Safety, Fun, and Learning: How Steamboat Resort Is Main a Community Approach to Slope Safety

By Dave Schuiling, PSIA-AASI Director of Education & Credentialing

January is National Ski Safety Awareness Month, an annual initiative led by the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) to advertise accountability, consciousness, and customary sense on the mountain. It’s an vital reminder that security in snowsports isn’t created by way of guidelines alone—it’s constructed by way of schooling, tradition, and shared accountability.

At PSIA-AASI, security is foundational to who we’re and the way we train. Our long-standing motto—Safety, Fun, and Learning—guides the best way instructors throughout all disciplines are educated to steer significant experiences on snow. Certified instructors are taught to mannequin the Responsibility Code, handle pace and area, and preserve their college students—and surrounding visitors—secure.

But instructors can’t do it alone.

When Awareness Breaks Down

Many of as we speak’s slope security challenges stem not from an absence of ability, however from a lack of information. Excessive pace in congested areas, snowboarding or using uncontrolled, and failure to handle area round others can considerably enhance threat.

For many visitors, the mountain already comes with built-in stressors: variable snow circumstances, climate, terrain, and considerations about private capability. When the added concern of a possible collision enters the equation, nervousness can enhance dramatically, diminishing confidence, enjoyment, and total expertise.

Slope security, at its core, is about decreasing pointless stress so everybody can benefit from the mountain collectively.

A Dedicated Approach at Steamboat Resort

I stay and work in Steamboat and a vital a part of my function as Director of Education for PSIA-AASI is staying linked on the snow degree and within the locker room. I’ve the pleasure to assist out with teacher coaching and train visitors throughout busy occasions. This season, Steamboat Resort has taken a proactive and intentional step by making a dedicated Mountain Safety Team, a transfer pushed by each visitor suggestions and a clear-eyed understanding of recent mountain dynamics.

Vice President of Mountain Sports Nelson Wingard, a PSIA-AASI National Team alumnus, spoke passionately in regards to the growing must commit targeted sources to visitor security. He famous that visitor security constantly ranks as one of many largest classes of suggestions the resort receives.

Traditionally, ski patrol has carried the accountability for implementing security on the mountain. While that is still true, Wingard acknowledged a rising problem: patrol groups are sometimes stretched skinny, with their main responsibility of care centered on damage response and emergency administration.

As Wingard shared, patrol’s first accountability should at all times be caring for injured visitors. Having a devoted Mountain Safety Team to assist patrol—together with different departments reminiscent of ambassadors and snowsports college—creates a stronger, extra seen emphasis on visitor security. Since its launch, even with restricted terrain and heavy visitors, visitors are already responding positively to this effort to assist their well-being.

The Catalyst: Safety as Guest Experience

Vice President of Mountain Operations Corey Peterson recognized visitor expertise as a key driver behind the creation of the Mountain Safety Team. For Peterson, security and visitor expertise are inseparable.

“Increasing guest safety on the mountain leads directly to a better, more positive overall guest experience,” he emphasised.

Peterson champions a workforce strategy throughout all resort departments, encouraging staff to view security as everybody’s accountability. Under this philosophy, the Mountain Safety Team actively collaborates with snowsports college, patrol, ambassadors, carry operations, and different departments, reinforcing constant messaging and shared targets.

This cross-departmental alignment is intentional. When visitors hear the identical message—from instructors, patrollers, carry operators, and security workforce members—it begins to form tradition.

Education, Awareness, and Enforcement

Mountain Safety Team Manager Chia Basinger bolstered a theme echoed by all three leaders: this initiative is just not about merely being “speed police.”

Instead, it’s about schooling, consciousness, and group connection.

The workforce focuses on serving to visitors perceive how their actions could also be perceived by others—significantly how pace, proximity, and unpredictability can create nervousness for these round them, even when no collision happens.

Basinger believes deeply {that a} shared expertise is feasible on busy mountains when visitors acknowledge their function in creating that setting. This strategy reframes security conversations from confrontation to collaboration.

“Space and Speed”: Culture in Action

That philosophy involves life by way of the Mountain Safety Team’s guiding mantra: “Space and Speed.”

Aaron Sanford, one in all two full-time Mountain Safety Team supervisors, described it merely and powerfully. The aim is to facilitate a tradition of security by way of schooling, consciousness, and enforcement—when needed.

Sanford brings a novel perspective to the function. A former teacher and winter sports activities membership coach, he spent years teaching U13 and U15 athletes, deliberately educating them to be function fashions—snowboarding in management, respecting others, and understanding that efficiency comes with accountability.

Today, Sanford says most visitors he interacts with are overwhelmingly constructive about this system and appreciative of the give attention to protecting everybody secure.

Community and Club Culture

One of probably the most compelling points of Steamboat’s strategy is its engagement with the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club (SSWSC).

There is a long-standing notion at many resorts that athletes snowboarding in membership jackets are quick—and typically reckless. Whether honest or not, that notion issues.

What Steamboat is doing otherwise is addressing it head-on by way of communication and partnership. The Mountain Safety Team has been actively connecting with membership coaches and athletes, reinforcing the concept being extremely expert additionally means being extremely accountable.

Athletes, by advantage of their visibility and skill, have a chance to steer by instance—demonstrating management, courtesy, and consciousness in public areas.

This aligns intently with the work of U.S. Ski & Snowboard Coaches Education, the place coaches are more and more acknowledged not simply as efficiency builders, however as cultural leaders. Teaching etiquette, Responsibility Code software exterior of coaching venues, {and professional} conduct on open terrain is crucial.

When younger athletes perceive that excellence consists of consciousness and respect, they change into ambassadors for the game fairly than sources of battle.

Equipment Technology, Grooming, and Modern Risk

Other vital components contributing to slope security embody tools know-how and slope preparation by way of grooming.

Modern skis, snowboards, and boots permit many visitors to go sooner, with extra stability, and in additional terrain than ever earlier than—typically past what their expertise or decision-making can assist. This technological benefit can create a false sense of safety. As a consequence, understanding how a lot area is required, when to decelerate, and how you can keep away from getting too near others has by no means been extra vital.

Additionally, improved grooming can place visitors on slope pitches past their true management degree. The Responsibility Code’s first level reminds us to “always stay in control.” Not everybody understands that management means managing pace, course, and stability—permitting you to cease, flip, and adapt to terrain and circumstances whereas staying conscious of others.

Education round area and pace should evolve alongside tools and grooming.

Learning from Others

Although new this season, Steamboat didn’t construct its Mountain Safety Team in isolation. The resort seemed to established packages at Mammoth, Palisades Tahoe, Copper Mountain, and Vail when designing its strategy.

Currently, this system consists of seven paid staff and 28 volunteers, with plans to at the least double the workforce within the coming years—a sign of each early success and long-term dedication.

A Shared Responsibility

Slope security is just not the accountability of anybody group. It’s a shared dedication amongst instructors, patrollers, coaches, resort workers, membership athletes, and visitors.

At PSIA-AASI, we stay dedicated to growing instructors who lead by instance—who mannequin management, courtesy, and take care of others. We applaud Steamboat Resort for investing in an education-driven security tradition and for demonstrating how a community-based strategy can improve the visitor expertise for everybody.

Keeping our slopes secure for all to get pleasure from would require an industry-wide effort to really transfer the needle.

As we acknowledge National Ski Safety Awareness Month, let’s proceed working collectively to make sure our mountains stay locations the place Safety, Fun, and Learning actually coexist.