40 years of the Ski Area Management Program - Article on Matt Koenig

SROAM instructor Bob Dodge has taken on a retirement project of documenting success stories of "SROAMIES" . Former Baldy Managers Steve Paccagnan and Tim Foster were featured in early stories There are lots of stories worth reading, including an update on Mark Weigeldt in Nelson at Gerrick Cycle and Ski.  https://selkirk.ca/sroam-success 

The latest batch of stories includes Matt.

I confess I provided the photo that Matt chose over the more recent ones with the signs of silver in the beard.😉

Matt Koenig 2000

Many of my past students have become my friends, some very good friends, and Matt is right at the top of that list. He is a man with a heart of gold.

Matt started in the ski industry after high school doing the laundry in the evenings at Manning Park so he could snowboard every day. Under the mentorship of industry veteran Mike Barker, Matt moved onto working in ski patrol, lift maintenance and did a little grooming. There he also met his now-wife, Robin. 

Matt Koenig, now operations manager at Apex, spent 20 years at Mount Baldy putting in heroic efforts to keep it going through some tough years.

For Matt’s work term he chose Mount Baldy outside Oliver for the opportunity to work for SROAMie Steve Paccagan and Russell Karp, now president at Mueller Lift Services. When Steve moved on, SROAMie Tim Foster became GM. Later, Tim moved on, but Matt stayed, and stayed, and stayed through thick and thin. He started as ski patrol supervisor, but quickly expanded his role. In his early years, there was some great optimism around the resort with a new ownership group taking over from a financially floundering strata of cabin owners, a new masterplan completed in 2004 and the Sugar Lump fixed grip quad installed in 2007.

Then the recession hit and there were a lot of thin times. Receivership, bankruptcy, closure for a year, and reopening under new ownership, Matt was there through it all. His job title through this period was most often mountain manager, but his job description was doing pretty much anything needed to keep the place going at the time, from dishwashing to resort marketing. During some very lean times, Matt worked without a paycheque and even used some of his own money to pay essential bills for the mountain. I marveled at his dedication to Baldy. Fortunately, he also worked as a paramedic and was able to scale up or down that work according to the demands at Baldy. Matt was always a gracious and welcoming host to the SROAM classes I took on our annual fall field trip.

If you have never skied Mount Baldy, put it on your bucket list. It is a quaint little hill with awesome intermediate glades, lots of snow and few people.

With close to 20 years in at Mount Baldy, in 2019 Matt decided to make a move up the Okanagan Valley to Apex Resort where he is now operations manager which, in addition to the common responsibilities of that role, includes overseeing building maintenance, snow removal, IT and village infrastructure systems, still very much a “do whatever needs doing” kind of guy.  

Matt now has three grown kids that enjoy skiing and are going faster than he does. He loves the ski industry and all the experiences and friendships that have come from it.

* Editor's note: As this article was in the final stages, Matt was making plans for a career change.  As the provincial government moved to provide more full time ambulance coverage in remote communities, full time positions opened up in Oliver. Matt and Tanja were two of the successful applicants, and Matt starts with the BCAS full time on Saturday.

I am happy for Matt and the family. No more long commute, more time with the family. He told me a little about his schedule - I think this will be the first year since he met Robin that he will be on time for Christmas dinner.

The SROAM program is industry driven, and we've had a lot of good people come to work at Baldy from Selkirk College.

Sure would like to see a return to that as one of the hiring strategies.