Whistler Blackcomb has 8,171 acres (or 3,307 hectares) of skiable terrain, 200 marked runs, and the lift capacity to carry just under 70,000 guests per hour, according to its website. That makes it the biggest ski resort in North America. With that many skiers and snowboarders sliding down so many slippery slopes, incidents are inevitable. Whistler Blackcomb’s Ski Patrol is there to respond to every call for help, but it’s just one part of the job. Each day, patrol is responsible for a host of tasks aimed at preventing as many of those incidents as possible.
Have you ever wondered how, exactly, they manage safety and hazards on the mountains? Or whether this season was more challenging than other years?
Whistler Blackcomb invited Pique to sit down with its senior patrol manager Adam Mercer and patrol manager Seamus Frew on Monday, April 24 to find out. What follows is a condensed version of that conversation. (It’s been lightly edited for length, clarity and grammar.)
Pique: As we move further into spring, what aspects of the job are currently keeping your team busiest?
Adam Mercer: The thing that keeps us the busiest all the time—the two main things—is the snow safety program, and the work involved in that, and then responding to guest incidents. The accidents, the medical stuff; that remains the same all season.
Avalanche work in the spring becomes a little bit more unpredictable due to the nature of the snowpack and how it changes in the spring with the heat. Often this time of year, explosives aren't the best form of avalanche mitigation. And so that's a shift from a winter snowpack to spring snowpack … [With hot, sunny conditions] we can expect to see closures of terrain, as opposed to trying to beat something down with explosives and then being able to open it like we do mid-winter—we may not be able to achieve that same objective there. That's one of the main differences, is managing things through closures a little bit more frequently in the spring.
Seamus Frew: That's predominantly guest-facing information. Patrol’s quite dynamic this time of year as well, and we're also thinking about the summer in the bike park, and training and hiring, and just prepping.
How difficult is that communications piece of it; informing guests that, ‘Hey, this is why this terrain that you might expect to be open might be closed today?’
AM: What's been a really satisfying shift for us this year is partnering with [Whistler Blackcomb senior communications manager] Dane [Gergovich] and his team, and trying to get more proactive with how we communicate to the public. That's been really exciting to develop that relationship again, post-pandemic. And we'll continue to build on this through the winter. Then there's been some other great initiatives by patrol; grassroots-driven stuff like going to the high schools, talking to kids there. I've been doing some other mentorship programs, doing some work with Zero Ceiling and that kind of thing that we're kind of gearing up to do more of down the road. But yeah, the communication thing is definitely challenging. We've got such a diverse audience, right from your ‘flying in from Manhattan for a weekend’ versus your locals.
Obviously the mountain hosts and the mountain safety volunteers also play a role in that guest interface. What's the relationship like between them and the patrol team day-to-day?
SF: [We’re] interacting with them right off the get-go. Really, it starts with the morning meeting the paid mountain safety team leads. They come in and sit in on the morning meeting. And so they'll get information about the operation for the day; the weather, the forecast, and just get a sense of where they're going to be needed, to help out. And then they take that back to the rest of their team and the volunteers that are going to be in that day. Throughout the day, it's quite dynamic. Mountain safety, mountain hosts; maybe they're helping us guarding for a medevac off the mountain, or maybe patrol is helping them with some signage or some banners on the lower mountain, as an example. We try and keep the communication open between those teams— kind of like that one-team mentality.
AM: It’s been a pretty long standing relationship. The mountain safety team and patrol have been working pretty closely as long as I've been here, for 23 plus years. New this year was a little bit of incorporating the mountain hosts along with the mountain safety team, just to try and create some engagement within that group, and seeing if we can make their experience as volunteers a little bit more interesting. That’s been a trial this year—we'll see how things go next year there.
Size-wise, after the pandemic, how is that volunteer team looking?
SF: The paid staff has been pretty consistent. Volunteerism, it's been consistent over the last couple of years, but pre-pandemic, the numbers were higher. We have seen a bit of a drop in that volunteerism, especially over the last 10 years. It’s challenging—recruiting people on a regular basis requires a lot of work and energy, and I think throughout the pandemic, people were reevaluating how they were spending their time, too. To volunteer on one of your days off of your weekend is a lot … But yeah, the plan is, it'd be nice to bump up those numbers, for sure, if we can moving forward.
With how big of a resort this is, I can’t imagine that even with a well-staffed patrol team, you're going to be able to consistently have eyes everywhere and know what's happening on every corner of every run. How useful and how important is that team in kind of spreading out that responsibility?
