Be The Beast: Cat Operator Faith Robinett

After several years on the terrain park crew, first at Wachusett and then at Killington, Faith Robinett was looking for a new challenge. The logical next step was to operate the big machines that build the jumps and keep snow conditions prime. So this season, Faith began her career as a snow cat operator at Killington Resort.

Faith grew up in Texas, but moved to the Northeast a decade ago, making her home in New England. It was Killington Terrain Park supervisor Jake Chiras who got Faith her first gig at Killington and she hasn’t looked back. For the past three years she’s worked in the terrain parks in the winter and the bike park in the summer. She said transitioning into being an operator was a relatively seamless process.

“Initially getting into it worked out really well, cause usually in the ski industry have to wait for someone to move out of that position that I could take 150 years, but I got really lucky because one of our really good operators was leaving he was just like hey do you have any interest in this? And I was like, yes, absolutely.”

Faith explained the training process for getting started driving snow cats.

“You do a ride-along for at least like a week and a half. You'll ride along with a few different operators, cause every operator has their own method of doing things. You’re just getting all this input and you're like ‘oh my gosh, I'm never gonna remember any of this!’ After the week and a half, then they put you in your own machine and you start following someone for a little bit, and some of those, you know, 10 million things that they told you start creeping in.”

Faith’s zone is Northbrook and she’s a bit of a perfectionist about it.

“I just remember I was going like really slow. I wanted everything to be perfect and you can’t make it perfect when you go fast. But it was probably like 9:30 and I still had another trail to finish and my supervisor was like, you're gonna have this whole zone by yourself, so you might have to go a little faster,” she laughed.

Faith is part of the first shift crew, working four to midnight, which works great for her.

“I got a little spoiled. I tend to come out and like snowboard for a majority of the day and then come clock in at four.”

Once she gets to work, the routine is basically the same.

“We go up to like our meeting room and it's awesome, it's just me and the guys and we go over the game plan for the day. I'll get my zone, any notes that maintenance left or anything for me to go and work on. Once we got the plan we go down to the machines, do a full check up, get it warmed up and then we just go straight from there.”

A long term goal of Faith’s is to get into operating the cats at build the terrain parks and she’s also looking forward to summer.

“It’s pretty hard to get into parks just cause you have to get the basics down, but that's definitely been a goal of mine like to get into the terrain park grooming. In the summer they're gonna start training me to use the summer equipment like excavators and stuff to build bike parks jumps.”

She said she does miss her old job sometimes but is enjoying the new challenge.

“It is night and day from being a terrain park worker. There’s very little, if any, physical labor, which is the one thing I'm definitely kind of missing cause you start to put on weight as you sit down for like eight hours. I loved terrain park. I think it's really good to start with the physical side of things. You get to see how it's built, and that transitioned really well into the machine side of it. But I wouldn't trade it for anything else. I'm just so happy being a groomer. I'm very appreciative for starting on the ground the way I did for as long as I did, but I wouldn't go back to that, I really like it.”

As the only female member of the team, Faith has worked hard to prove herself.

“I just remember in the bike park, I would always help out as much as I could. I would try to move a rock that was the size of my body and I wouldn't ask for help until, you know, they saw me like, hey do you want help?”

But, that said, she doesn’t feel like her gender is relevant to her success.

“The guys have been great; they've always accepted me and I've never noticed it. If I was a normal girl coming into it, and without the terrain park experience, I might be a little intimidated, but I'd say that there's no reason to be, because even if I hadn't had all that experience, the guys are very welcoming and very inclusive.”

She encourages other women to do the same.

“Do not be intimidated by the process or the fact that you might be the only girl if it's something you want to do. When the guys around you see that you're very passionate about it they will help you get to wherever you want to be. They're never gonna try to hold you back. They always help you get over your fears. If it is something you want to do, you just have to take that next step and realize it's not as bad as I thought it was gonna be.”

Overall, she says working on the grooming team at Killington has been an experience she’ll always remember.

“I love the community here. I feel like that's a response a lot of people give, but I've never worked somewhere where they cared so much about your progress. If you go to them and you're like ‘hey, I really wanna move up and make this a career,’ they'll help you lay out that plan and help you move up. And it’s not just the employees, all the people that come here are always so interested in learning what you're doing and having a conversation. I've never really found that anywhere else. It's really hard to put into words unless you're here and get to experience it, but it's just something you never forget.”