Ski Pros Have Secret Societies, Too
In most places, ski pros last two or three seasons before moving on. Not Aspen. Remember the Curse of the Ute? Instructors stay here for decades, which means that likeminded cliques—or gangs—start to form. Yes, gangs.
Think of them less like Bloods and Crips and more like the Sharks and the Jets—breaking out into slalom turns instead of jazz hands. “There’s a tribalistic quality to them,” says ski instructor Ted Mahon. “They’re like college fraternities, each with their own reputation.” Names like the Bell Mountain Buckaroos, Powder Sluts, the Umbros, and Flying Monkeys all find their way into regular conversation in Aspen. The Freaks are currently the fastest group on the mountain; unsurprisingly they’re mostly made up of millennial-age Instagram aficionados. Want to pledge? Remember: These are professional ski bums. They’re too relaxed for that nonsense. (But if your street cred checks out, you might get an invite to the gang’s morning runs.)
Learning their lingo can help you fit in. Aspen gang slang goes beyond industrywide vocab terms like “yard sale” (noun: when you wipe out so hard that all your gear falls off) and refers more to local terrain. “We have a lot of secret names for mountain areas that are passed down like folklore,” says Julia Hedman, one of Aspen Mountain’s youngest instructors. Following her lead might mean taking Copper to Yankee Stadium to the Nose—though none of these are listed on official trail maps.
Also popular: using celebrity names to inform secret codes. According to Hedman, a John Wayne Bobbitt is when you ski a certain cutoff (get it?), and the long face of Aspen Mountain is called SJP. Poor Carrie Bradshaw …
Ski Patrols Are EMTs and Bouncers All Rolled Into One
For a sport that involves speeding down frozen mountainsides, surprisingly few people sustain serious bodily harm while skiing. On their busiest day this season so far, Aspen’s 18-person ski patrol reported just nine incidents—despite having more than 4,000 skiers on the mountain.
Thirty-three-year veteran ski patroller Art Nerbonne mostly sees knee and shoulder injuries; he’ll get occasional calls about altitude sickness as well. “Intermediate skiers are the ones getting hurt most often,” he says. And some people need rescuing over and over. “I’ve actually saved the same guy from a heart attack on two separate occasions, two different years,” Nerbonne says. “It was like a little reunion.”
As for the nonmedical aspects of being a ski patroller? “Every morning we punch in at 7:30 a.m. and check for obstacles and avalanche risks,” he says. At day’s end, they morph into bouncers, kicking off sloppy revelers stumbling through their last runs. “We’ve found all sorts of strange things during the last sweep,” says Nerbonne. “Even two people having sex.” Hope they didn’t get frostbite …
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.