Congrats, you earned your bones — Now go do your first wreck… NOW!
First the good news…. I passed my final exam. Now the even better news comes from our head instructor. “Report outside at once…..IN YOUR BONES! We’ve got work to do! 
I have to say its been a long journey and Damn does it feel good to put on that shiny new patagonia ski patrol vest and lose the fanny pack!
Literally two minutes after graduation we are assigned our “mentors”. We will be one on one with a mentor for our next five days to further hone our skills while someone senior stands behind us for backup. I literally am assigned my mentor when the radio crackles to life (seriously like within seconds). Skier reported accident on XYZ run, unknown disposition.
The hill lead looks at me and says “are you ready?” Yes sir! “Then get on it, you are dispatched on your first wreck”. I have to say that if you had put a heart rate monitor on me I would have been off the charts and now I know what the police guys feel when they are driving code three with the lights on. I’m pretty sure I must have arrived “too quickly” at my incident as I was blazing down full tilt all while being careful to not ski past it going Mach 5. (boy I would have never heard the end of that one….)
So my first wreck… 12 year old boy with double wrist fractures. And he is a Mexican national on vacation with limited English and his dad isn’t with him. Funny they didn’t teach me in OEC how to sling both arms at the same time but we figure it out pretty quickly. On top of this, his location is in an area you can’t ski out of so I get a tow behind a snowmobile with the sled all the way to the top of the run. By the time we get there, my quads are on FIRE and now its time to pull him down all the way to the bottom of the hill. Whew!
I have to say that was a few days ago and i’m living off the rush. It was a little freaky getting dispatched for the first time. After nearly nine months of reading, studying, training, etc., this is the real deal and I’m doing it. Awesome. I can’t wait to do it again!
After the incident I got the debrief from my mentor….. you don’t need to ski Mach speed, lets slow it down a little next time….
THE FINAL EXAM!
OK after nearly 9 months of training it all comes down to this. One final exam. Do or die. Pass or get sent home to try again next season. Its actually quite simple. You hang out in the patrol shack and you get a call over the radio. There is a wreck on XYZ run and no further info. You are dispatched to go check it out and care for your guest. Seems easy right??? Well…. sure its easy only when you arrive to your scene, one of the instructors has planted himself in some weird angle on the steepest slope with the most ice and contorted himself into a weird pretzel. On top of that he is sort of responding but not very clearly, doesn’t know where he is, feels dizzy, thinks he passed out and hit his head hard. Oh yeah and his back hurts….a lot. Yeah great, we now have to figure out how to backboard this guy on a 45 degree ice rink when we can barely stand ourselves. And he is passing out so we need to get to work quickly! One wrong step and you are a hockey puck all the way to the bottom of the run. Luckily we have all trained for this! I proceeded to pre-dig myself a “staircase” of steps between where our guy is and where the sled is so I will have something to stand on once I pick up an extra hundred pounds of weight beside my own weight. The team digs in and in less that 20 minutes after our arrival on scene, we have him packaged up and sent for delivery. Woo Hoo! All of the skills we have learned are certainly much harder on an icy vertical slope for sure.
As I read the above back to myself, it doesn’t sound so hard, right??? Well, it actually was really hard and quite sketchy. Much like the real thing I guess…. How did we do? Cutoff time was 20 minutes. We came in just under 20. Nothing like a photo finish to get the blood flowing!
Could you make the cut? Breckenridge Ski Patrol try outs and the WFG
When i started this blog is was because there wasn’t a lot of info on what it really is like to join patrol. Recently I found this article from the Colorado Springs Gazette on the selection process at Breckenridge. Thankfully the resort I patrol at isn’t as harsh as these guys but it does sound like they have a lot of fun. My favorite was putting flower on the top of the fan blades for the ceiling fan with a sign taped to the cord saying “pull me”. I’m going to have to try that one for sure!
I would have WFGed a few of my fellow candidates for sure (read the article to know what a WFG is)
This is a good read if you are thinking of joining one of the “ivy league” ski patrols in colorado or utah.
Out There: Do you have what it takes for ski patrol?
http://www.gazette.com/articles/-21415–.html
Reason #239 to Join Ski Patrol
When you aren’t running wrecks, training, cooking, cleaning, putting up Boo or Banner guard there are a few zen moments in between the chaos and all the hard work that goes on daily.
Reason #239 in favor of joining patrol is chilin outside bump on a warm sunny day with the tunes cranked while sitting in one of those andirondack chairs made out of old skis and checking out all the cute girls skiing and boarding by.
