We Need Women in Operations

The maintenance shop at your ski area is likely a male dominated space—and likely always has been. Our industry’s complacency about that fact is starting to shift, though. The antiquated idea that manual labor and physically demanding roles are not suited for women is getting squashed on a daily basis. However, most ladies who are operating cats, running snow guns, managing park crews, and sitting at the head of the table for a weekly mountain ops meeting are rarely working alongside other women. More often than not, they are the token chick on the crew, or one of very few. 

“Very few females apply for positions in [these] departments,” observes Susan Cross, general manager of Snowmass, Colo., herself a woman who spent years in operations as the Buttermilk, Colo., mountain manager.