Columnist Dean Juipe: Lee Canyon traffic down as skiing slips

Dean Juipe

Friday, Jan. 9, 1998 | 12:55 p.m.

DEAN JUIPEis a Las Vegas SUN sportswriter.

LEE CANYON -- This may not be South Tahoe or Vail but it's a mountainside and it's steep. The longest of the eight ski runs at the Las Vegas Ski & Snowboard Resort is 3,300 feet -- virtually a half-mile -- and there are places where it feels more like ice than the soft and fluffy stuff that appears so heavenly in the high-gloss advertisements that routinely tout the sport.

It's slick and dangerous up here, from the ski runs to the equally treacherous road that winds its way to an otherwise serene destination some 50 miles from the Las Vegas valley.

It's peaceful -- unless you're whizzing down the slope at what literally is breakneck speed. But that's skiing's appeal, the thrill of the act vs. the invigorating challenge of surviving its inherent dangers.

That's a challenge fewer Americans have been willing to take in recent years, as skiing's position as a recreational pastime has been on something of a hard and fast slide. The recent high-profile celebrity deaths of Michael Kennedy in Colorado and Sonny Bono in Nevada will only add to the wariness.

"One thing has already changed," said Lee Canyon resort director Russell Highfield on Thursday. "I've already seen quite a few helmets surface, especially on kids. To me that's a great sign, especially because kids usually have such a no-fear attitude toward things."

Of course Kennedy and Bono weren't kids. They were competent skiers who tackled extremely difficult runs, with Kennedy dying as the result of being too playful and Bono dying, it's presumed, from simply overextending himself or overestimating his ability.

Neither was wearing a helmet at the time he struck a tree.

"It's the experts you have to worry about," Highfield said. "Beginners and intermediate skiers are more cautious than the experts who like to live on the edge. I had an expert instructor who bit a tree a year or so ago."

No one has ever died skiing at Lee Canyon, although Highfield said there have been heart-related fatalities. As a midwinter visit confirmed, this is a place where the probability of heart palpitations is at a peak.

It's skull and crossbones slippery.

"One thing (the Kennedy and Bono deaths) are going to do is create a safety awareness," Highfield said. "They died in what truly were accidents, yet now there'll be a renewed emphasis on safety."

In the United States last ski season, 36 skiers died according to the National Ski Areas Association. Some if not all were preventable.

But that's skiing's Catch-22. The collective risk, including the lack of headgear, is part of its appeal.

However, fewer people are skiing these days and skiing itself has dropped from being a staple on Wide World of Sports two and three decades ago to where it's rarely acknowledged beyond the every-four-year interval of the Olympics.

"Participation is definitely down," Highfield said. "For whatever reason, I don't see as many familiar faces as usual."

From a business standpoint, the trade-off at Lee Canyon is a huge increase in a less-hazardous endeavor, snowboarding. That's a trend that may continue at skiing's expense.