By Thomas (2023-24 cohort)
With my 4 months in DC done, I was embarking on my next adventure – a ski season in Jackson Hole. After some lovely family time over the Christmas holiday, I stayed behind to start working on the mountain as a lift operator.
On the 1st of January, I started my training program. I was a little nervous, as I had no lift experience. I also wouldn’t exactly describe myself as the most mechanically minded person. My peers, doing the training program alongside me, were firefighters and welders, and here I was – some kid out of English Boarding school. I nodded along nervously during the training program, not exactly following the whole thing, and feeling slightly concerned for the poor people that would end up on my lift. This seemed a bit realer than any previous work I’d done – people can actually get injured on ski lifts, as they made abundantly clear in our training video.
Luckily, I was eased into the job, as each lift was a 3-man station, and so my two partners could help me catch up to speed. Days on the mountain were long, and went like this: wake up at 6 am, get to the mountain by 7 am, get my stuff from my locker, go to my lift, shovel snow and get the lift ready for the day, open the lift at 9 am, start closing at 4 pm, and hopefully beat the traffic to get home by about 5:30 am. As for the work on the lift, it was divided into 3 shifts – bottom, top, and break – with each stint being 70 minutes.
At the bottom, my job was to bump the lifts (slow them down to help kids get on), as well as to keep the ramp looking presentable, which entailed raking it every few minutes. It also meant interacting with lots of people, as there was basically a constant queue for the whole hour – lots of “how we doing!”, and “have a good one!” (This probably sounded a bit strange in my English accent). Then at the top station, luckily rather than being outside in the freezing cold, I was inside a little shack – I could keep warm and put on a podcast to pass the time. All this part entailed was watching people get off the lift and stopping it in the case of someone falling off (a remarkable amount of people can’t seem to get off a ski lift). Finally, the third shift, my personal favourite, was an hour ski break (although sometimes it was more of a hot chocolate break).
Fortunately, there weren’t any serious accidents. The nearest miss came when an instructor with 3 little girls approached the lift. I bumped the lift and watched them get on, with seemingly no problems. I then quickly had to turn my attention back to the queue to make sure that the next group in line was waiting behind the red line (so the next lift wouldn’t take them out as it swung around). Unfortunately, what I did not see was that one of the poor girls didn’t quite get on properly, and so was in an unfortunate limbo, half on the chair, and half out. Because the noise of the lift was so deafening, it took a few seconds for me to register what was happening. My ears detected a distant commotion, over the churning of the bull wheel, and I turned around to see this poor girl dangling off the lift, with the instructor screaming at me to stop the lift. I scrambled to the stop button and rushed out to try and catch her before she fell. I couldn’t get there in time, although luckily, she was just a few feet in the air, and underneath a big snow pit (it had snowed the previous day, thank God). She fell without a scratch, although understandably there were a few tears. I helped the poor girl up and put her on the next lift, rather shaken up.
While workdays were fun, the main perk of the job was the free season pass that came with it. As I was working part time, 2 days a week, I sure made the most of this. Skiing every single day for 49 days straight, I certainly improved. Growing up, I had skied a few times, but I wasn’t exactly a graceful skier. Jackson Hole, being a famously hard mountain, provided a perfect training ground for me to improve my skills. In the span of 2 months, I went from being paralyzed with fear every time I stared down a black run, to bombing down double blacks with confidence.
This middle stint of my gap year was a wonderful experience, and I met some great people. In many ways we were very different – I’m fairly certain I was the only Brit working on the slopes. Many grew up in rural towns in the mid-west, in places I had never heard of. But we bonded nonetheless, and very quickly I felt at home and part of a new community.
And most importantly, I learnt a new skill! This is a hobby, I am certain, that I’ll continue to build on for the rest of my life. While I’ve always loved skiing, now that I am finally confident and in control on the slopes, it feels like a different sport. I fell in love with skiing, in a way that only a whole season out on the mountain can really provide. Out there alone on the slopes, you experience a unique sense of freedom. Free from all distractions, you are transported into an almost hypnotic rhythm, as you seamlessly glide left and right, left and right, down the mountain. Surrounded by soaring peaks and sweeping valleys, you feel a profound connection to the natural world, as well as a reminder of your humble place in it all. There’s just nothing quite like it, especially in Jackson Hole.
