Reckless behavior cited for ski area rule change
Over the past couple of years, we've noticed an increase in uphill traffic within the Whitefish Mountain Resort ski area boundary, which has now reached a level of concern for safety. Many people have skinned up Big Mountain for years, utilizing the side of the wide-open trails to avoid downhill traffic, staying away from heavy equipment and generally using common sense.
Those people have been somewhat innocuous to our permitted downhill ski operations. Unfortunately, those are no longer the only kinds of people hiking uphill in Whitefish.
We have people snowshoeing and skinning uphill on narrow winding trails such as Home Again in the Chair 3 area and up 10,000 Turns above Lower Big Ravine. We have reports of several near misses on these trails, which are especially problematic because of the tight, blind turns.
We have people going uphill in the middle of Toni Matt or Inspiration in heavy cloud cover. This is a recipe for collision. We also have people who are going uphill after-hours and skiing closely behind or in front of groomers in the early evening and at night, and have had several incidents of people skiing over or under winch cat cables under tension just this season. This is so frighteningly dangerous that if you were to watch it happen, you wouldn't believe it.
We have avalanche and explosives danger in-bounds between closing and opening the next morning. I'd like to think that everyone has common sense about staying away when we're blasting or closing terrain because of avalanche danger, but that isn't the case.
Early season, we have snow-making guns, high-pressure water lines, high-voltage electrical lines, winch cables, groomers and other heavy equipment all over the mountain, and people ignore signs and continue to go uphill in these areas.
Just a few days ago, we had an after-hours hiker ski down to a groomed run where a groomer was using a winch cat. The hiker at one point was under the winch cable and either didn't know or didn't care. When the grooming operator signaled for the hiker to evacuate the area the hiker proceeded to argue with and block the path of the groomer. This kind of disregard for danger and poor attitude is not isolated to this incident, but has become something our staff deals with on a regular basis.
Whitefish Mountain Resort has allowed public uphill traffic within its boundaries for a long time, which many resorts do not allow at all, but the popularity of the activity and the attitude and actions of a portion of those participating in it have brought us to a point where we cannot, in good conscience, continue without some ground rules.
We are permitted to operate a lift-served downhill ski area on U.S. Forest Service land above the base area land that we own, and we are responsible for "public health and risk management within the resort boundary," according to our permit. We must continue to do the best we can, in conjunction with the Forest Service, to fulfill that responsibility.
Dan Graves is the president and CEO of Whitefish Mountain Resort.