Like many in the ski industry, Jaron Thibault’s role as lift operations supervisor at Woodward Park City shifts with the seasons. From managing ski lifts and crowds during winter holiday surges to converting infrastructure for summer mountain biking, a lot changes in a year — especially when it comes to staff.
The bonds they build on the hill through shared shifts, busy weekends, and early-morning projects are the core of what Thibault said makes the job worth it, but in the lift operations world, those connections are often fleeting.
“The hardest struggle is maintaining the people who want to stay season after season,” said Thibault. “You have to meet new people every other season, mid-season, too, and train people mid-season, which makes the job 10 times harder. You’re deep into Christmas, and you’ve got to train someone how to be safe on everything.”
Thibault’s favorite part of the job is the people. So when faced with the constant turnover of staff, especially with lifties, he set out to build a team centered on collaboration and a work culture that made people want to stay. That leadership is what earned him Ski Utah’s 2025 Yeti Award for Lift Operator of the Year.
Thibault got his start in lift ops at Bolton Valley Resort and Cochran’s Ski Area in Vermont. It was his love for skateboarding that led him to Woodward, as well as its reputation for hosting many of the professionals in his favorite sports. He landed at Woodward Park City in 2020 and quickly climbed the ranks from operator to supervisor, a position he has held for the last two years.
As a supervisor, Thibault takes the lead on hiring and training behind the scenes of a typical lift operations role, but he also jumps in on other projects, collaborating with lift maintenance teams and other departments when they could use the extra hand.
“It’s all about being out on the hill and helping everyone out. We want to make sure that everyone has a good day and gets home safely. We’re all here for the same thing — we all love watching the pros and seeing new tricks,” said Thibault.
Whether it’s scheduling shifts, troubleshooting lift issues or coaching new hires through their first week on snow, Thibault said he likes the way he’s able to jump between projects and learn something new with each one. Currently he is working with the maintenance team to reengineer their conveyor system on the training hill.
When one of Thibault’s mentors, Emily Bruckner, came on staff as Mountain Operations Manager in 2021, she gave Thibault the space he needed to solidify the work he had already taken on as a leader — handling scheduling, training, and problem solving across departments. For his leadership, Bruckner nominated Thibault for the award at the end of this season.
“He kind of took it, ran with it, excelled at it,” said Bruckner. “He plugged in wherever we needed him, took on a variety of different things, and he solidified a structure that helped us retain staff. He already knows how to build a team, inherently, with just the work that he’s done and the years of experience and dedication to the job and, really, to the industry.”
For Thibault, his focus on building a strong team is about friendship and community, but it’s also about learning. Surrounded by people from different departments and backgrounds, he sees every season as a chance to learn something new, whether it’s the mechanics of a lift or a new trick.
“Woodward makes for pretty cool friendships. You end up finding people from all kinds of backgrounds, from maintenance, coaching staff, patrollers, and you find out they do all these other cool sports, and so you end up doing other things and learning new things. It’s great,” said Thibault.