It’s every ski area manager’s nightmare: A winch cat is working on the upper mountain. A group of skiers are touring uphill in the dark. One of them is ahead of the group and doesn’t see the cable or the cat. Suddenly, there’s an accident and the sheriff is on the way.

As the backcountry segment of the sport grows, resorts are facing a number of new challenges. Most resorts have learned to handle the most visible manifestation of this trend, the sidecountry skier. But another aspect of the backcountry movement is uphill travel, including nighttime travel. And this is a more difficult issue to tackle.

Fueled by a quest for adventure and new easy-to-use alpine touring bindings, consumers are able to go places and do things they’ve never done before, creating a complex array of issues and possibilities for resorts. No longer is after-dark security as simple as dealing with intoxicated guests sliding on lunch trays at night, or a few mountain-savvy hardcores poaching moonlit powder or pre-season turns. Today, the general public can appear anywhere, at any time. And resorts have to prepare for that.

This trend to 24-hour traffic is likely to continue, and increase. Consumers are embracing the backcountry experience in general, from skiing outside the ropes to pre-season hiking, and the category is exploding. Last season, backcountry gear sales, including alpine touring bindings, climbing skins and other specialized products for going up, doubled from the previous season.

At many resorts, people are already going up, and they’re causing problems now. Highly publicized incidents include Whitefish’s moves to limit uphill skiing in the spring of 2010, and the arrest of 72-year-old Roland Fleck for uphill skiing at Jackson Hole in March of 2011. Both incidents ignited the blogosphere, with commentary on Teton Gravity Research’s forums and JacksonAt.com particularly energetic in regard to the Fleck arrest.

Whitefish, for its part, took the debate as an opportunity to refine and publicize its uphill policy, and ended up with a coherent set of guidelines—including an uphill skier’s code, which can be accessed via the resort’s website, skiwhitefish.com.

“It’s always been a tradition here,” says Whitefish spokesman Riley Polumbus. “People were hiking up the mountain before there was a resort.”

Key to the success of Whitefish’s policies is that “we try to listen to people,” Polumbus says. This has led to what is perhaps the most innovative approach to uphill skiing in the industry, complete with a code of conduct for uphill skiers developed by the resort’s patrollers.

Despite this, challenges remain. “The hard part is educating people,” says Polumbus. “It can be tricky to get the word out.”


A WIDESPREAD TREND
Other areas face similar challenges. “We struggle with how to handle uphill traffic,” says Dave Ulbrich, lift operations and trails manager for Sugarbush, Vt. “We have loads of people skiing up in the morning, before we open, and after we close the Glen Ellen side. And we have had issues with people skiing at night. It’s been a huge problem for us.”

“It’s gotten crazy here,” adds Vail local and professional photographer Jeff Cricco of pre-season uphill traffic on Vail Mountain. “You should see how many people are skiing up the mountain before it’s open. It’s so dangerous. There’s snowmaking on some runs, and there are cats and snowmobiles on other runs.”

Injuries (and associated rescues), winch cats, snowmobile traffic, liability, avalanche control and closures; the concerns are many. But managing uphill traffic does hold some opportunities, even if it seems that making money from people who will hike for their turns is akin to coaxing soup from a stone.


PLANNING FOR UP-STERS
First, resorts need to come up with a plan to manage uphill traffic. It might be tempting to simply ban uphill travel, but there’s a political price in alienating some of your most loyal locals (the consumer revolution that was worth $13 million to equipment manufacturers last year is being spearheaded by enthusiastic skiers), and ultimately it’s difficult, if not futile, to enforce a ban. “Every resort has examples of people accessing the trails when they are closed, and examples of tragedies from that,” says Killington’s director of sales and marketing, Rob Megnin. But, he adds, “you can’t catch people. They disappear into the woods.”

Instead of banning uphill travel, says Wildcat general manager Josh Boyd, you need to approach uphill traffic just like downhill traffic. For Boyd, “it’s an education thing.” Wildcat has a “designated route that they (uphill skiers) are supposed to use, so that the employees know there’s possibly someone on the trail.” Any trail not designated for uphill use is closed, similar to a downhill closure. “If we see them not on the designated route, we then have leverage to tell them to use that different route,” says Boyd.

For Boyd and the Wildcat mountain ops team, uphill-designated routes minimize risk. And they have the potential to help the bottom line. Wildcat, for example, charges a $10 fee for uphill skiers. The fee helps offset some of the costs of grooming and snowmaking. “We try to be fair to the people who want to go uphill, but the snow costs money,” says Boyd.