AM: The more the merrier. We’ve got other employees that are responsible for doing those things as well—like if a lift maintenance person is heading around on a snowmobile and notices something that needs to get done, they'll pass it on to us. Yeah, it does make a difference having that headcount to support what we're trying to do. And yes, certainly the pandemic has shifted the working demographic in general, and the impacts on volunteerism are unknown. As we move forward past this year, it'll be interesting to see what happens in general—my suspicion is that volunteerism is going down across the board, so how do we react to that down the road will be an interesting opportunity for us to explore.
We’ve had a few people send Pique letters this winter saying that they were concerned about very specific safety issues, it seemed, like a rut in the snow, or a sudden drop-off. In terms of those [localized] on-mountain hazards, is that something your team actively goes out looking for every day, or are those things that you respond to when you get a complaint from a guest, or a heads-up from lift ops, for example?
SF: It starts right from the beginning of the day, we have trail checks that we do and we're responsible for. Our patrollers really are our on-hill risk managers, so they're going out and they're looking for hazards, they're passing on any information and they're resetting bamboo and the mountain safety team will be going out and doing their banner runs, and if there's any hazards that need to be passed on to dispatch, where other people then have to go down to help out, then we'll do that. But we'll get calls in from other departments and even guests saying, ‘Hey, have you noticed this?’ And then we'll obviously go and have a look and assess it. But yeah, predominantly, the focus in the morning is doing those work-runs and seeing how things are looking.
AM: It doesn't really stop. That even happens with the grooming shifts— we can get calls from grooming, saying, ‘Hey, heads up on this,’ if it's been pouring rain overnight, for example, and something washes out, it's often grooming that gives us the heads up … that cycle never really stops. Patrol takes a pretty systematic approach with how we mitigate hazards in the field. It's the first task that gets done: we sign up for a trail check, and that's been prioritized specifically to address the most important issues first … and we do get a lot of input from guests for sure—’What about this thing? What about that thing?’—so we appreciate that as well.
SF: It changes throughout the year too, like in the spring … if it's winter up top and it's spring down low, then the groomers have some challenges with the different types of snow they're dealing with as well. But like Adam says, we have a really good communication between those other departments just to pass on information, say if we require additional marking or grooming.
When it comes to marking, especially as we get into spring and snow starts melting, and some of those hazards are uncovered, how do you draw the line between, ‘We need to completely rope this area off,’ and giving people an element of personal responsibility to avoid skiing over these areas?
SF: We have different designations for runs, like ‘Unmarked rocks and obstacles’ as an example. We use that a lot at the beginning of the year, when we don't quite have the snowpack to fill in all the hazards on the mountain. It’s just giving people a heads up—’Hey, you may encounter early season conditions,’ as an example. That's a sign that we'll have up to just give people some information. Also ‘marginal conditions,’ we don't use as much, but if it gets really bad we'll actually have a full gate with a sign that you need to go through, so it's a really good warning for people. If, say, that’s happening at lower mountain, we'll recommend downloading instead. And then the boundary is a whole other topic to discuss.
For sure. I noticed some comments on an Instagram post about Blackcomb Glacier and Spanky’s Ladder being the new boundary from people saying, ‘What do you mean, you're not patrolling this?’ So how does that work?
AM: That's a tough question to answer. We've had a floating boundary within our larger, more permanent boundary for as long as I've been here. It exists early season—and most readers would be familiar with that—we open the mountain, we have a couple runs open, and the rest of the whole thing is boundarized. And then that happens again in the spring. It takes place when we feel like we don't have the means to deal with the hazards beyond that point, whatever those circumstances are, whether that be avalanche risk or some other thing, or construction or whatever it is.
So at this point in the year, what should people expect, if they want to go past that boundary this spring?
AM: We just label it all the same. It's the same as a boundary to go into the backcountry, saying 'Not patrolled, so be prepared for self rescue.'
So if someone does get hurt beyond Spanky’s, would you go help them?
AM: Yeah, we would work with local search and rescue (SAR) and other stakeholders to determine the best course of action, but we're not going to leave people out there.
Are there behaviours you're seeing on the hill, whether from casual guests or from the long-term locals that have been concerning to your teams over the winter?
SF: We'll stay on the theme of the boundary and going out of bounds. We put a significant effort into making sure … that boundary is thick with bamboo and signage, so it's quite clear. But we still have people that are caught off-guard, underprepared, and they end up out there. And either we're involved in the rescue where we partner with SAR, or SAR takes it. That is a challenge because it does pull resources from our main operation, and then it potentially pulls SAR volunteers in off whatever job they're doing in the community to come in and to help out with that.
