The biggest story in Utah’s outdoor world right now is the Park City Mountain Resort ski patrol strike. The patrollers struck on December 26, one of the busiest days of the season, and are committed to striking until their demands are met. They’re fighting for a number of concessions, but the sticking point for the resort’s parent company, Vail Resorts, seems to be on wages. The patrollers are asking for $23/hr starting pay, up $2/hr from their current starting point of $21/hr. Vail Resorts is apparently unwilling to meet those demands.
Seeing this in the news got me thinking about my own experience with ski patrol in February of 2020. It was a traumatic day that I don’t like to remember.
I’ve been an expert skier since high school, and although I was familiar with the bowl I was skiing that day, the snow was in an unforgiving mood. In between firm and slushy, it was hard to figure out and made for some awkward turns.
Against my better judgement I still chose to hop off a 3- or 4-foot rock. I landed, hit an unseen bump and was suddenly airborne. I flipped head over heels and, as my skis hit the snow, I felt immediate pain in my left leg. Worse, I heard a sickening crunch beneath me.
I would later find out that I had suffered a spiral fracture of my tibia and a clean break of my fibula. The ski patroller on duty said it was one of the worst below-the-knee injuries they’d seen that year. I wouldn’t be able to return to my outdoor hobbies for about four to six months and, to this day, I still have nagging ankle and calf problems from my fall. But I wasn’t thinking about any of that in the moment: I was thinking about the resort’s profit margins and controlling investors.
How would my accident affect the shareholders? By forcing ski patrol to make a rescue using expensive man hours, would I eliminate the chance at a profitable day for the resort? Why had I taken such a careless risk without considering the bottom line? How could I be so stupid?
What if a patroller had been clocking out just as my accident was called in? Would he now have to work another hour? How much would that cost the mountain? If it had been at PCMR, it would have cost $21. Imagine stupidly snapping two of your bones and costing your favorite resort 1/13th the cost of a lift ticket. Would they even be able to open the next day? I was distraught.
Two ski patrollers arrived on the scene quickly. I asked if they could get me down with just one patroller so the other one could clock out and save the resort some money, but they assured me it would take both. I mentally cursed myself again.
Inside the medical area, they told me they would take an X-ray to confirm the breaks. My guilt was mounting. How much electricity did it cost to fire up an X-ray machine? Too much, surely. I tried to balance out the cost by shutting off the lights, but was in too much pain to stand up. Could this day get any worse?
It sure could. Soon, they brought in a third health professional to get the boot off of my leg. Three people on the clock. Three hours of work. At Park City, that would mean $63 dollars. They’d have to sell two and a half cheeseburgers to make up for that.
Patrol soon got to work, and let me tell you: It hurt. If you’ve never felt the pain of three people pressing down on a ski boot exactly where you twisted your tibia into four or five pieces, it’s bad. But still not as bad as the pain of knowing you’ve cost some poor, helpless millionaire out there the chance at passive income.
After all, those investors had done so much for me. They’d invested in this great resort. What had ski patrol ever done besides respond to medical emergencies in dangerous alpine environments, mitigate hazardous avalanche terrain, and set up innumerable safety features around the mountain? Nothing, that’s what.
So let’s all take a moment to thank the people who keep mountains like Park City and Vail’s other resorts safe. And to be clear, I mean financially safe, the more important kind of safe.
If you’re wondering about me, I’m much better now. Surgery and physical therapy eased the pain over time, and I’m back in full form. But real relief only came when I learned the resort I was skiing at was part of a private ownership group.
(Brian Higgins) Brian Higgins is a writer and comedian in Salt Lake City.
Brian Higgins is a writer and comedian in Salt Lake City who really did break his leg skiing and wants to thank patrollers everywhere.
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