The fee also gives the resort a bit of control over uphill traffic. When a guest buys a ticket, they’re buying into Wildcat’s program. The ticket acts as a liability release, and the customer can be educated about the appropriate uphill route to take.

It’s worth noting that Wildcat’s uphill tickets are only valid during normal operating hours, and that the resort does see some night and early morning activity from hikers. “We don’t encourage it,” says Boyd of off-hours uphill traffic. “How we handle it depends upon who is doing it and how they’re approaching the mountain.”

Boyd plans to keep a close eye on the situation this winter. “Our tickets don’t reflect the numbers,” says Boyd of previous uphill ticket sales versus the number of uphill skiers on the mountain. “We’re going to be a bit more vigilant this year.” Furthermore, if uphill use starts to spike, Wildcat will revisit its uphill policies, including ticket sales. “If we start to get constant uphill traffic, and it impacts downhill skier traffic, that becomes an issue,” says Boyd. “Our trails are narrow, and uphill skiers can be hard to see.”

Visibility is certainly an issue, not only for downhill skiers, but also for resort staff and equipment operators. “Skiers don’t always appreciate that they can’t be seen easily,” says Mad River Glen’s Eric Friedman.


IT’S A CULTURAL THING
Friedman concedes that Mad River takes a rather different approach than most to uphill traffic. “We don’t do a lot of grooming, so it is less of an issue in regard to those kinds of conflicts, and we think it (uphill travel) is part of the outdoor experience,” he says. In fact, says Friedman, the tradition of earning your turns is “something Mad River wants to protect.”

In this regard, Mad River Glen doesn’t restrict uphill traffic at all. But Friedman concedes that the traffic at the resort has been increasing. “A lot of it is pre-season or late season, after we close,” he says. Friedman laughs, “people bitch at us when we open because they have to compete with the chairlift riders.”

At the other end of the resort spectrum, Aspen, too, appreciates the fact that uphill traffic is part of the mountain experience, and that it’s here to stay. Still, each of Aspen’s four resorts handles the issue differently, says director of public relations Jeff Hanle. Each has its own mix of terrain, skiers, hikers, and snowshoers.

“On Buttermilk you can go uphill all day, on designated routes,” says Hanle. “But on Aspen Mountain we have a cutoff time. You have to be past Chair 3 by 9 a.m. That’s because the egress of that mountain is very limited, and we don’t want uphill skiers mixing with downhill skiers.”


EDUCATION FOR ALL
For Hanle, the key is education. “We have signage at the base of the mountain, we reach out to the uphill community through the newspapers and radio via public service announcements, and we try to keep people apprised of special circumstances, like when we commence snowmaking,” he says.

Furthermore, the company has put in place operating procedures for employees to help mitigate potential problems. “It’s a combination of uphill education for the general public and employee safety practices,” says Hanle. He adds that while their mountains are probably experiencing more uphill traffic at night, particularly on full moons, the Ski Co. has no plans to ban after-hours access.

Still, plans change. Alta, which traditionally hasn’t banned uphill access when the mountain is closed, instituted a temporary closure this fall during the second week in November, after avalanche conditions spiked. The closure came after well-known pro skier Jamie Pierre died in an avalanche at nearby Snowbird after accessing that resort’s terrain from Alta, and four other skier/snowboard related avalanches occurred in the immediate vicinity.

That cascade of events illustrates the need for flexibility when addressing uphill traffic. To that end, says Jackson Hole’s Zahan Billimora, “We’re always evaluating our policies.”

Jackson currently bans all uphill traffic due to the severity of the area’s avalanche situation. “It’s a risk management thing,” he says. “We have three- to four-thousand feet of consistently steep fall lines across the mountain, and the avalanche hazard for us is a constant issue. We’re looking to see if changes can happen, and we’re talking to all involved. But our priority is to mitigate risk.”

Even so, Jackson has figured out a way to make money from skiers who want to go up. The resort has a long tradition of hosting ski mountaineering or “rando” races and was the site of the 2011 U.S. Ski Mountaineering National Champion­ships last January. Randonée events, while still small, are increasing in popularity, and offer a way for resorts to not only create excitement around uphill skiing, but also harness the uphill movement to positively impact the bottom line.

Ultimately, the way an individual resort handles the growing numbers of uphill skiers will depend upon site-specific issues. And while managing uphill activity can be a drain on resources, there are business opportunities. Uphill ticket sales, uphill races and expanding recreation opportunities all can increase revenues as well as customer loyalty.