them. You want it to be safe, efficient and you want people to know you’re taking care of them. There are a lot of little things that can go wrong. If you can avoid those things, you can really make someone’s day a lot better.”
There are people like Barrett all over our local hills. Many enjoy the opportunity for wintertime seasonal work after agricultural or outdoor work in the summer months and take pride in their role in the local tourism industry. It’s a small role, but at a busy club or resort, it is a vital one.

Crafting the learning experience
with Chris Lewis, director of snow school operations, Blue Mountain

The logistics of running a snowsports school can be staggering, especially at a destination resort like Blue Mountain. Every weekend in peak season, hundreds of people, of all ages and abilities, must be given equipment and organized into different classes, groups, programs and events. Each must be matched up with a suitable, certified instructor and collected in an area that suits their skill level.
Blue Mountain runs what is likely the largest snowsports school in the province, accommodating over 600 people on a typical peak-season Saturday. The sheer size of the school means it is one of the main places Ontarians are introduced to skiing and snowboarding. They have over 300 ski instructors and snowboard pros on staff, 60 of which are full time. And the person at the helm of this unwieldy ship is Chris Lewis, director of snow school operations.
Lewis has been working in snowsport schools since he was a teenager, moving up through the ski instructor ranks at Glen Eden, Talisman and finally to Blue Mountain, where he has been for nine seasons. He’s done everything from on-the-ground teaching, training fellow instructors and now, overseeing the entire snow school.
Snowsport schools have a special place at public ski resorts. It is the first experience many people have with the sports and getting that experience right is important. A successful first day could create a lifelong customer, whereas a bad day can turn them off permanently. So people such as Lewis across the country are charged with making that experience great—hundreds of times a weekend, thousand of times a season.
At private clubs, the role of snow school is a bit different, but of equal importance. The snow school provides members with opportunities to improve their skills and, at the same time, creates a season-long structure for the weekend’s activities. (Professional skill development is a big deal too: Many of Ontario’s best ski racers come from the private club system.)
But times are changing in snow schools, says Lewis. The average customer has gotten more sophisticated and people’s perceptions of learning have changed. As he and many of the instructors have found, people now expect to be “good” immediately, and are often disappointed when that doesn’t happen.
“There is a bit of a MacDonald’s drive-through mentality,” he says. “I find that guests don’t really have the expectation that they will have to spend the time to learn. It’s not like thumb punching on an X-Box . You have to get out there and learn. That’s always in the back of my mind. We want to make it as easy as possible for our guests to enjoy themselves, but we also have to set them up realistically and let them know it’s going to take more than one session to become proficient.”
However, being in the position to cultivate that first-time experience is what Lewis loves about being involved in the snowsport school. He’s passionate about winter sports and, he says, honoured to have the opportunity to help cultivate a similar passion for thousands of new people every year.

Let them eat… comfort food
with Frank Vander Raadt, food and beverage director, Devil’s Glen Ski Club

