The Man Behind the Jackson Hole Mountain Magic

You know, my first day that I ever skied here, we drove up from Alta, got here at like five in the morning, got in tram line. We get on the first public box and it was like an 18-inch day, just blower. It just kept going and going and from that day, it's like this is where I want to work. My name is John Furnell. I oversee the lift operations department here at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. I started in 91 and I'm still here. I oversee 120 to 140 lifties and 15 to 20 wranglers. The wranglers, again, they're in charge of the speed control. They do a lot of the maze work, open up gates, set up some mazes, and just keep the base flowing in the morning. Oh, that was good. On the sublet, we have three crew members on a typical chair such as this, the fixed grip, so they're always in rotation. These are the real workhorses of the mountain right here. You've got a fleet of 32 on an air like this, invaluable. When we show up, we have 20 to 25 minutes to get this chair ready. There's no sitting around, no drinking coffee. It's really, really good teamwork. The teamwork part of it, it's just not with my team, it's with the whole mountain operations side of things, from the ski patrol to the groomers to the lift mechanics. They don't go up the hill unless we're here, so our lifties, we are sort of a standby department. Lift to stop, we're doing safety checks. You've got to check all your slows, all your stops, all your emergency brakes, stopping distance, test every stop button, every slow button. Here, up in the terminal, in the shack, and at the top. Mechanical in there, he'll sign off and get everything ready to go, and once that's done, we can open the lift. We got snow early this year and we're still getting it, so it's been fantastic. I mean, you can look around and see these snow drifts and snow banks and everything is buried. We have, on a typical year, anywhere from 70 to 80 percent return rate. A lot of the industry is sort of struggling with retaining workers or getting enough lifties to open a lot of their chairs, but we have such a reputation in our department, I feel, that we're always full. The mountain just opened, all the groomers are off the hill. It's all about teamwork and how fast you can get this lift open safely, so we can all go ski, ride. You know, the favorite part is, I mean, obviously the skiing is great and I still love that, but it's the kids that work for me, keep me feeling young. How's your day going? Pretty nice, huh? We do take care of these lifts, we maintain them, we check them every day. Every tower I try to look at, just make sure all the shivs are turning correctly. There's a lot of behind the scenes, a lot of the maintenance goes on. We've got a really good safety record here and that's something I'm really proud of. You know, at the end of the day, ski and be happy. Pretty simple. It's all about the people I work with. They're the ones that allow me to do what I can do. Very dedicated, very hard working. They make the department. Couldn't do it without them.