So I’m snowcat skiing at Copper Mountain, Colo., and I’m in a cat filled, and I mean filled, with Copper employees. Just as we’re about to take off for some high, and I mean high, country, this guy skis down, kicks off his boards and clambers up the cat’s steel steps.
The guy is big, standing six-three and weighing in at 260 pounds as it turns out, so I expect a groan of protest to issue forth from the already shoulder-to-shoulder occupants. Instead, all the 20-something women, every one of them, commence shouting excitedly. “Risky!” they say, “Hey, Risky, come over here and sit with me.”
Even before he squeezes onto one of the snowcat’s narrow benches, displacing a few of the men on that side, Risky starts talking. He’s talking cliff jumps and gap jumps, halfpipe jumps and over-the-school-bus jumps, and other equally awesome (and equally risky) feats of derring-do. He’s quick and funny, but other than titillate fellow passengers with tales of high danger, I can’t figure out what his function is here. So I ask him.
And he says, “I’m the risk manager.”
“Say what?”
“Yeah, I’m Copper’s risk manager. I’m the guy who’s supposed to prevent the mountain from getting sued for allowing a dangerous situation to exist.”
“No offense, but it sounds like you’re doing just the opposite.”
The women laugh. The PR guys look nervous. Risky smiles. “Your typical risk manager is the guy who says no. No jumping off rocks, no opening backcountry gates, no new terrain. Some risk managers would like to put all skiers in Nerf material. Sumo suits.”
“And you?”
The PR assistant tries to change the subject to what a really nice day it is out there. The snowcat powers up and starts climbing the ridge.
“Nah,” says Risky. “I take a different view. I love adrenaline. When everything is maxed out, I’m at my best. So are a lot of people. That’s why they ski instead of going to Disney World.”
“Let’s talk later,” I say, cocking my head at the PR team biting their nails through their ski gloves. “I’ll catch you in your office this afternoon.”
But Risky—whose mother named him James Moss—isn’t in his office that afternoon. Instead, he’s helping out at the accident clinic.
Rennaissance Man on Skis
It seems that in addition to being a risk manager, he’s also an EMT. And a lawyer. And a licensed raft guide instructor. And a certified binding technician. And an Eagle Scout. He’s been a trial attorney, a specialist in outdoor recreation law, publisher of the Outdoor Recreation Newsletter and public speaker. His talks have included “Reducing Your Exposure to Lawsuits,” “Reducing Your Liability” and “Reducing Your Errors and Omissions Exposure.” Lest you think Moss’s only interest is reduction, he has also spoken about “Liability for Sexual Contact Between Guests and Guide.”
“Yeah, and I’ve written two books, and I’m writing a chapter for the ‘Boy Scout Handbook.’ I also like jumping off things, but these days the landings are getting harder and harder.”
Hard though they may be, I suspect it’s even harder for the Copper and Intrawest suits to know what to do with Jim “Risky” Moss. He is so far from the mold of the cautious, careful, conservative risk manager that it’s hard to believe they let him wear the name tag.
I asked Copper’s CFO, Marty Hammock, how that came about. Hammock was matter-of-fact: “We thought he was the best candidate for the position.”
When he picks up that my silence might signal skepticism, he continues. “I didn’t say the most highly qualified or the most experienced. But we liked his personality and where he wanted to go with the job.”
“Tell me more.”
“Well, he’s amiable and affable. A lot of the other candidates wanted to sit behind a desk and crunch numbers. Jim wanted to be out talking with people, to be investigating and resolving issues in the guests’ best interests as well as ours.”
“Given his lack of ski biz experience and his, ummm, unusual approach, didn’t you feel you were taking a risk?” I ask.
Hammock shakes his head. “Every time you hire somebody, it’s a risk. Jim was the best all-round candidate. And he hasn’t let us down in our assessment.”
“But then, he is cut from a different cloth than your stereotypical risk manager, yes?”
“He handles it differently, it’s true; he’s brought his own personality to the job,” says Hammock.
Again, I was silent. Again, he continues. “Jim is new to the industry and corporate life. There are times we trundle off after him and kind of get him back in the direction we think he ought to be going. But even then, it’s a fun experience.”
Inexperienced, risk-loving, 46, bearded and single, Moss was hired by a management that doesn’t seem entirely adverse to its own risk-taking. And since his first day of work in February, 2001, they’ve cheerfully kept him on after watching his, well, unusual approach to risk management. Take, for example, the bus jumping.
“Ah, the bus jumping,” says Moss. “Well, I started work on Tuesday. At 8 a.m. Wednesday, I’m in my first meeting, and they start talking about Copper’s aerial team jumping a bus, a school bus, in the parking lot. I groaned. But I didn’t say no. I hate to say no.”
Moss describes the logistics of pulling the team behind a snowmobile across a 60-yard parking lot, up a 12-foot ramp, where they “let go of the rope, jump 45 feet over a school bus, then ski into a quarterpipe. But that wasn’t the only problem of the day.”
He stops to take a call on his cell phone, then continues. “We’d laid out a line of cones to make room for the Skidoo to come through at 40 mph. But the spectators start crossing the line. Everybody is telling them to stay back—‘Stay back or I’m gonna throw you outta here!’
“But they ignore the warnings and keep crowding over the line. So I look at them and I yell, ‘Listen up!’ The crowd stops chatting. I yell, ‘I’m not gonna harass you. I’m not gonna throw you outta here.’
“They start smiling, and there’s this little scatter of applause. I yell again, ‘But I want you to stay behind the line. If you don’t . . . I’m gonna knock you out!’ ”
Moss gives me the unwavering gaze I imagine he gave the crowd that day over his full beard on a head the size of a basketball. No one in the crowd said a word. And not a single spectator crossed the line.
Jules Older is editor-in-chief of Ski Press and Ski Press USA online magazines.