Every weekend, every winter, Frank Vander Raadt has to make sure that the members of Devil’s Glen Ski Club are fed, warm and happy at their wintertime home-away-from-home. Sound easy? Well, think about making sure lunch is on the table every day at your house, then times it by 500 or so. That’s the life of a chef at a ski resort every day.
A chef by trade and food and beverage manager by profession, Vander Raadt has been working at Devil’s Glen in the winter for seven years overseeing its food and beverage program. (In the summer, he works at a nearby golf course in the same role.) At Devil’s Glen, he is responsible for everything that people eat and drink: the bar, the kitchen, staffing, supplies, cash balancing and budgets. “It’s a big job to manage this place,” he says. “People don’t realize it, but private clubs do huge volume in their food business. As an example, I do the same amount of business, dollar-wise, in January and February at this place as I do in a whole season at the golf course.”
Food is a big deal in the ski resort business, especially at a private club where people are paying a premium to have an above-average experience. It is a huge part of people’s day whether or not they are on the hill, as non-skiers often spend an entire day in the lodge, socializing and caring for children over hot chocolate and snacks.
Vander Raadt tries to make the experience as special as he can, making a selection of food from scratch every day, creating daily specials and having easy-to-please options such as a make-you-own sandwich bar.
On a given weekend he’ll serve an average of 500 plates at lunch, adding a few hundred more if there’s a special event. His days are a crazy mix of managerial tasks and good old-fashioned chef duties. Starting at 6:30 a.m., he’s up balancing the bar cash and making sure his cooks have breakfast on the go. From 8 to 10 a.m., he’s making soups for lunch (one clear, one creamy) and by lunch, he’s on “the line” whipping up his daily special for the hungry masses. After the whirlwind dies down, the staff sets to cleaning, cooking and preparing to do it all again the next day.
And although there are never enough hours in the day, Vander Raadt wouldn’t have it any other way. “Food is an integral part of these sports,” says Vander Raadt. “I love the feedback and the instant gratification I get from this job. People are always stopping and saying, “Thanks Frank! That was good!”

Building a love of the sport
with Meagan Blackett, ski racing coach, Toronto Ski Club

Ski racing is the foundation on which many skiers, and even snowboarders, build a lifelong passion for winter sports. Racing programs teach skill on the mountain, forge friendships amongst peers and provide a structured and supervised way for youth to spend a weekend on the hill.
At the heart of such programs are the coaches, who guide young racers through the system and help them hone their skills. It’s in this role we found Meagan Blackett, 21, on a sunny Sunday morning, standing at the bottom of a gate-filled racecourse at Blue Mountain. She’s coaching the Toronto Ski Club’s K2 racing team (the national division for 13 and 14-year-olds) and is just wrapping up a morning’s training before taking a break for lunch and a chat with On The Bay.
Blackett, like most coaches, grew up ski racing and loved the thrills of competition and spending her weekends at the hill. But as her other passion, elite soccer, started taking up more time and old skiing injuries persisted, she started to consider how she could remain in the racing scene without the commitment and physical toll of competition. Coaching provided an obvious solution and she has been working her way up the system since.
Today, the University of Guelph student spends her winter in a busy mix of studying, coaching on the weekends, and attending training camps. Her time is split between coaching at home and coaching off-site at races. An average coaching weekend at the TSC starts at 8:45 a.m., when her crew hits the lift for first chair. Then the day is split into two-hour modules, focusing on race training, freeski drills, video reviews with the racers and dryland training. Dryland training involves an activity completely unrelated to skiing, such as hockey or basketball, to ease the racer’s muscles after a hard weekend on the hill.
It’s a schedule played out across all the clubs and snowschools across Canada. Every club will have a version of its own, dialled to the needs of the provincial and national racing system. But the most important thing to remember about coaching, Blackett says, is to make sure each student is having fun, regardless of if they want to race in the big time or not.
“There’s no point in going out there and not loving it,” she says. “We really want to develop a passion for the sport and not have them be doing it because their parents signed them up for it. We want to have them enjoy it. We try to make sure everyone is focused, involved and having fun.”

Ski patrol: The eyes and ears of the alpine experience
with Donna Muller, head of ski patrol, Craigleith Ski Club