Niiiiiiiiicccccceee!
I’d like to put this on the “brochure” to make people want to join but the dirty truth is this rarely happens. But is is pretty darn cool when it does.
Reason #147 to join ski patrol
Picture says it all. Untracked groomers that require a few laps to properly “safety check” the hill for an hour before the resort opens. YEAH BABY!
Reason #1 to NOT join ski patrol
Paperwork. And lots of it. Basically every resort has been sued so many times by idiots who do something dumb and blame it on the resort that every report you do is like a pre-trial discovery document. If you patrol, you better get used to doing a lot of paperwork! Touch a guest and you might end up filling out forms for another 30-60 minutes. Be careful who you help!!!
By the time you graduate and get your bones, you will practically be a para-legal in the resort risk management department.
Not fun but part of the job.
Toboggan training…Part three…. steep slopes.
As I mentioned before, the first few times out with the toboggan are purely survival and not wanting to fall and get run over by the sled (yep it runs you over if you fall in front of it).
Now that I’ve had 4+ days on the hill pulling sleds, its getting a lot easier and I’m now comfortable pulling two and three people around in it. I can’t believe that 4 days ago I could barely ski in front of it and now we are going down steep walls with 200+ pounds in the sled to make it go fast with gravity. The learning curve comes very quickly and with every run you get more confidence and ability (thank goodness!).
Once you get comfortable you start to hit more agressive hills. This is where the tail rope comes in. I picked the picture above for this post as it is a perfect example of how you can get down a steep slope safely. Basically you get two people and one gets on top and uses the tail rope as a belay, just like in rock climbing. That way if you screw up, your tail roper can hold the weight of the sled or help you brake.
Its quite simple really and actually works quite well. One of the guys in my class had the chain brake fail to work on the steepest run on our hill (with ME IN THE SLED AS THE GUEST!!!). I could see him struggling to make the brake work and it wasn’t going to cooperate as it was jammed. We started to pick up speed and the tail roper noticed, tightened up on belay and started braking. With two people braking, the sled is pretty easy to stop on even the steepest of runs. What the sled doesn’t come with is a supply of toilet paper in case someone soils themselves during training as we learn how to handle the steeps with 300+ pounds of stuff pushing you downhill.
After the first run its just like a roller coaster…. lets do it again!
Toboggans…How good of a skier do you need to be to pull one???
I have been asked this question by a lot of guests riding up the chair lift with me and I’m guessing any of you reading this blog would want to know the answer to this question as it goes back to the fundamental question… Am I a good enough skier to be on patrol?
First off, it is not hard and it isn’t for big burly men only. I’ve seen some petite 115 pound women do better than the men so this one falls into the finesse category.
Frankly, you need to be way better than intermediate. Seriously. It starts out easy on the green runs but what it really comes down to is your ability to side slip. Yep… side slip. Bet you never had anyone train you on that in any ski lesson, right? Well, I’ve never been taught to side skip either. And side slipping doesn’t come naturally because you have to release your edge and fall down sideways without falling.
This is were our class was quickly split in two camps. The solid skiers with good edge control managed to pick up side slipping pretty quickly. Where most in my class got into trouble is they had never had any formal training on their technique to keep the upper body quiet and not “drive the bus” by rotating their shoulders and arms from left to right on each turn. If you are driving the bus, you can’t side slip on anything above a green run.
We also had a few people who were actually quite good skiers but had the old school method of feet together skiing, they had a bitch of a time trying to learn how to go sideways with your feet shoulder witch apart.
So here is the quick home study test for you to gauge how your are doing. Next time you are on the hill, go to a medium groomed blue run. Stand at the top facing sideways. Hold your poles in the middle of the shaft and point them straight at the bottom of the run. Now you have “pretend” toboggan handles in your hands. Now go sideways down the entire run without changing the direction of the poles pointing straight down hill. Sounds easy but the first time we all did it, the entire class was wondering if we could do it. Luckily, it gets easier.
So to cut to the chase and answer the question. If you can ski sideways well enough to look up and talk to people around you (i.e. not focus 100% on just trying to ski) then you will be fine. If going sideways consumes your entire attention and effort, you won’t be able to do it.
As we have progressed in our training, we have all gone from just going straight with a death grip on the handles and trying not to fall to skiing sideways with the toboggan fully loaded with 300+ pounds and spending more time looking around at other guests, your patient, bumps, rocks, snowboarders looking to take you out, etc.
