Gone Ronin

Ski Days 28 & 29: Sunny Nuts & Bolts

2011-06-10T17:41:00.000-07:00

The annual Pacific Northwest Division Nuts & Bolts clinic for the patrol was this past weekend, and while I didn't ski all 3 days, I had a great time. The weather was, for the most part, perfect. I say "for the most part" because it was a tad breezy on Saturday.

Okay, understatement.

It was windy as hell on Saturday, to the point where the upper lifts were on standby almost all morning. This wasn't a catastrophe, because the lower mountain still has a crap-ton of snow. We skied the Pucci lift while we waited. Pucci. In June.

It was, however, still a big problem. All of the toboggans we left on the hill for the clinic from Friday's session were at the top of Palmer. I don't recall if I ever heard why we didn't ferry a bunch of the patrollers or instructors up top via snow-cat to ski the toboggans down, but it didn't happen. We did manage to get enough toboggans to start in on some of the clinic stuff.

Rewind to Friday, though. It was EPIC. Gorgeous day, got to see a bunch of familiar faces from last year's Nuts & Bolts (including the Michigan contingent), as well as some of the evaluators and advocates from when I took the NSP Senior S&T test last season. Very cool. The instructor shop talk session was excellent once again, and the whole clinic was an eye-opener for me in terms of how we need to approach toboggan-handling techniques and training. I had a lot of really good conversations with folks from different areas, tried a handful of slightly different things, and came away from the two days with an even more inspired perspective on teaching and evaluating. I'm really excited about next season.

Friday also was probably the best ski day, since it was a little cooler. We got to venture out west of Palmer a good ways and really crank and bank out in the untracked windpack. Gorgeous day, great snow, epic fun.

Back to Saturday. I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to get out of Saturday. I thought I'd just attend one of the toboggan enhancement sessions, and maybe just see what else I could pick up that might help. Instead, I got asked to help instruct one of the toboggan enhancement sessions. I was a little flattered, but mostly super excited to get out there and do it. I had a great time working with a really solid instructor named Dave, whose home area I can't recall. We took turns working with our group on various ski-skill drills in the morning, then working on toboggan-handling in the afternoon. Great day. Snow got a little sticky late, but the wax job from Fuxi Racing the afternoon before held up well.

I got off the mountain and caught the tail end of one of the other off-hill instructor clinics, then headed off to the patrol building in Govy to help set things up for the 'luau'. Burgers, taquitos and beer followed, as well as some more really good conversations about toboggan-handling training with a handful of MHSPers and one of the instructors from Bogus Basin.

I can't say enough good things about Nuts & Bolts. I hope we can get more folks from outside the west/northwest to come out next year.

Ski Days 26 & 27: Last Chance Saloon, Closing Time @ Bowl

2011-05-05T21:06:00.000-07:00

A view of Tom Dick Peak, from Outback 1

Another bout of blogslackery has me a couple ski days behind, so I'd best get back to it. Inching closer and closer to 30 days skied now, and this marks Day 55 on the repaired knee. That's one shy of equaling last season's with-brace total, now without the brace. I'm still skiing smart and focused, but it feels great.

Day 26 was Saturday, April 23rd. We still had a handful of ski patrol apprentices who needed to complete their toboggan-handling tests, so once again, we saddled up some evaluators and an advocate to do some testing.

It was a pretty freakin' awesome day at Ski Bowl that day. Some new snow had fallen during the week, but we had a bit of a melt-freeze situation the night before, so the snow was firm and fast in the morning. It softened up pretty quickly, though, so we had some pretty challenging conditions to test in. Things got awful mushy and sticky awful fast, but we managed to safely conduct our evaluations. Unfortunately, not everyone passed, so we'll have to give them another shot next season.

Day 27 was the last day of 'normal' winter operations at Ski Bowl. The announcement about that came via e-mail about a week beforehand, and I managed to snipe the Hill Captain slot for the day (May 1st). The dispatch was looking pretty woeful the first time I looked, so I sent out a plea to my fellow patrollers to come help me out.

The response was better than I'd expected, and we had a GREAT crew. We even had FIVE (!) of this year's hill apprentices come out to get a shadow day in, which was pretty special. I knew I would need to provide some refreshment at the end of the day, so I brought up a box each of Deschutes Brewing's Red Chair NWPA and Black Butte Porter. I figured a pale and a porter would cover the range of tastes pretty well, and the names were evocative of patrol colors, so it fit the theme of the day. Also, one of the chairlifts at Ski Bowl has red chairs on them, even the same style as the chair on the Red Chair label.

