By Dan Balkin
Sometimes things work out perfectly – at least here at HoliMont. In 2006 Amber Widrig arrived at HoliMont to work in the SnowSports office. 17 years later she is still here. Why? She loves the job and everyone who interacts with her loves the job she does. I asked Travis Widger, after his first season as Snowsports Director, what did he learn about the job that surprised him? There was no hesitation, he just smiled and said, “How hard Amber works.” In 2018 Amber became the Snowsports Office Manager. Travis appreciates Amber’s unwavering devotion to the job because it has a lot of moving parts: overseeing all lessons scheduled; working with program leaders to register participants for season long programs in Skiing, Snowboarding, Adaptive, and Freestyle; managing the mounds of paperwork required for roughly 200 instructors, volunteers, and trainees.
Amber is a daughter of the Southern Tier. She is from East Otto and attended school at the Cattaraugus-Little Valley Central School District. Amber married her husband Chris in 2012, and they have four children: Ella (2), Jack, (5), Finn (8), and Carter (9). It’s a tribute to Amber and Chris’s parenting skills that their kids are as kind and gentle with others as with each other. Anyone who wanders in our Snowsports building late in the day on weekends or school holidays will see these kids happily cavorting with the other young children of our Snowsports Director Travis (wife Laura) and Children’s Director Mary Claire Vivian (husband Mark). Why not earlier in the day? The kids are too busy skiing! The friendship between the kids has brought these three families together into a tight circle of friendship. Amber said that the three families are also bound together by the “common goal” of overseeing and running HoliMont Snowsports.
When not working in the Snowsports office, Amber has an all-consuming hobby which she loves: her family. Amber, Chris, and the kids live in a house at the top of a hill in Ashford Hollow with five acres of surrounding land. In all seasons, the family loves to be outside. With a smile, Amber said she does not know if one would “exactly call it hiking” to wander through the woods on nearby lands with four exuberant kids – but that is one of their favorite family pastimes. The family also enjoys to spend time enjoying nature in Allegany State Park and Chestnut Ridge Park, and to watch the kids play baseball and soccer. Many people in WNY, because we don’t have a Major League Baseball team, are by default Yankees fans. HoliMont has a bit of kind advice for the Yankees if they hope to get back to be World Series winners: Don’t steal Amber from us! Rumor has it Amber has coached T-Ball for her kids, and we know she would bring the same work-ethic, attention to detail, and cheerful attitude to raising the Yankees fortunes that she brought to the Snowsports School!
Working for the Snowsports School has always been a part-time job for the vast majority of the instructors. That said, some of us have worked longer at HoliMont in terms of years employed than we have worked anywhere else in our lives. In the center of our Snowsports building is Amber’s office – our mission control. When the astronauts are in space, it must be comforting to hear voices across the void of space from back in Houston. Our HoliMont Snowsports earthly equivalent is that Amber and the other wonderful ladies in the office are always there at the other end of the radio if we are out on the hill and have a question or need assistance. How patient is Amber? Patient enough to help computer illiterates like me fill out paperwork electronically! Amber is as kindhearted as she is hard-working and efficient. A ski area is a bustling and big place with a lot of people, territory, buildings, machinery, lifts, and employees. At the center of our Snowsports universe, however, is the calm and reassuring presence of Amber. Houston, we have not a problem but a solution – her name is Amber!