Warn skiers and let them make their own decision is the primary component of today’s access gate policies at ski areas.
For San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters, that perspective didn’t come easily. The sheriff spent several years of his early career in the late 1980s battling skiers who boldly violated Telluride ski area’s strict boundary closures by skiing the vertiginous Bear Creek, which has claimed almost a dozen skier lives in the last two decades.
The early deaths – including three in 1987 and two in a single Valentine’s Day incident in 1989 – led Masters to initially oppose access gates. But after several years of what describes as “playing a stupid cat and mouse game” with brazen Bear Creek skiers, he decided individuals should be well warned of the hazards and left to their own decisions.
But now Masters is thinking about changing his mind again.
In 2009, the Forest Service and the Telluride ski company began opening more gates accessing Bear Creek and marketing the steep-and-deep experience. The area’s managers also told ski patrollers who participated in rescues outside the area boundary they would not be paid for participating in any rescues. Ski area spokesman Matt Skinner said patrollers must punch out before any out-of-bounds rescue because “they are under the supervision and control of the San Miguel County Sheriff while performing those SAR operations.”
Masters, who estimates as many as 200 skiers a day were accessing Bear Creek via the resort’s access gates before some were closed this season due to trespass complaints from a new landowner in the middle of Bear Creek drainage, doesn’t like the ski area’s position.
“Telski now requires the sheriff to sign an agreement with them requiring me to accept full responsibility for their customers that venture off of the ski area or they will not allow their ski patrol to assist in the rescuing of their customers,” Masters said.
In the last week, Masters’ search-and-rescue team has responded to two calls from groups of skiers who left the area through an access gate, only to find themselves lost atop gigantic cliffs. “I am considering closing the access gate… until the Forest Service or some other responsible party can put up direction signs so people won’t get lost,” he said last Wednesday night, when his team began searching in the dark for a trio of young skiers trapped in a cliffed-out zone of Bear Creek.
As of this week, Masters’ hadn’t made a final decision, and the gate remained open.
“I know it’s the skier’s responsibility to understand where they are going but here is the reality: they are idiots, and the gate encourages them to go into Bear Creek and get lost and the Sheriff’s Office has to perform the rescue,” Masters said. “In the future I would like to see legislation that would require ski areas to accept the responsibility of rescuing their customers who venture off the ski area through gates or other areas that are not closed.”
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com
