MEET MIKE
Above: Ski California recognized Reitzell for his 9 years of service. Below: Reitzell with John Rice, his successor at Ski California and the former GM of Sierra-at-Tahoe.
My wife Kristen and I have been doing the balance already for a while. I mean, at Ski California, I didn’t just sit in my office all year. There were places to go, things to do. I think the challenge from the travel side will be that I have to go a little further for NSAA events. From the office standpoint, I’m focused on finding a really good open communication line with everyone. I want everyone to know that when I’m around, meaning whether I’m there (in Lakewood, Colo.) or I’m here sitting in my California office, that I’m available. If you want to walk down the hallway to where I am in the office, then we can also do that virtually. Olivia: Switching gears a bit, what’s the toughest challenge you tackled while at Ski California? Mike: I was going back through my email to get it nice and sorted for the next person, and I found this big set of emails that I had not moved into the “COVID” folder. And I was looking through those and, man, it made me recall how close we were in California to not being able to open, and some of the suggestions out there, some of the limitations that were going to be provided were going to be dif- ficult to meet. We had a Zoom meeting with the California Department of Public Health. They wouldn’t give us their proposed documents in advance of the meeting. This is the day before Thanksgiving. They were telling us what challenges they saw with us. So, we’re on the call,
just trying to type out what we thought our Covid guidance could look like. We end up sending it to them and kind of crossing our fingers that they would lis- ten to us. Then I got on a call a couple days after that with this giant group of peo- ple, like the restaurant association and all these other huge groups. I just raised my hand and I was able to give the pitch about skiing, if you will. The next day, the governor’s office calls me, and they say, “we’re about to begin a shelter in place in California, but you’re gonna get to be open during the shelter in place.” I’ll quote Tim Cohee. Afterwards, he said something along the lines of, “Up until that point, Mike had faced a lot of challenges, but this was fourth and goal with two seconds left in the Super Bowl, and we threw a touchdown.” I’ll always feel good about that one. Katie: Let’s talk about safety. Among other initiatives, you helped create the Mountain Safety Guide, which has been widely adopted by Ski California members and also other regions. How
do you see the conversation around safety evolving?
Mike: There’s a great base there already with NSAA. My perspective on it is just how can I help us continue to push the industry forward? I think that’s a much bigger challenge on a national level because it is easier in a specific region for you all to get behind very common things. There are fewer common things across the entire country. Even with the Mountain Safety Guide, when offering it to the other state associations and regions, I told them, “we know there are going to be some differences here.” Like, Michigan didn’t include our section on deep snow and avalanche safety because it just isn’t that relevant. So, I hope what I can bring is that I am very passionate about safety—being a lawyer, there’s a piece of that where you see a lot of things that you prefer not to see again. I also want to challenge myself with the idea that you have to make decisions about whether things should be a national platform versus a regional one. You can’t
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