Junior Internship: Snowbasin Ski Resort
Position: Guest Services Intern Under Kevin Stauffer
During the springs semester of 2014 I had the opportunity to work under Kevin Stauffer within the guest services department at Snowbasin Ski Resort in Huntsville Utah. This was a soul-searching job/ internship; since my degree is in commercial recreation I thought I might orient that towards resorts and resort management. I worked with them for six months doing a variety of different jobs throughout the resort. Jobs varied from managing personnel for parking to guiding guests around the mountain. A few times I was able to assist ski patrol with a few situations throughout the mountain, with a few of those situations being critical enough to call a medevac Helicopter. The most sever injury I helped with was a broken femur. I was the first staff member on site, first I called the injury into ski patrol then I was able to stabilize the situation from getting worse. The victim had fallen off a cliff onto a cat track then went over the side into roughly a foot of powder. I was able to keep him from sliding further down the hill, which would have made the situation worse. After a few minutes a patroller arrived and had me stay to assist. At the end of the two-hour ordeal of getting him off the mountain and into the medevac helicopter the patrol members that I assisted thanked me. They told me that had I not arrived on the scene and called them in it could have been an hour or more before someone found him. I was also able to work a full shift with the grooming team to see if that was something I might be interested in. It was very interesting and cool to have that opportunity but I found myself getting bored throughout the night. Throughout this internship I learned that resort management, especially ski resort management is not a job or passion that I wanted to pursue. I talked with John Loomis who is the GM at Snowbasin about being a manager and he advised me to pursue business over resort management. He said that the road takes years and years of experience before I could be considered for a GM position. Since this internship I have pivoted my career and school path towards entrepreneurship and business. This is more of a passion of mine; I love finding solutions to problems or finding a more efficient way, which leads into my impact statement.