Skier/Snowboarder Responsibility Code
January is National Safety Awareness Month, a good time to be reminded about safety on the slopes we all love, to keep us, the kids and the grandkids all safe and smiling on the slopes we all love.
We invite you to add your comments about experiences with downhillers who have violated the safety code. Even more, we invite you to contribute a full article on your opinion of the current state of safety and courtesy on the slopes today. Add your comment directly to the article, or send us your full article to info@seniorsskiingmedia.com
This list of ten “must do” safety tips is from the National Ski Areas Assn. (NSAA), which represents more than 300 alpine resorts that account for more than 90% of the skier/snowboarder visits nationwide. Additionally, it has several hundred supplier members that provide equipment, goods and services to the mountain resort industry.
- Always stay in control. You must be able to stop or avoid people or objects.
- People ahead or downhill of you have the right-of-way. You must avoid them.
- Stop only where you are visible from above and do not restrict traffic.
- Look uphill and avoid others before starting downhill or entering a trail.
- You must prevent runaway equipment.
- Read and obey all signs, warnings, and hazard markings.
- Keep off closed trails and out of closed areas.
- You must know how and be able to load, ride and unload lifts safely. If you need assistance, ask the lift attendant.
- Do not use lifts or terrain when impaired by alcohol or drugs.
- If you are involved in a collision or incident, share your contact information with each other and a ski area employee.
Ski and snowboard safely – in January and in all months of the ski, snowboard and XC season.
Fit to Be Tied
Lord willing, this is my 66th straight year of skiing. But this is about one special memory with the Blizzard Ski Club of Minnesota in 1964, when I was nine. It is also about my dad, a PSIA Chief Examiner who skied well into his 70s, as I am doing now.
My parents were early flatland skiers in the Twin Cities just after WWII, after he had returned from active combat in Western Europe. He had enlisted in the 10th Mountain Division but became impatient for assignment and transferred to the 71st Infantry. As a kid he competed at a respectful level in jumping, which was really the only skiing done back then in our neck of the country. He decided to join the Minneapolis jumping club after visiting Sun Valley when he was just 12 years old, in 1936, and then fell in love with downhill skiing, too.
We had many family ski trips when I was a kid – the old single chair adjacent to Ruthy’s Run at Aspen was my first experience on a chair lift, at the age of seven. This is one of many stories I have written about the Adzick Family Alpine Skiing adventures, about a spring skiing excursion to Montana.
The Blizzard Ski Club had assembled 100 kids from in and around Minneapolis to take the train to Billings and ski Red Lodge Mountain, for a full week of corn snow, clear blue skies, new friends, goggle eyes and – for my family – my mother’s 40th birthday. The freedom we kids enjoyed was a celebration of life at its very best. I skied alone, not by choice, mostly by will and reckless abandon. By mid-week, the entire flatlander club was well equipped with mountain legs, including me.
George Adzick at A-Basin 1982 in Daphne style, a Bernard Altman sweater, jeans, Nordica Astro Bananas, and 210 Blizzards.
One afternoon, from a chairlift, I spotted a group of skiers making their way down the highest and most difficult terrain on the mountain, romping from one mogul to another. My privileged view triggered a deliberate pre-teen unraveling of my inner self.
As the tiny figures below expressed their joy of dancing with gravity, they braided past one another and through the trees, leaped the knolls and carved the fall line. Random movements separated their individual styles, but they would remain in formation, as if a squadron.
These men were the finest skiers I had ever seen, an eight-year-old watching a regiment of heroes rapidly moving downhill as I slowly ascended past them. The sounds of their skis on the snow added to this wave of splendor, brilliance and grandeur. I was overwhelmed.
“Dad!”, I shouted as they skied beneath my chair. I was the only rider on what may have been halfway to a never-ending ascent. “Wait!” I yelled down as I moved uphill away from them. Our paths had crossed. “Wait!” They all stopped, in an instant.
My dad looked up. I was in agony. Would he wait for me to join him? Would they all wait? Any of them? I twisted around to keep them in sight as the chair moved further away. Then, the unspeakable. The squadron of men I so desperately wanted to join, to romp with and braid with, to show my stuff, to keep up with, in a blink turned in unison down the fall line in real time. It was a portrait of magnificence, the rare beauty of elite christie in unison, for my eyes only.
They didn’t wait, and I had but one choice to take command of my destiny, to experience inclusion in this squadron of alpine masters, so I did it.
I worked my way to the edge of the moving chair and jumped 40 feet off. I hit the ground hard, luckily everything intact, and quickly pulled myself together to catch them. I pointed my skis down the mountain and thought of nothing but the coming glory of my gallantry.
I caught up to them and stopped with a hockey stop swagger. They stood motionless, seething, not a variation of expression on any face. And while by week’s end I would become a fixture in Blizzard Ski Club folklore, I was until then a shocking image, a paradox on skis, an undeniable liability.
They were fit to be tied.
George Adzick
Blizzard Ski Club
Winter in the Time of Global Warming
Planning in late summer for an early December ski trip in Europe you have to think about glaciers. There are a number of possibilities: Zermatt in Switzerland, Cervinia in Italy, and Hintertux, Kitzsteinhorn, and Stubai in Austria. Glacier skiing used to be confined to summer and pre-season skiing, but with global warming, the situation is changing and if you want to be sure of snow in early December, it has to be on a glacier.
We chose to go to the Stubai glacier in Austria because it’s the glacier with the most ski runs and it’s just a short ride up the hill from the Innsbruck airport. There are 35 downhill ski runs between the top stations at over 3,100 meters all the way down to the mid-station at 2,300 meters. The lifts are of a mix of gondolas and covered chair lifts with a few T-bars for shorter runs. We bought our lift tickets on line and took advantage of the 20% discount offered for advanced purchases.
Glacier skiing is usually not ski-in-ski out. We stayed in the town of Neustift, which is 25 minutes from the Innsbruck airport. The lift station for the glacier is a further 20 minutes up the road, and is serviced by a free ski bus every fifteen minutes or so. For convenience we chose to drive. Neustift is a typical Austrian ski town complete with ski shops, restaurants and shops selling all the local handicrafts. We stayed in an apartment at Sportpension Elisabeth which was more than comfortable, with a small kitchen to prepare dinner on the nights we stayed in, and with the option for breakfast in the pension’s breakfast room
Everything at the Austrian ski areas is tip-top: moderately priced self-service restaurants, full-service restaurants, inside areas reserved for those who bring their own food, cubby-hole storage to store your pack while you’re out skiing, escalators to avoid climbing stairs, charging stations for your phone, and snow, real snow. Oh, and don’t worry if you’ve forgotten something down in the valley gloves, goggles, a helmet, skis, poles, whatever, there are Intersport shops at every lift station.\
The weather in December is not always accommodating. We had four snowy days and three days of bright sunshine. The skiing was great, even on the days we couldn’t see much past the next turn. The new snow made up for what we couldn’t see. Temperatures were -2 to -8 Centigrade, depending on the altitude, but with new materials for ski outfits these days, such temperatures are not uncomfortable. The sun did come out for us during our last days, and the skiing was super. While skiing on a glacier may seem fraught with black diamond rated trails, the reality is just the opposite. For the most part the trails are rated blue with a few reds. We encountered no ice and enjoyed cruising along on the runs which were meticulously groomed after the snow stopped falling.
This was a multi-generational adventure with my son, some grandchildren and spouses. All in all, we greatly enjoyed our early December glacier skiing. Snow covered pine trees, snowy white landscapes, skiing in the new snow, all reminded me of Winter’s Past.
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