beneficial to get new operators trained
up. This is another option and options
are a good thing,” he said. “The market
will ultimately determine if it’s a valu-able
program to the industry or not.”
Despite Kässbohrer’s involvement,
the PRO ACADEMY curriculum has
been designed to work with virtually
any brand, including both PistenBully
and Prinoth products.
“It’s not meant to be Kässbohrer-specific,
necessarily,” said Perkins. “It’s
meant to be something where we can
come in and share our expertise … no
matter what your choice of manufac-turer
is. We’ll give you the same out-come
regardless.”
Perkins says who enrols in PRO
ACADEMY will be determined largely
by the ski operations that participate in
the program since it will be them who
will be paying for the service. His hope
is the program will help make it easier
for those operations to fill vacancies
in their snow grooming ranks and ad-dress
the issue of steady turnover that
has been a huge challenge for many in
the industry.
“I think the PRO ACADEMY is a
way to bring people in and get them up
to speed fairly quickly,” he said.
The idea for the PRO ACADEMY
came from Kässbohrer CEO, Jens
Rottmair. He noticed an Italian-based
company, S&E, was offering a snow
grooming training course and wanted
to offer something similar on a larger
scale. Rottmair was so impressed by
the company, he hired its founder, Flo-rian
Profanter, to run PRO ACADEMY
in Europe.
“It was really Mr. Rottmair having a vi-sion
of the importance of quality training
and interpreting what the vehicle should
be doing so that an operator … under-stands
the technical aspects of the ve-hicle,
understands what the technical
aspect of the slope is and understands
what the snow is doing,” said Perkins.
Perkins, who will initially handle
most of the instruction for PRO ACAD-EMY,
has a lengthy history in the snow
grooming industry. He got his start as a
groomer at Squaw Valley Ski Resort in
California. He’s also worked for a num-ber
of major manufacturers, including
Prinoth and Bombardier, and spent
a portion of his career involved in ski
lift construction.
“Snow grooming has always been
one of my passions,” he said. “I’ve al-ways
had an interest in it, in terms of
from an asset utilization standpoint,
looking at the vehicle as an asset and
the groomer operator as an asset.”
Perkins says initial interest in the
PRO ACADEMY in the U.S. has been
very high.
“I anticipate it’s going to be widely
accepted. You’ve got a really good name
behind it … and the company is com-mitted
to making it work,” he said.
EDUCATION
“I anticipate it’s going to be widely accepted. You’ve
got a really good name behind it … and the company
is committed to making it work.”
– Chris Perkins
Your Premier
Snowcat Sales,
Leasing, Rental,
Contracting and
Training Company
Running snowcats in the Rocky Mountain region since 2001.
Mountain States Snowcats is your #1 snowcat service provider!
In addition to our superior trail grooming and snowcat
training, we provide year-round service with
excavation and summer trail building.
mountainstatessnowcats.com 970-447-6005
26 September 2017 | snowopsmag.com