Ski patrol has a serious job to do, ensuring everyone stays safe on the mountain through terrain control, avalanche mitigation, and general safety checks. In general, most ski patrollers are hard working, great people who want to keep everything moving smoothly on the mountain, but you do, on rare occasions, encounter “power tripping” ski patrollers who seems to blow everything out of proportion.
This specific situation filmed at Sugar Mountain Resort in North Carolina is a bit of a sticky one. The snowboarder filming attempts to avoid a group of people in the middle of the trail, but he accidentally hits the very end of a patroller’s ski, causing him to fall over. In response, the patroller takes the snowboarder’s day ticket.
There’s a lot to consider in this incident. Why was that group, including three ski patrol members, stopped in the middle of a trail without much room on either side? There are two snowboarders on the ground, but neither look injured, so why couldn’t the group have moved to the side of the run?
The snowboarder clearly slowed down quite a lot before encountering the group, but why did he pass so close? It’s not like there wasn’t plenty of space on each side of the group, so the fact that this snowboarder came that close is pretty inexcusable. Was this all enough to pull the guy’s pass? It probably depends on the resort’s specific rules.
The snowboarder did slow down after the crash, but he didn’t actually stop to check in on the patroller, something that’s absolutely required in the case of any collision. Plus, if he’s not experienced enough to snowboard a safe distance from the group and he couldn’t tell that he had hit someone, why is he riding with a camera? That seems like a pretty clear distraction that he shouldn’t have in his hand.
