Ski Areas Grooming New Drug-Free Image -- Operators Try Employee Testing To Alter Image, Reduce Liability

On any given day at your favorite ski resort, there are some things you can just count on. A $2 chili dog will be $4.75. "Mixed conditions" means rain. Your feet will hurt.

And when lift operators speak of getting high on the mountain, they might mean just that.

Squint and picture the typical lifty or snow-cat driver (or cheat by going to an illustrated dictionary and looking up "aloof"). He's wearing faded Levi's, tie-dyed shirt, mirrored shades, prehistoric Sorels. To the tune of Bob Marley, he loads skiers on chairs like banana bunches on fruit hooks. One love, one heart, let's get together and . . . keep your tips up.

Not to suggest that your stereotypical ski-resort employee might appear to be a recreational drug user or anything. But, well . . . he does.

Or he did. Until several years ago. Ski areas - arguably the last occupational bastion for the Professional Goof-off - have taken the bum out of skiing. While no one was looking, they instituted professional employee standards you might expect at Nordstrom, but certainly not in the foothills of Mount Rainier.

Just ask a handful of employees at Crystal Mountain.

Rules are Crystal clear

It turns out that Crystal, like most other Northwest ski areas, now has a modern little fringe benefit called random drug testing. Last month's target group included a high percentage of people who drive the snow-grooming tractors.

A couple of employees refused to take the test. Others took it and tested positive. At Crystal, that means you enter a counseling and treatment program or you're fired.

Either way, you're off the mountain indefinitely. Legend has it that the combined impact of groomers-out-the-door and groomers-in-treatment left the mountain partially crippled for several days last month. Entire ski runs were closed because of "high winds."

Some of that is embellishment, says Tom Leonard, Crystal Mountain president. Actually, about 60 employees were tested, with "eight or 10" positives, Leonard said. Some were on the grooming crew, he acknowledged. Four no longer are with the company.

Skiers weren't really affected by the absences, although some employees were asked to pull double shifts, he said.

Get used to this. Ski resorts have gone corporate. Most already have firmly embraced drug tests for all employees, from little-old-lady snack-counter cashiers to the gnarliest lifty. If it causes temporary problems or sudden career shifts, so be it.

"From our perspective," Leonard says, "that's OK. We've made a corporate decision that (drug users) simply aren't the type of people we want as employees."

Angst in the ranks

Predictably, the crackdown has produced considerable angst in the ranks, especially at ski areas where testing is random. Many workers dismiss the notion that testing improves safety, suggesting reduced insurance rates - not skier well-being - is the prime motivation.

Asks one employee, noting that tests don't show alcohol use: "Would you rather have someone running your lift who smoked a joint three weeks ago, or a guy who's been up all night drinking scotch?"

They also ridicule the belief that employees earning about $5 an hour can be held to professional standards more befitting crane operators.

That argument doesn't go far with ski-area managers. To them, drug testing is necessary in an industry with the lurking potential for huge financial liability if a skier should fall on a shoddily groomed slope and break his or her head.

The Northwest ski industry as a whole faced that reality four years ago, and drug testing has increased in intensity since.

Snoqualmie Pass does random, "lottery" tests of its 1,200 employees. It also conducts "for-cause" tests and tests all employees involved in an accident.

This year, Crystal added drug screening of all new employees to its random program, which tests 50 to 80 of the resort's 750 employees each month. The resort also does "for-cause" testing.

White Pass also does random tests. No employees have tested positive, although one was caught attempting to dilute his sample - with snow.

Stevens Pass has a strictly random policy, with all 500 employees eligible for a testing "lottery" every week. Employees who test positive twice are fired, no questions asked, unless they agree to an organized program of counseling, re-treatment and compliance checks - at their own expense.

Stevens General Manager Ron Nova, who has been tested twice this year, said Stevens has had its share of dismissals.

"With over 500 employees, it would be silly to think we have a workplace absolutely free of drugs," he said.

Higher-quality applicants

But he and other area managers see the tests as a strong deterrent. The knowledge the tests are there has led to a "higher-quality" ski-area applicant, they say.

"The kids we're getting these days - the 18- to 23-year-olds, they're not the same," says Kathleen Goyette, marketing director at White Pass. "It doesn't seem like smoking pot is their No. 1 ambition in life anymore."

At Stevens, Nova says, drug testing is only one part of a larger "employee-image" program that includes detailed safety training, a dress code and grooming standards.

True, image is everything. But dress codes? Grooming standards? At ski areas? What's next, team-building sessions and daily goals?

Those are some of the same questions they asked at Mount Baker, the only local resort that does not test employees for drug use. Ironically, Baker, which has a king-sized "hang-loose" reputation thanks to its thriving snowboard culture, is on the honor system.

"I'm not even sure it's been an issue up here," says Marketing Director Gwyn Howat. Many Baker employees live in an on-mountain dormitory, where drug use would be obvious, she said. "And we deal with (drug problems) harshly."

Yet Baker is part of a shrinking minority. To skiers, the trend probably should sound comforting. Keeping heavy equipment operators off drugs makes an infinite amount of sense, and drug-testing is likely a necessary modern evil.

But somehow, its prevalence makes the latent ski bum in some of us cringe. Logical or not, there's something sad about squeezing a ski resort into a corporate mold.

It does make a nice shape. But the part that smooshes out around the edges can be awfully messy.