Snow conditions drive a huge chunk of the economy in the Roaring Fork Valley — from the restaurants and businesses that cater to skiers, to the ski patrollers whose jobs depend on good snow.
Aspen Public Radio recently aired a story about one patroller’s reaction to this year’s historically bad winter, but some patrollers felt it offered too narrow a perspective on their work.
Andy Biehl is a ski patroller at Aspen Highlands and the president of the Aspen Professional Ski Patrol Association, the union that represents patrollers at all four Aspen-Snowmass mountains.
Reporter Sarah Tory spoke with Biehl about a Letter to the Editor he sent to the Aspen Daily News earlier this week and what he felt her story missed.
The conversation below has been edited for clarity and length.
Sarah Tory: Andy, thanks so much for joining me here in the studio. You've been a ski patroller for how many years now?
Andy Biehl: Oh, I started in 2008, so a while.
Tory: And you left for a time and then came back. So, what's kept you in this job?
Biehl: Boy, a lot of things. You know, I did not want to leave the job, but various financial pressures conspired to necessitate taking on some more lucrative work. And once I got that sorted out, I know where my heart is, and it's in ski patrolling. There's nothing I've ever found that brings me as much joy and satisfaction as doing that work. So, as soon as I was able, I went back to the ski patrol, which was probably, I don't know, six, seven years ago now.
Tory: In the letter to the editor, you talk about it being the best job in the world. For listeners who might not know the ins and outs of ski patrolling, can you talk a little bit about why you said that?
Biehl: Just speaking for the highlands team, I really feel like it's an incredibly competent, skilled group of people, and that makes doing these kind of high-consequence, at times, very dangerous tasks much more approachable when you know that the people around you have got your back and can really be relied on. And they're just fun to hang out with too.
Tory: There have been several really high-profile ski patrol strikes in recent years, most recently in Telluride this past Christmas. As a ski patroller, what is your reaction to those incidents?
Biehl: I think industry-wide, especially the Park City strike a couple years ago, really brought a lot of attention to this career and the challenges that, really, all mountain workers face. You know, working in a resort community, they're expensive places to live, and you're probably not getting paid a lot of money. And I think it mostly just comes down to having a passion for the job that people just really want to do it. They want to find a way to live here and make it work.
These strikes do bring a lot of attention to that fact. They, as we saw in Telluride, also put a lot of stress on the community at large, because our communities do kind of live or die by the tourism industry. And the power that these organized labor forces have to shut down that industry is, well, it's not to be taken lightly.
Tory: Yeah, and patrollers at Aspen's four mountains have been unionized a long time. Is that correct?
Biehl: Yeah, 1986, I believe.
Tory: Okay. And can you talk about what being in a union has meant for the patrollers, and also what changes and benefits the union has pushed for to make ski patrolling a more sustainable profession?
Biehl: I think we've — at least in the length of my career — really enjoyed a pretty amicable relationship with the ski company. It’s generally never gotten super contentious. Every two to three years we go through a contract negotiation, and we sit down and we talk about what we'd like to see change and trying to keep wages high — high enough that people can look at this as a viable career and something that they can do in this valley for as long as their body and mind will allow them to do it. You're never going to get rich doing this line of work, but it's totally doable if it's something that you're passionate about.
Tory: The impetus for this conversation was my story of one patroller's reaction to a bad winter and the prospect that these bad winters might get more frequent as the climate changes. How are you feeling about that possibility and the impact it will have on patrolling in the future?
Biehl: It's a scary prospect for sure. Ski patrolling aside, a lot of us are here because we love skiing, and that's essentially what brings you to this line of work in the first place. But if skiing is in danger due to climate change, that's a terrifying prospect. We'll take it one season at a time and hope for the best. And I think there's a lot of people in this community, especially, trying to look at ways to mitigate climate change. Whether or not those are impacts we're going to see in our lifetime, I kind of doubt it, but there's always snow making, I guess.
Tory: Well, Andy, thanks so much for coming in and sharing your perspective. That was fun.
Biehl: Yeah, thank you for giving me the time.