AM: We’re seeing a lot of people that are over-equipped, and under-educated … 20 years ago, people didn't have ski touring equipment, they didn't have Vibram soles on their boots—it just wasn't a thing. It was a handful of people that had the equipment to be able to access some of this terrain outside of the boundary. That's really changed. Now everybody's got that stuff, and then you don't need to learn how to read a map and a compass, you can pull out your phone, because it's got a GPS on it. Again, 10 years ago, that wasn't a thing.
The other [challenge] is, it seems like there's a lot of new people to the sport—and this is anecdotal—that maybe are less willing to take a lesson than they would have before. I’ve seen a lot of first-time never-evers that just don't take a lesson. I don't know what the driver is there. I think that that's something Canada West and resorts need to spend time looking at.
What do you think the community can do to encourage more responsible behaviour on the mountain?
AM: Help us educate and encourage people to take a lesson … I think that, as a community, we need to meet people with kindness, especially people that are new to the sport or people that are visiting and educate them in a non-patronizing manner, and I think the opposite is maybe in play right now with some of the banter online.
I imagine people taking lessons would be important for you, because in addition to learning basic technique and how to get down a mountain, lessons might help newer skiers or snowboarders grasp the alpine responsibility code or mountain etiquette they might not learn by just being up there [on their own]. How are those pieces of information being communicated lately?
AM: I think it starts with the snow school team, when they're teaching those things … that's part of their curriculum. And then patrol certainly does that, mountain safety does that in the field, on the mountain—when we see a problem, we'll address it. More proactively, like Seamus said, looking at the schools, like going to local high schools; we could expand that up and down the Sea to Sky and provide more education. There’s some vocational information about what it's like to be a ski patrol, and then talking a little bit more about how they can stay safe out there. We have our tree well program that we run. There's a whole bunch of cool things that can be expanded. But there's a need there to, I think, enhance people's overall experience by providing more educational opportunities, if that’s what they want. And again, that's not specific towards Whistler Blackcomb.
[Editor's note: According to statistics provided by Whistler Blackcomb, approximately one quarter of the 200,000 people that participate in ski and snowboarding lessons range from never-evers to having only skied a couple of times. Aside from snow school, other programs offering access to instruction include its Schools On Snow program, its Valley Kids program, the EpicSchoolKids program and the Sea to Sky Elementary School discounted lesson program. Free lessons are also available for First Nations skiers and snowboarders, while learning areas like the one at Whistler Mountain's Olympic Station are open to the ticketed public, no lesson required.]
Over the past winter, what types of incidents have you most frequently responded to on the mountain, and has that changed at all from previous winters?
SF: It’s kind of the same-same. In terms of the types of injuries, the seriousness of the injuries, it seems pretty consistent. Now, coming out of the pandemic, our business has been increasing so we're seeing probably more similar trends to pre-COVID [seasons.]
AM: Incident rates, for as long as I've been here … some weeks are a little bit more, some months are a little bit more or less, but it's about the same. And then the acuity is about the same. Seamus and I were talking about this today—and again, this is anecdotal—but talking with my paramedic friends as well … as the baby boomers come of age, and that's what we're seeing, as they go and get some exercise, and maybe haven't exercised, I think we're seeing more medical incidents take place on-mountain. Heart attacks, that kind of thing. Again, it’s anecdotal, but it would make sense with the aging demographic. That's going happen.
Aside from those medical incidents, I think that could also mean people are going to have more blown out knees, or things along those lines, and those people are going to make more calls. Would you say most of the incidents you respond to are injuries involving single-skiers, where something like that goes wrong?
AM: Yeah. For skiers, it’s twists, knees, head bonks, and snowboarders dislocate their shoulders and hurt their wrists. That's been the same. If we were to stretch it out, I think there's probably more people skiing these days that require more assistance from patrol in general. Whereas in the past, maybe those people would ski out under their own steam—there’s nothing stopping you from skiing if you’ve got a broken wrist, right? … Again, anecdotally, just talking to the teams about what's happening with our [guests’] demographic, it's like they need more assistance, more support in general. Which is OK—we’re happy to do that; it’s super gratifying.
But I can imagine it does put more strain on resources.
