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….