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BigPurpleSkiSuitHonestly, why do they even have a slow sign in merging areas? If I go fast enough I dont have to worry about anyone behind me coming up and I can ski well enough to avoid those in front of me.
dan4060I get that, but remember that something like 95% of skiers ski fewer than 5 days a year. The vast majority of people on the hill suck, so they want people to be careful in crowded areas.
Squaw has an area called the mountain run which is a real shitshow. It is a cattrack that winds from mid-mountain all the way to the bottom. When I lived in Tahoe I instructed part-time at Squaw so that I could get a pass. I only taught on holidays and maybe 1-2 days a weekend, I think I only taught 25 days the whole year most years. Because my income did not depend on it I did not really want to work, I just showed up to lineups and hoped to ski. Because mountain run is narrow and has lots of beginners and intermediates it is dangerous, and there are lots of slow signs. In the afternoons patrol would set up people at the slow signs to get people to slow down. Us instructors sometimes did that, I could usually get out of teaching the morning if I agreed to go to the slow signs for a couple of hours in the afternoon. I hated telling people who were clearly in control to slow down, but that was just what we had to do. I never pulled anyone's pass, I don't think I had the authority to do that anyway, but we had to tell people to slow down EVEN if they were perfectly in control. Fast skiers can frighted beginners, even if the fast skier is in control, and Squaw just wanted to slow everything down on that run.
So it is not necessarily whether or not you are in control, it is whether you will frighten gapers. I know that sucks, but that is just the way it is. But honestly, are you really on the hill to ski where there are merger signs? I would think most here spend very little time in those areas, so is it really that big of a deal to slow down? I think there are other more important battles.