AM: It does, but again, that's what we do. It's very rewarding and gratifying work. So we just have to make sure, as a business, that we're proactive in being resourced, and have the infrastructure and resources to support that thing.
When it comes to the actual locations on the mountain where a lot of these incidents occur, is there anything that sticks out, or a few spots in particular your team finds itself heading to more often? Especially in comparison to other years?
AM: No, because it would be exposure-based, but people don't hurt themselves in Spanky’s Ladder very often, right? Probably no, but on more beginner terrain, we see those, like, slow, twisting falls, and that ‘caught my edge on a snowboard and smashed my head off the ground.’ I’ll go out and say conditions play a part, and it's more about low light versus good light. When it's hard and fast, and the light is good, acuity goes up. People are moving faster, just like in a car. When it's low visibility and deeper snow, people are moving slower, and we don't see the serious incidents, but we see a lot of those twisting kind of injuries pop up. But again, it kind of floats [around the same level.] It’s been unchanged.
This winter, on a province-wide scale, we saw a lot of avalanche activity, a lot of fatalities. On the other hand, it feels like a lot of alpine terrain in the resort was open for much of this season. How was it, managing that risk this year?
AM: Comparing what's happening in the province versus what's happening in resorts or Whistler Blackcomb specifically is probably not a great comparison to make. The province has got a problem on their hands … but luckily for us, we've got explosives to treat most avalanche problems as they come up. The other thing that we've got going for us, which they don't have in a backcountry setting or heli-ski setting, is skier compaction. That’s this phenomenon of: it snows, we do some mitigation work and treat it with explosives, we open the terrain up, it gets skied out, and once it’s skied out in full, we're starting new again. That’s quite unique compared to a backcountry or heli-ski situation. We are, however, challenged some years where, for technical reasons, the avalanche problem we have on our hands doesn't respond well to explosives-use. When that happens early season, and we get a cold snap or something like that, then we can end up in a scenario like we had a couple of years ago where we couldn't open the Peak until mid-January. That does happen. Usually once we kind of break it and open those lifts early-season and pack it all down with skier traffic then we’ve usually dealt with that problem for the season—until this week starts, and 24-degree [temperatures are] going to change everything.
SF: This season was a little bit challenging to start off, just with the snowpack and access up into our start stones, but once we received enough snow, then we just got into our regular routine of dealing with storms coming in.
AM: There was definitely concern early-season. When we had that cold snap in December, I was like, ‘This is making a problem lower in the snowpack’ that we were able to get ahead of, because we were able to open. We had enough to open the lifts, we had enough to get people in terrain to help us mitigate the hazards.
For people who do want to head into the backcountry from the resort this spring—or if they’re just wanting to tour up Whistler for a Peak to Creek lap now that it’s closed—how do you manage that, and what’s the message for people who are wanting to travel uphill through closed terrain?
SF: If you look at our website and go to the risk-management safety page, it provides all the uphill access routes, so you can still go up Singing Pass as an example, you have access into the backcountry off the Blackcomb side, but we have conversations with people and we just indicate that especially in the Fitzsimmons Zone, it's a construction zone, there's some hazards out there. We try and be polite and just turn them around and educate them and tell them where they can go to access the terrain they'd like to get to. That’s the approach with closures, but especially if our staff or other guests are at risk, we will pull passes. Like with avalanche closures, it's an ongoing challenge throughout the winter, and we take those seriously.
AM: To be clear, Whistler mountain is closed, meaning passes will be revoked for violation.
What do you feel is most misunderstood in the community or from guests about the work that you do?
AM: What is involved in avalanche control and how heavily regulated it is by WorkSafe and Transport Canada—our explosive permits, and our requirement to keep people out of terrain where we're doing avalanche control, because of the explosive side—I think people misunderstand that part. For example, breaching a closure whilst we're doing avalanche control, you're not just exposing yourself to avalanche hazard, you're exposing yourself to an explosive hazard, which is highly regulated. If we can't keep people out of a piece of terrain that's being mitigated through use of explosives, then we run the risk of losing our license to be able to do that work. And that's challenging, because we do see people breaching closures, fairly on the regular. I think they’re just like, ‘Well, we're just taking on this risk ourselves,’ or whatever their motivation is to do that thing, but I think they're putting a lot of other things at risk there. And I think there's an opportunity for us to do some more work with our local public around what it is that patrol does, in that regard.
SF: The other thing is just the consequences of going out-of-bounds not prepared, and then that impact on resources from our team. People can get caught ill-prepared and it becomes problematic depending on what else we have going on that day.
