Patrol/Information/Policies/Opening

From SPVSP

The hill opening process requires patrollers to do the following:

• Ride up each chairlift
  • Ensure chairlift, line, and towers appear to be in good working order
  • Ensure load and unload areas are safe and ready for the public, including cones being set out.
• Ski each run
  • Look for thin snow cover
  • Look for man-made obstacles
  • Verify tower pads adequately protect chairlift towers
• Ensure bamboo and banner guard mark off closed areas and major obstacles

Individual patroller assignments during hill opening procedures are assigned by the Hill Captain for each hill. Before public can be allowed onto the chairlifts, patrollers must be stationed at each bump shack.

Finally, it is important to note that while the ski patrol can keep the chairlifts closed if there is a safety issue, we merely give the go-ahead to open them rather than opening them ourselves. Any number of reasons, typically a staffing shortage, may keep the lift operations supervisor from opening a chairlift immediately after we clear it to be opened.