Retirement Park City Style
Mountain Hosts
Photography: Jill Orschel
“We moved to Park City the same year we retired and really didn’t know what to do with ourselves for those first few months,” says Santa Cruz, California native Kerry Biddle, who in her previous life was a social worker. “One day, I got up to leave the room, and my husband said, ‘Where are you going?’ Well, I was just going to the bathroom, and it was at that moment that I knew we had to get out and do something.”
That “something” the Biddles decided to do was become mountain hosts — on-mountain quasi public relations/customer service personnel charged with running mountain tours, handing out tissues, reuniting lost kids with their parents, making restaurant recommendations and what The Canyons Director of Guest Services Kandy Grantz calls, “looking for the look.” “People don’t always ask for help when they need it,” Grantz says. “So the biggest part of our job is identifying and helping people who appear as if they could use a little help.”
When this job was created at the Park City resorts back in the early 1990s, mountain host staffs were made up of stereotypical ski resort employees: recent college grads looking to spend a winter skiing before going out into the “real” world. Now, while 20-somethings are still part of all three resort’s mountain host departments, the other half of the ranks is made up of outdoor-loving 50-, 60- and even 70-year-olds enjoying the fruits of successful careers, but who still want to feel like they are making a contribution. “Many of us have been successful over time and want to keep engaged,” says Bob Devaney, a 60-year-old executive coach and mountain host at The Canyons since 2003. “I think older professionals and recent retirees make good mountain hosts because they understand the concept of customer service and are comfortable dealing with guests. Some have even run companies larger than the ski resorts themselves. I think we are a real asset to the resorts, and they realize the value of the experience we bring to the table.”
Though mountain hosts at all three Park City resorts perform similar whatever-the-guest-needs duties, each individual program is structured in a slightly different way. At Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR), home to the largest mountain host program, volunteers fill all but seven of the 98 mountain host positions. Park City’s namesake resort first began utilizing volunteers during the 1999/2000 winter season, modeling its program after its successful volunteer mountain patrol staff. “Park City has this amazing base of almost retired and fully retired, very smart, very capable people who are ideal ambassadors of both the mountain and the town itself,” says PCMR Mountain Host Manager Stephen Long, a former air traffic controller who joined the resort’s host staff as a volunteer two years ago.
PCMR mountain host volunteers are required to work one day a week throughout the winter season; each day is staffed with a 12- to 15- member team who work together all season long. This continuity and virtual instant network of friends keeps veterans coming back year after year. “What’s most surprising about becoming a host is this great team of people I get to work with every week,” says Kerry Biddle, currently in her eighth year of hosting at PCMR. “We not only work together during the winter, but hang out together all year long.”
On the flipside, every one of the 30-member mountain host staff at Deer Valley Resort is a paid employee. But not many seem to be doing it for the money. “I’m really proud of the product, which makes it really easy to be helpful and to work with the people who come to ski here,” says Howard Schatz, age 63 and a mountain host at Deer Valley for the last four seasons. “You can tell I’ve been drinking the ‘Deer Valley Kool-Aid,’” he says with a chuckle. Around eight to nine hosts rove the mountain at Deer Valley on a light day; during the week between Christmas and New Year’s or during President’s Day week, Mountain Host Manager Chris Sherwin schedules up to 22. “We view places like Disney and the cruise lines as our competition rather than other ski areas. And our hosts are a big part of delivering an experience akin to what you’d expect at one of those places,” Sherwin explains. Deer Valley seems to indeed be delivering on that mindset: earlier this year, the readers of SKI magazine ranked Park City’s swankiest resort as the #1 ski resort in North America for the fourth time.
And at The Canyons, the 75-strong mountain host staff is made up of a combination of volunteers and paid employees; a combination that Grantz says helps provide guests with a nice balance of professionalism, top notch guest service and in-depth resort knowledge. “The training that each of our mountain hosts goes through includes the ‘What Do You Say?’ booklet, which provides our hosts with a list of potential questions and polite answers. We think it’s just another way of preparing them for their job, which sometimes involves answering difficult questions,” Grantz says.
One attribute all of Park City’s mountain hosts share is a willingness to give guests the inside scoop: showing off their favorite run to ski on a powder day, revealing how to get reservations at their favorite Main Street restaurant, or where to get a killer hot buttered rum after the lifts shut down for the day. In a nutshell, they give guests the keys to becoming an insider sooner rather than later. “Living in Park City, it’s easy to get complacent and take the place for granted,” says The Canyons Mountain Host Bob Devaney. “Helping out and being with people who are seeing Park City for the first time is rejuvenating and makes me appreciate this place in the same way I did when I first experienced it.”
Freelance writer Melissa Fields is busy working hard and living honestly now in hopes that her golden years are full of powder snow, bluebird skies and hot buttered rum by a crackling fire at the end of the day.
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