The short answer is if you can’t get comfortable side slipping and talking to your buddies who might be in front or behind you and watching out for bombing snowboarders at the same time, you aren’t going to pass toboggan training. Don’t be scared by this, its actually not hard to learn but this one doesn’t just come in one day, it takes a lot of practice. You have to be able to ski with a quiet upper body and minimal upper body rotation to nail this skill however so I’m sorry to say but if you are borderline in your abilities, you have to go back to my earlier post on skiing ability and the ways of the PSIA to have someone show you how to ski with a quiet upper body and learn to ski by just rotating below your hips with minimal rotation above your hips.
Once you learn to do it on one side, you then learn that we all have a strong and a weak side and you now need to learn how to do that pole drill I mentioned above and begin to throw in some trainsitions and snowplowing without moving the directions of the poles to the hill (just as your toboggan won’t be changing directions as you turn back and forth in front of it.)
I don’t want to scare you off but its hard. The good news is that with a little practice and some guidance it actually goes from hard to easy very quickly and before you know it you are skipping sideways and looking back and talking to your guest in the sled while you also perform the “bobble head” to scan for traffic and bombing snowboarders.
The other good news is that its actually harder on snow green runs and easier on blue and black runs due to the magic chain brake on the steeper runs that provides a lot of control.
My advice to you from here…. many patrols have free ski enhancement days. Get out with a good PSIA instructor for 30-60 minutes to have them critique your skills and do the poles demo with them. They know what you are trying to do and will point you in the right direction with tips you can work on by yourself later. Its totally worth it and will make your learning curve go a lot quicker.
Toboggan Training……. FINALLY we are learning to pull sleds!
OK, I’ve been slow in posting lately and that is because we have started Toboggan training. In short my excuse is that I’m so tired when I get home after two full days of learning to pull sleds that I’m A&O X zero and ready to pass out when I arrive home.
To start with, the toboggan is pretty cool. Its sort of like a 1950’s technology that isn’t broke so nobody is trying to fix it. The handles can be free skied up and and down as they are not “locked in” with the “dog ears” (clamps that make the two handle poles rigid so you can push up and down on them). There are a couple different kinds but most of them have metal skegs on the bottoms in the back that bite into the snow and stop it from sliding sideways down a hill. There is also a metal chain that goes under the front of the sled. Its a very primitive breaking system but surprisingly it works pretty well. You pull a short rope and it keeps the chain up and off the snow. When you want to stop, release the rope from your hand, the chain falls down and the sled runs over it and slows it down dramatically. Simple really.
I can tell you that the first time they handed me the toboggan, I was scared out of my wits and just thinking I needed to not crash. Two runs later I was actually releasing my “death grip” on the handles and starting to relax a bit. We have been running them top to bottom quite a bit and every time you do it, it gets a lot easier.
A lot of the training prior was pretty tedious…. Now that we are “in the handles” the training days are flying by and its a lot of fun. This is where we get to finally put the SKI in ski patrol. No more boring classrooms, now we are out on the hill skiing! I can say that its very humbling and it makes you feel like a total beginner all over again. Just because you can ski well doesn’t mean you can pull a sled…
Hazing and Ski patrol candidates…
One thing that we have learned as candidates is that you are going to get a lot of stories about “walking up hill, both ways, through the snow, barefoot”, etc. Seems every candidate class has it “easy” compared to the people who have come before you.
A couple of us were in fraternities when we were younger and know the hazing experience (although no where near to the level that the poor sod scrubbing the floor with the toothbrush knows…).
When you are a candidate you get all the sh1t jobs. Basically we clean the room at the beginning of the season, at the end of each day and we take out the trash. You are probably thinking….hmmmm…… if I join ski patrol they are going to make me clean the toilets at the shack??? Probably yes. And take out the trash and move crap and whatever else they don’t want to do. Oh yeah we also cook the BBQ lunch for them also.
At first, many of the candidates had an issue with cleaning up the room and the toilets. I can’t say I was all that excited either. We quickly discovered that there were a bunch of us and we could knock it out in just a few minutes if we all jumped on it. So after a the first few times, we quickly got over it and decided we didn’t care if it was hazing. If every class before us had been responsible for cleaning and maintaining the shack, we were on it and going to do a damn good job of it. Now as we are getting on through the season, its no big deal.
I share this as you need to come prepared to do some stuff you probably wouldn’t think of but its all part of the crew looking after the bump house like it was their house.
Hmmmm. Next year maybe we make the candidates do the toothbrush routine in the picture…. in the snow of course…
joinskipatrol
joinskipatrol 