Above all, ski patrollers are medics, trained to administer first aid to injured skiers and snowboarders. But in reality, their most common role is promoting safety on the mountain so that injuries don’t happen in the first place.
That’s why you’ll see them first on the chair in the morning, checking all the runs for rogue rocks or hazardous “death cookies” (ice chunks) stirred up by the groomers the night before. And when they appear to be skiing and snowboarding casually, they’re not just whiling away the hours between injuries. They’re making sure people don’t act dangerously, putting others at risk or risking themselves.
Donna Muller has been working as a ski patroller at Craigleith Ski Club for over 20 years. She got into it at just 19-years-old, “following a boy!” she jokes. He would later become her husband and today they patrol together at the very same club. Since then, she’s seen it all: bad things, like injuries, but good things too, like watching club members’ kids grow up and have kids of their own. Her quiet demeanour is perfectly suited to the job and it’s hard to imagine what it would take to get her flustered after all these years.
It takes experience to manage the entire patrol staff at Craigleith, which number seven paid staff and up to 30 volunteers, plus any visiting volunteers who might stop by for the day. That is actually one of the most interesting benefits of being a part of the Canadian Ski Patrol (the national certifying body). You can request to visit another ski resort for the day and join their staff, checking out how their systems work and seeing what it’s like to work and ski at a different hill.
The best part about being a patroller, Muller says, is being able to help people in need. Everyone knows everyone else at private clubs and it’s rewarding to be able to help her peers out when they are hurt. On the other hand, she says, assisting children when they are injured is really tough. “It breaks your heart,” she says, since the really little ones don’t understand what’s going on and are really scared.
Since teamwork is such an important aspect of ski patrol, friendships become a big part of the patrol experience, Muller says. “One of the nicest things is the friendships that you develop over the years with your fellow patrollers—even in the summer, spring and fall we end up going out and doing things together.”
Ski patrol often gets a bum rap—especially from young people—for being the “police” of the hill, but the reality is that they’re there to keep things fun by keeping it safe, says Muller. So the next time a patroller stops you for a safety tip, just remember they’re there to ensure everyone has the same opportunity to enjoy themselves.

Beating Mother Nature at her own game
with Denver Holden, head of snowmaking, Osler Bluff Ski Club

We don’t always get the snow that we need, so resorts often have to play Mother Nature and make it themselves. But if you ever thought that she had it easy, you’ve never been in charge of covering a ski area every winter with the frosty white stuff.
Denver Holden has been making snow on the Escarpment since 1975. He’s worked at Osler Bluff since high school and has seen the world of snowmaking change significantly since he first starting pumping air and water up the hill over 30 years ago.
The life of a snowmaker is one of constant anticipation, attention and good old-fashioned, get-your-hands-dirty work. Osler, like most resorts, has a 24-hour snowmaking team, running two 12-hour shifts per day. They try not to make snow during the day on weekends as not to upset the members’ on-hill experience, but attention must be paid to the systems at all times.
“Every day is different for the snowmaking team,” explains Holden. Hoses must be moved and attached to the different towers or guns and the equipment must be constantly monitored and cared for. And the temperature is obsessively watched (if you want to know what the weather is going to do, ask a snowmaker!). As soon as it hits -4 C of correct humidity, the tower guns are switched on and running full power.
Making snow at night is more dangerous than you might think, Holden says. The team is out on the slippery, dark slopes, checking the towers and ensuring the quality of snow is coming out correctly. “Learning the trails [in the dark] is probably the hardest thing,” Holden says, “especially for the new guys.”
It can be hard for guests to understand the intricacies, and the costs, of making sure the slopes are snowy all winter long, says Holden. “We get a lot of questions like ‘why are you making snow here?’ But it takes so much more snow than it used to, especially with the terrain parks and halfpipe. They really require an enormous amount of snow.”
And snow is expensive stuff. If you’re ever wondering where your lift ticket money goes, it’s right underneath your feet. Holden estimates it costs about $175 an hour to run the snowmaking equipment, so in a bad-snow year, that can really add up. (Industry experts say that a large resort’s snowmaking cost can be up to $3000 an hour.)
It’s the kind of job, though, that is greatly satisfying because the results are right there in front of you all winter long. “I think the best part is seeing the finished product when the hill opens up,” Holden says as he pauses to think. “You finally get everything covered, it all gets groomed and then everyone gets out there skiing. It’s really nice to see.”

