Directing Skiing

Hey guys Reed Ryan here. I'm the snow safety supervisor here at Copper and I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about our directed skiing and how we open slopes safely for you guys to enjoy. I tend to view directed skiing as sort of one of the final steps that we have in our compaction program which starts really as soon as the snow flies and we have enough snow to travel safely on. Here in Colorado we don't have a super deep snowpack especially early season so we get a lot of weak snow that forms at the bottom of the snowpack and once we have identified a slope that's both safe from a ground hazard and an avalanche perspective we bring you guys into the mix because really the skiers and riders are the number one tool that we have to disrupt the slab and the weak layer and create an industrial snowpack. So while you're out there skiing and enjoying Copper Mountain you may see some patrollers going to open a piece of terrain and it might be open only for a short period of time and that's because we're trying to get some compaction on it but we really want to make sure it gets the right amount of compaction in the right way. So what that looks like often you'll have a patroller at a gate an access point to a piece of terrain they're going to identify where to ski down to the next patroller and the next patroller may tell them to safely down to the bottom or even the final patroller. Look for us out there and you can always ask any ski patroller if you guys do any directed skiing where and what might be open we're happy to answer any questions you might have. We update that in real time on the Copper Mountain app so please respect those closures because we want to make sure everybody's safe and enjoys our mountain and get some great powder skiing and thanks everyone