New Bill Would Criminalize Skiing Out Of Bounds In Vermont

Its a Class A Misdemeanor to duck a rope in Utah. Not a huge deal, don't do it because you put the lives of others at risk.
 
>outlaw skiing off trail and impose a $500 fine for deliberately skiing out of bounds at a Vermont resort.

>impose a $500 fine for deliberately skiing out of bounds>deliberately skiing

>deliberately

you could always claim that you were unaware. that sucks tho, imo its the responsibility of the individual skiing to choose to risk their lives. if they want to do it, why not?
 
Unless you went into a roped off area without crossing a line, you couldn't argue that you didn't do it deliberately. If you had to duck a rope, then you did it deliberately.
 
Can't they just make this for southern Vermont? Places like killington where 15 people get lost before January? Northern Vermont does nothing to stop people from skiing out of bounds and seem to have the problem under control. Why does it have to be a statewide descion?
 
You can't ban people from state owned land, thats unconstitutional. I suppose they could move the boundary ropes back ten feet like JHMR did a while ago, then they could charge you with trespassing.
 
Vermont =/= Utah. Terrain on the east coast is way more mellow. If you're getting lost in Vermont then you're probably a gaper. That bill is dildos.
 
Just do what every sensible person has been doing since the beginning of skiing out of bounds... duck the rope when there are no patrol around! It's an incredible concept and it works really well.
 
While a agree that this bill is dildos, the motivation behind the bill in not unfounded. With "Backcoutnry" skiing being all the rage and the general public having the notion that there are no dangers involved with it, people are going out of bounds despite their lack of knowledge and skill. For example Killington has had huge issues with people skiing out of bounds and getting themselves into trouble this year. Keep in mind that these people are people who truly have no business being there. For example an elderly man and his nephew ducked a rope and blindly headed away from the ski area. They got stuck and as the sun was going down they called 911 and had to be rescued or they would have been forced to spend the night. Although Vermont does not equal Utah there are idiots everywhere, regardless of the terrain. Ideally, this bill would be to try to deter everybody and their grandmother from ducking the ski area boundary and getting in over their head. Hopefully it would not be used to give experienced skiers a hard time. This bill would be used to punish those who have no business going out of bounds but still do. It would not be used to prevent people from accessing sidecounty terrain. Its dildos but used correctly could help save the Vermont taxpayers some money and help to avoid a possible tragedy by trying to deter a buch of retarded monkeys from skiing out of bounds.

Also if, god forbid, someone was to go out of bounds, get stuck and die. The family could probably sue the shit out of the resort. With a law in place like this it would protect the ski area to some degree.
 
As written now, the bill would add language to the existing statute on unlawful trespass and make it illegal to use the “facilities of a ski area to access terrain outside the ski area’s open and designated ski trails (if) as a result, (the skier) must be rescued by a rescue organization.”

Its not banning you from state land, its making it illegal to use the ski area to access state land.

That aside, this is fucking stupid. Let people ski outside the boundary. They fuck up and get lost, make em pay for the rescue effort. Im sick of this country babysitting us

 
I think Killington should actually put some fucking ropes down by Coopers, this is where the majority of the shit happens.

Either way this isn't going to stop people
 
I think it's saying that it's illegal to leave if you get lost, not to just leave. It says that it's if someone requires rescue services. Essentially, they make them pay for the service.
 
A few people made good points up there that I agree with.

The main issue is that the 'average' skier in VT is not capable of traveling safely outside most resort boundaries (with exceptions being things like the Slide Brooke Basin at Sugarbush). In a normal winter, the snowpack on the upper half of our mountains (minimum) is just too deep to easily move across without skins and free pivot binders. Even snowshoeing is difficult in many locations. I measured the snow depth to be 100-160 cm at Big Jay yesterday (brought my probe along for that purpose). It seems like this bill is aimed to keep people who would not navigate the backcountry safely out of it. The only way to gain any measurable elevation with alpine binders and no skins is to take a chairlift, thus that is the only reasonable way the average person would access the terrain in question. Nobody will bootpack up Teardrop when the Stowe lifts are right on the other side. The discrepancy in the severity of the situation between those with the right gear and those without it is so big, though.

The wording also looks like the fine is given only if the skier needs rescuing. I doubt Resort X ski patrol would hassle a couple of my friends and I if they saw us putting skins on at the top to traverse a ridge. If they did though, I would go over our situation and how we prepared.

We do a decent amount of things before we set out to explore something new:

-Look at a topo map for distances and elevations

-Take a peek at google earth

-Make sure we know the penultimate 'oh shit we are lost' destination and how far it is (example: Waterbury Reservoir is ~4 mi ESE from Woodward)

-Carry food/water/layers/GPS/phones

-Have a basic repair kit for our binders and skins

And ultimately, let's face it, there's not much in VT that's the 'middle of nowhere.'
 
A couple years back they tried to bring in a bill that made backcountry travel illegal in BC. It went nowhere, nor should it have.

From what I read though, the law states you can't go out of bounds from a ski area... so only slackcountry will be affected, not backcountry? Either way, I'm curious how this turns out. In BC is was laughable, but we have a very strong history of ski touring and mountaineering so there wasn't a chance in hell it would go through. Vermont though... I'm not so confident about that one.
 
It doesn't matter too much if this passes. The only way you could get caught is literally skiing out of bounds in front of a patroller. If your caught skiing out of bounds say you hiked.
 
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