Making a home for jumps, flips, and tricks
with Kim Roberts, director of alpine programs, Alpine Ski Club

Much of that manmade snow finds a fun place to land in the terrain park. There, skiers and snowboarders fly through the air, doing tricks (or trying to) that defy gravity and awe those who watch. In the history of ski resorts, it’s a relatively recent phenomenon, and one that’s seen explosive growth over the last decade.
For many resorts, capturing the attention and imagination of this new brand of customer has become an important part of their organization. It’s a tougher job on the outside than it may seem: these sports are very much about ‘cool’ and at the same time they are about skill, progression and safety.
How this is approached is much different at a private club than at a public ski area—in that youth are almost all in programs in a private club—but the central goal remains the same: How can you get people, especially youth, to enjoy this aspect of snowsports in a safe and fun way?
Alpine Ski Club has been working toward this goal since the late ‘90s, when an astute board member noted that this freestyle thing was probably going to be pretty big and that the club should consider investing in it.
Kim Roberts, director of alpine programs, has been involved in developing the freestyle programs and terrain park at Alpine since they installed their first halfpipe in 1998. A freestyle program has many components: creating a terrain park, teaching people how to use it and developing an effective safety program around it.
The terrain park is the foundation of any freestyle program, and Roberts says the club works with their groomers, riders, ski patrol and instructors to make it all possible.
“We’ve tried to be really inclusive in how we’ve developed the terrain park. We want to make sure that it is designed so that everyone can use it. It’s a developmental park: you start with smaller features and gradually move up to the bigger ones. It’s a really good training environment because there is something for everyone and all abilities can be in there.”
The most interesting outcome of developing their terrain park and freestyle program is the diversity it gives the mountain, says Roberts.
“The terrain park gives us a neat opportunity; you can’t change your slopes everyday but you can change up the terrain park. You can create diversity, interest and excitement in a terrain park and that’s one of our strongest philosophies.”

Styling the ski hill
with Nic Elias, grooming supervisor, Georgian Ski Club

There is no sight sweeter the sight of a perfectly groomed run stretched gloriously out in front of you on a sunny day. And for that we have to thank the stylists of the ski hill: the grooming team.
Grooming supervisor Nic Elias has been smoothing the slopes of the Georgian Peaks Club since he graduated high school in the late ‘80s. Every night, he and his team climb into their snowcats—which look rather like strangely shaped tanks—to spend the next eight to 10 hours in the kind of quiet solitude only a professional groomer knows. The cats are warm and snug, rather like a fishbowl, Elias says, and most importantly, are kitted out with stereos. “It’s a lot like going to Karaoke on a Friday night,” he jokes. “Only there’s no audience and you can sing your heart out at the top of your lungs.”
Then they hit the trails. From up inside their little cabins, they have to make sure that each trail is smoothed out to be safe and comfortable for skiers.
“The general intention when shaping a trail is to make it smooth and flat like a highway,” he explains. “People ski way faster than the snowcat goes, so the operators have to be cognizant of what it’s like to be a skier out on the hill. Things like flat light have to be taken into account, and the trail shaped in a way that people can’t wipe out in a compression and go spilling into the trees.”
The tractor, and operator, accomplishes this by functioning almost like a woodworking plane. The blade in the front cuts off the tops of the large moguls that form from the action of skiing and snowboarding, and pushes the snow into the depressions between. Then, the tiller on the back grinds up the snow and breaks it down. Finally, the mat in the back presses the snow down and adds the corduroy shape that makes for such lovely skiing the next day.
It can be a little bit like mowing the lawn, Elias jokes, but it’s a nice way to pass the time on a cold winter night. It’s just you, the snowcat, and the endless vista of Georgian Bay spread out beneath you. And not a soul in the world to listen to your glorious rendition of AC/DC’s entire greatest-hits catalogue all night long.

[Kicker]
[Drop Cap]

Of all the commonalities that exist between ski resort operations, the strongest is passion. Ski resorts run on passion. The hours are often long, the winter season intense and the pay—let’s face it—is often not that great. But the people that work there almost always want to be there. They love the lifestyle, they love the perks (like free passes to ski or ride) and love being a part of a unique community. It’s not for everyone but for the people that love what they do, they wouldn’t have it any other way.

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