Veteran ski patroller Lori Spence doesn’t only bring competence, experience, and grace to the job—the 60-year-old also brings the snow. The week she was named acting director of Aspen Highlands Ski Patrol in early February 2021, the resort received its biggest storm of the season, on top of record-dangerous avalanche conditions.
The ski area’s infamous Highland Bowl includes 2,500 vertical feet (762 meters) and 270 acres of complex avalanche terrain that commands a snow safety team, as well as a crew of volunteer boot packers to compact the layers that develop in the Rocky Mountain snowpack. And when Spence officially took over the job at the end of 2021, another massive storm delivered more than 230 centimeters of snow in a week.
“It was worth all the early mornings and working late. We worked as hard as we could to get the Bowl open every day and give people the best powder skiing we’d seen in a long time.”
Lori Spence
Women account for 23 percent of the 31,027 ski patrollers in America, up from 19 percent in 2007, according to a recent New York Times story. Still, Aspen Highlands only has six female patrollers, and throughout the industry, men still account for the vast majority of leadership roles.
Spence joined Aspen Highlands Ski Patrol in 1985, with only two other women on staff. They skinned to work on 210-centimeter telemark skis. In more than three decades of ski patrolling, she’s never worked with more than a handful of women each season. One ski season, she was the only female on patrol. She recalls pulling up to an injured guest with a rescue sled and the guest asking, “How are you going to take me down?”
“I think my look said, ‘you want a ride or not?’” laughs Spence. But she says she’s always been tasked with the same jobs as male patrollers and treated fairly and with respect.
Spence’s predecessor, Mac Smith, a legendary Aspen figure, spent 42 years as patrol director at Highlands. Spence knew she had big (ski) boots to fill, but felt confident after serving as assistant director for the last four years of her 37 years on patrol. In an industry predominantly comprised of young men, she brought grit and perseverance forged in ways her male colleagues could never understand.
Spence patrolled through two pregnancies and nursed both of her sons at the ski area’s mountaintop patrol headquarters. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, six weeks after her mother passed away from the disease, she continued patrolling and skiing. Each day of radiation, she hiked the 250 vertical meters up to the 3777-meter summit of Highland Peak.
As a dog lover, Spence is credited with starting Aspen’s avalanche rescue dog program in 2000 alongside a couple of veteran patrollers from the valley’s neighboring resorts. Last winter, she worked and trained with her fourth avalanche dog, a high-energy black lab named Meka. The majority of Highlands’ dogs are black labs, though the handler has the ultimate say as the dogs are owned and trained by the individual, rather than the organization. Spence, in particular looks for dogs with a certain spunk and energy—perhaps a canine that reflects Spence’s personal drive and determination.
But alongside her humble tenacity, Spence brings empathetic communication skills to her new role managing a team of more than 40 patrollers. At PHQ, as the ski patrol headquarters is called, she maintains an open-door policy—patrollers frequently pop in to discuss issues large and small. She takes pride in being observant, listening closely, and treating everyone with respect. She responds with compassion and years of wisdom, with the directness to get to the heart of the matter.
“If something is going on, I approach it head-on,” says Spence. “I go to that person directly. Let’s just talk about it and not stew about it. I think women are natural communicators, and I want to keep the lines of communication as open as possible.”
Spence never expected to be a ski patroller for this long (she started at Arizona Snowbowl and worked a few seasons in Tahoe at the recently renamed Palisades before coming to Aspen), but after all these years, she says she’s still excited to go to work every day. The new role brings more responsibility, administrative work, and time in the office, which might sound dull, but gives Lori a lot of interaction with her staff. She still makes time to free ski (putting the “ski” in “ski patrol,” as she says), hike the Bowl, and partake in day-to-day ski patrolling routes and tasks.
“The camaraderie among all the patrollers is unique,” says Spence. “It brings me a lot of joy to be with these passionate characters—they make me laugh so much. I really enjoy the teamwork. Positive attitudes make for a strong team.”
