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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Landers: 50 years of ski swap

The fastest Inland Northwest skiers and snowboarders who’ve collected the most medals are no match in hero status to the founders and perpetuators of the Mt. Spokane Ski Patrol’s annual Ski Swap.

Without the Swap, many families could not afford regular upgrades in equipment – if they could afford to be in the sports at all.

Without the proceeds from the Swap, some skiers might not be alive.

The Swap is celebrating 50 years of killer deals this weekend at the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center to finance the patrol’s life-saving equipment.

“For example, we’ve been able to buy four defibrillators which we station around the mountain,” said John Nelson, the patrol’s director-elect.

“When a skier had a heart attack last year, a couple of our patrollers likely saved his life. We got that call to the top of the mountain and one patroller skied like a bat out of hell and had the defibrillator on him within 120 seconds.

“A doctor says a skier has a better chance of surviving a heart attack on the mountain than in his living room.”

Seven thousand bargain hunters are expected to swarm the event Saturday and Sunday to explore new and used winter goods. Roughly half the gear is related to alpine skiing while snowboarding, nordic and telemarking equipment continues to increase each year, said Kevin Voss, patrol director.

“Children’s gear and clothing is typically the fastest to go,” he said.

Retailers bring out last year’s leftover new gear at deep discounts while skiers and boarders sell their used gear.

“The biggest praise we get is from families who have kids that can outgrow their gear before a season is over,” Nelson said. “I know this personally. My kid went through three pairs of snowboard boots in three years. Now he wears a size 15.

“If we had to go retail, it would really hurt. But by selling the old ones and buying a larger pair of used ones we got through the whole boots thing for about $40 bucks instead of $300 a pop.”

Members of the all-volunteer patrol laude Dan Edwards as a modern hero of the swap for modernizing the sales operation during his recent 10 years as Swap director.

“I’m basically a lazy person, so the first thing I thought was, ‘There’s got to be a better way,’” said Edwards.

He’d been a patrol member for five years and served in four Swaps before he stepped up to lead the largest winter-gear sales event in the region. “People were working their butts off.”

Mt. Spokane patrollers are told up-front that donating 16 hours to the Swap is mandatory. “But we needed to be more efficient,” Edwards said.

He tapped the skills he’s developed with his technology company as well as his background in logistics as a former manager for UPS.

Under Edwards, the Swap dumped the laborious process – for both volunteers and ski retailers – of hand-writing the item, size, price and other information on five-page carbon ticket.

Ticketing and cashiering is now done with a wireless computer system.

Among other things, he bought a program for using bar codes and scanners. “The retailers loved us for that, and so do the customers,” he said.

The system is standardized so a ski shop can move goods from one of the area’s ski swaps to another without re-ticketing the item.

“That was a big improvement for us and for the shops,” he said. “We eliminated about 1,500 hours of labor from the process, a 25 percent improvement.”

The system allowed the Swap to process more equipment, expanding the inventory for each event from about 10,000 items when Edwards took over to more than 22,000 items on 60,000 square feet of display space.

“That’s a big win for the community,” Edwards said. “We’re able to get a lot more merchandise on the shelves for people to choose from. Not many years ago you had to get there early to even have a chance at the good stuff. That’s not the case anymore. There’s so much equipment, you can find good stuff at competitive prices through the weekend.”

This year’s Swap also is a huge leap from the first Swap 50 years ago when all the sales items were hauled in a single pickup to a back room in the old Armory on Second Avenue.

“We cleared $200, mostly because we begged the ski shops to come in and put up a table,” said Edna Fruit, who has worked at every Swap with her husband, Jack.

“The first person to register something to sell was a downtown resident. “He brought in a rubber jacket.”

Four patrollers put the Swap together in three weeks, she said. That compares with the year-round effort and help from all 135 patrollers and dozens of retailer employees to put on the modern Swap.

Founded in 1938, the volunteer ski patrol originally got a tiny percentage of lift ticket sales, “but it wasn’t enough to buy the toboggans and other gear we needed,” said Lee Bratcher, another patroller who’s served all 50 Swaps.

“So we sold trinkets, like thermometers and a little patron saint of skiers medal you could attach to your coat zipper. We’d stand in drug stores in on corners selling the things.”

“It was like begging,” Fruit said.

But the Swap proved to be the patrol’s financial salvation. The location had to be moved several times to accommodate the rapid growth.

“After every Swap we’d say, ‘Let’s get a head of this,’ but we were always behind,” Fruit said.

As the Swap has become more efficient, it’s also become more innovative.

Last year, a learn-to-ski ramp staffed by certified instructors was introduced. This year a movie along with beer tasting is being offered to pay $50 for the Friday VIP night and early shopping opportunity.

The patrol’s new website, skipatrolskiswap.com, was created by patroller Kristin Whitaker, streamlining online registration and boosting marketing exposure, Edwards said.

“We’ve done well with the Swap, enough to build and maintain a top patrol and one of the best publically-owned on-mountain first-aid facilities in the country,” Nelson said. “But the big winner from the Swap is the community. It’s become part of our culture.”