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Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has announced it will no longer feature leaderboards of who has skied the most vertical feet on its slopes.
As of Sunday night, leaderboards with day, week, month and season vertical ski metrics were still accessible on the JH Insider app. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort President Mary Kate Buckley wrote in a Jan. 3 press release, that the mountain would be removing the leaderboard.
Buckley wrote the vertical feet leaderboard was “deemed to potentially promote fast skiing.”
That move was welcomed by Laurie Thal, a Wilson glassblower who first asked the resort to remove the feature last summer.
Thal was motivated by the death of a friend, Peter Wuerslin, a ski instructor who was struck and killed by a skier at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort last year.
“It’s horrible that it took the death of Peter to create these changes,” Thal said. “But if making some of these changes will save one other child or one other person, I am grateful to make any contribution to that.”
The resort has seen an increase in “enforcement actions” this year compared to the last, Buckley’s letter stated.
Though the resort does not share the number or identities of passholders whose passes are pulled “due to privacy concerns,” Buckley’s letter did have some data. Ski patrol issued 24 pass suspensions in one day this season for violating closure signs.
The ratio of reported collisions to skier visits aligns with the industry average, according to Buckley’s letter.
“But we are not striving for the average,” Buckley wrote. “Our goal is to have the most robust culture of safety in the industry.”
