Bretton Woods 3/16, 3/17

This past weekend at Bretton Woods I worked with Courtney the supervisor of lift operations. Over the course of the two days I got to see the top and bottom terminals of the Bethelhem, Zephyr, and learning area lift. Essentially I lived a day in the life of Courtney for the most part though. In the morning I set up the magic carpet and worked that for a while and from about 10 o'clock on I went from lift to lift with her and gave the lift attendants breaks. Because of the extreme temperatures we usually gave them a break and shoveled as much snow as we could onto the loading/unloading ramps and raked them out for them. At times I got sent to do different tasks around the mountain which gave me an opportunity to ride which was nice. I got to experience the terrain park which was basically a lawsuit waiting to happen. As you can see by the rail sitting on its side in the middle of the trail unmarked, held up buy Kory. Other than that I attended the department manager meeting in the base lodge on Friday and just helped out where it was needed throughout each day.

The job of lift supervisor is very busy and it seems that each day can be drastically different from the next. Once the lifts start spinning there needs to be an unending sense of alertness, and responsibility from the lift supervisor. A reliable lift operation is essential for a ski resort and is easy to overlook, but constantly dependable lifts and operators are key to the big picture of a successful mountain operation. I have a lot of respect for everything that she does on a daily basis and got to experience it first hand this past weekend.