I've had some e-mail communication with Welch regarding this issue and from what I can gather, there is no "ban". Here are their exact words:
"Thanks for inquiring as the carving issue has been embellished. Carving is allowed but we have had a few issues with “extreme” carving followed by “attitudes” from some of the individuals. Thus, customers complained to us, we spoke with the carvers, and some of the attitude is what made the issue explode. If everyone gets along and carvers don’t leave big ruts or almost run into people, or cop attitudes when someone says something etc., we usually don’t say anything and everyone goes along, happy as can be. That is the way we would like to see it. Everyone respecting everyone else on the slopes at any given time. Safety is out biggest concern as I am sure you are aware. We would rather put our time and effort into making this a great place to ski and snowboard than time in the court room defending ourselves from someone’s injuries due to slope conditions or collision."
It's somewhat ridiculous that ALL carvers got singled out like this, but maybe they are changing their tune here. I'm not happy with how they have handled this, as we all know if a jibber pissed off a customer or a group of customers, they wouldn't have even thought about banning the whole lot of them.
My guess is, they thought the "carvers" were limited to this small group of people that had the initial issue and thought they could just be passive aggressive and ban "carving" to get rid of these individuals. Little did they realize that we are a stronger group.
I have asked them to come out and declare a policy and suggested that they stay in line with every other ski area and just declare the policy is simply ....stay in control.
Looking forward to riding, whether my money is spent at Welch or else where. Got my new board ready to go and looking forward to meeting some of you this season.
