Dave Smith, who is in charge of marketing and sales at the Arizona Snowbowl, says what he likes about his job is “everything.”

“It’s nice to be able to go out into the community and be respected,” said the transplant from Fargo, North Dakota. As the face of the Snowbowl, Smith travels to trade shows, gives interviews to the media, and promotes the resort to local businesses and organizations as a destination for meetings and events. Skiers will recognize Smith’s voice on the hotline that reports the daily slope conditions during the wintertime.

And, of course, he hits the slopes. A job like this does come with perks.

Smith, 35, didn’t grow up skiing but instead played soccer and spent hours in the pool. A competitive swimmer, he was a hopeful to make the 1992 Olympic team before burning out.

He fell in love with skiing when his father, a college music professor, took a sabbatical and moved the family to Walla Walla, Wash., where Smith’s cousin, a nationally-ranked competitive skier, got him hooked.

But it wasn’t until he moved to Flagstaff to study economics and marketing at Northern Arizona University that he fell in love with the sport. Like many college students, he landed a job as a ski instructor at the Snowbowl and nabbed a vision for his future — perhaps working for a ski resort would combine his business skills with his thirst for adventure.

But first Smith had to pay his dues. He sold life insurance in Colorado before landing a marketing gig at Keystone Ski Resort in Keystone, Colo. Hankering to move back to Flagstaff, he worked in internet technology sales in Phoenix before the marketing job at Snowbowl became available nearly seven years ago.

Turns out you can take the boy out of the midwest but you can’t take the midwest out of the boy. Despite feeling like Flagstaff is his home, Smith says he has maintained a midwestern perspective on life — “a good, quality work ethic.”

Though he didn’t grow up on a farm, Smith added: “The crops didn’t come in if you weren’t on the tractor.”

Friends and colleagues describe him as driven by passion.
“He really works hard, night and day,” said friend and former Snowbowl ski instructor David Schultz, now a biologist in New York. “It takes a different person to enjoy the winter. Passion is getting up at dark-thirty and doing that snow report,” he said. “You want to see a depressed person, see Dave when there’s no snow.”

Because northern Arizona has weathered an extended drought, Snowbowl, which is a privately-owned resort located on U.S. Forest Service land, consequently has suffered. Unlike competitor resorts throughout the southwest, it has not been able to manufacture snow due to lawsuit brought by several Native American tribes who argue that plans to use reclaimed wastewater to make artificial snow would violate the religious freedom of Native Americans.

At issue is whether the estimated .0001 percent of human waste contained in the water desecrates lands held sacred by several tribes. Recently a federal court of appeals ruled that the resort’s plans to use reclaimed wastewater to make artificial snow did not violate religious freedoms.

Though Smith cannot discuss the case, which could head to the U.S. Supreme Court, he says the Snowbowl has been a less reliable vacation destination than its competitors because of the lack of predictability. It’s tough, he said, when “it’s January 3rd and you still have brown slopes.”

For Smith, the prospect of man-made snow makes his job that much more challenging and engaging.

Not to mention more fun.

“He’s a pretty good skier, too,” Schultz joked of his friend. “Oh—I gotta be nice ... he’s a great skier.”