Hoodoo opens for the season

"Hey Chipper. How're you doing?" a voice rang out as skiers and boarders streamed into the loading line of the Manzanita chairlift at Hoodoo Mountain Resort Saturday morning.

The big beaming grin of lift operations and guest services manager Mike "Chipper" Anderson, who was there greeting guests, was a happy and familiar sight to all the returning Hoodoo snowsport crowd enjoying their first runs of the season.

"Hi Matt. Great to see you again!" Chipper said.

Chipper has been greeting folks and friends at this lift and others at "the 'Doo'" for 14 years now and knows most of the regulars by name.

"It's great being open again," he said. "We're already starting to get back in the swing with a great crew this year."

For Hoodoo, this December 1 opening, while missing the Thanksgiving holiday, gives an early and positive kickoff to the ski season. Although the opening was limited to the lower mountain, there were no complaints to be heard as the new snow was great and lots of old muscles were pleasantly being reawakened on the hill.

"We are extremely happy with the turnout today. Attendance was great, especially considering the heavy competition we had with all the huge football games going on!" said office and human resources manager Brynne Beverly.

The next week or two will center on training and orientation for a new wave of seasonal employees, part of an annual ritual in the ski industry where normally more than 50 percent of staff are new hires at the beginning of every season. It is usually a race to get the all the new crews trained and up to speed just in the nick of time for the Christmas vacation crowds. The early opening helps take the pressure off and smooth the process.

The task may have gotten a little easier this year at Hoodoo as, according to Beverly, an unprecedented 75 percent of last year's staff returned this season and Hoodoo has a waiting list of strong applicants still hoping for jobs.

"Traditionally we have needed to hold two job fairs early each year to fill all of our open positions. This year we found we had most of the staffing wrapped up before the beginning of the second fair," she said.,

Food and beverage director Eric Turner added that he "...was astonished at the quality of applicants that I had to turn down this year. So many of them would have been high on our hiring list any other time. We just couldn't take them all."

While the ski industry has never been known for it's high wages, there has always been a special mystique, romance and camaraderie associated with working in the snowsports community that dates to the earliest days of skiing.

"At 19 I was a self-taught want-to-be skier who always dreamed of working at a ski area," Beverly said. "The opportunity finally happened, and I have never wanted to leave it since. I love the people I deal with every day, and I see that same dream in people around me all the time."

This year Hoodoo will have employees living and sharing that dream ranging from as young as teenagers all the way to staff in the eighties this year.

Ex-10th Mountain Division ski trooper instructor Bill Miller is joining the Hoodoo team this year hoping to help older/senior skiers with their skills.

Greeting returning and new staff members with their season pass paperwork was effervescent second-generation employee, Jennifer Engstrom, daughter of 25-year veteran snow groomer Roger Engstrom. "When Jennifer first came aboard as an employee, I found she hardly needed any training." Beverly said. "She could already answer just about any question there was about the mountain since she had pretty much grown up here."

Jennifer's dad Roger and 12-year Hoodoo veteran Ray Gates work through the dark of nights and glows of early dawns taming the Cascade snow gods with their huge snowcat grooming machines, providing the billiard table flat surfaces found most days by the early morning skiers.

Weather permitting, after closing down for the midweek, Hoodoo hopes to be in full operational swing this Friday, December 7. During the week of December 10-14, Hoodoo will be sponsoring a Toys for Tots drive. Donate a toy valued at $10 or better to Toys for Tots, and Hoodoo will thank you by giving you a half-price lift ticket.

On Saturday, December 15, visitors can tube for Tots and enjoy half-price tubing for a $3 or better toy donation.