I know, I'm a dork.

The day was getting off to a decent start, and I was kind of moseying out the door of the Palace, just preparing myself mentally for what we'd have to do. Most of the mountain 'tear-down' was going to be done by the paid patrol, so we really only had to worry about getting our own equipment off the mountain. I was on my way to RC when a call came in from operations about someone with an injury near the Warming Hut.

I was closest (for a change!), so I jumped on the radio to respond, and sped up to get to the case. After a brief focused assessment, it was clear what we were dealing with, and pretty fortunate that we were standing not 10 feet away from a pair of toboggans. It's nice not to have to wait around for someone to bring one to you. With the help of another patroller and an apprentice, we got the patient's injury immobilized and I took the toboggan down the hill to the first aid room.

Mt. St. Helens. Gorgeous day.

That would end up being the only real busy part of my day, other than coordinating getting the toboggans and other equipment off the hill. Sweep was kind of weird, since we had to close and sweep the Outback a little early, then round back up to the top to close/sweep upper bowl, then Multorpor and lower bowl. We got it all done and it was off to the Palace for beer and de-brief. Mountain Ops was nice enough to tow us and our toboggans over to the Palace from the bottom of Multorpor. Definitely appreciated that, as it was getting pretty warm.

Mt. Hood, from Skyline Trail, as some apprentices towed toboggans down to Multorpor

Great way to end the season at Ski Bowl. They're still running a rope tow and a terrain park in the lower bowl, and they have so much snow there that I have to wonder how far past Memorial Day they will go...

Ski Day 25: Still Winter @ Ski Bowl, Kinda

2011-04-22T08:52:00.001-07:00

Crap, I forgot to blog about last weekend. Sunday the 17th was another day of toboggan training for some folks who needed a catch-up day to be ready for testing. Glorious partly sunny day, that started out in the high 20s.

Not much else to say except that the off-piste stuff was terrible in the upper bowl, having gone through a melt-freeze since the last snowfall. The groomed stuff was firm and fast, and in great shape all day.

Saw a small avalanche in the upper bowl on the West Wall about mid-afternoon (2-ish, I think). Nobody was skiing over there, thankfully. My apprentice group and I observed it from the chairlift. Looked like the point of origin was one of the exposed rocks a little ways down from the top of the ridge, probably having heated up from sun exposure and released. Origin looked like maybe a 4-5' wide (if that) spot broke loose, and the toe ended up being probably about 30' wide or so. If I ever remember to upload the photos, I'll post 'em.

Good day of training though. Had to be towed over to the Palace from the bottom of Multy via snow-mo since the handle tow wasn't running. Still plenty of snow all around the area, and it sounds like they had some accumulation up there this week. Going back up Saturday to do the last round of toboggan-handling tests for this year's apprentice group.

Ski Day 24: Toboggan Testing at Ski Bowl

2011-04-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

After taking a weekend away from patrolling, I was kind of excited to get back into it. I'd been sick the couple days prior, which meant missing out on dragging pal Barkernews up for night skiing on Thursday night. Pretty frustrated about that. But Saturday was looking to be a decent weather day, and I was pretty stoked at the prospect of getting to see some of the folks I've helped train this season take their toboggan tests for the patrol.

I was also kind of stoked to get back to Ski Bowl. I hadn't been there since all the recent snow, and since it was a day after the second anniversary of my ACL repair, I hoped I'd get the chance to visit the scene of the crime.

I carpooled up with one of the other coaches (last year's Alpine Coach of the Year, in fact), and he was going to be spending the morning training the folks that hadn't yet been recommended to test, then sending folks from that group over to myself and an instructor-trainer for evaluation in the afternoon.

We started the day just getting warmed up, and seeing how the snow was in various places in the upper bowl. Just about anywhere that'd had a lot of direct sun was hard and choppy, the typical result of the melt-freeze that happens, but the stuff that didn't get the direct sun was pretty sweet. Around the middle of the day, I found a line in the trees that was so much fun I was chuckling aloud.

The toboggan testing started out a little shaky for a couple of the apprentices, and I attributed that to some pre-test nerves. They settled, mostly, and once we really got into the meat of the test program, things got better for the most part. We had one apprentice who had been out of town for a couple weeks, so she missed some key training days, and I think we rushed her into testing. We should have just had her train instead of test - in hindsight, I don't feel it was fair to her to throw her to into a test scenario without having seen her run toboggans recently. I was kinda bummed for her, because she's worked pretty hard and has had a great attitude all season. She's not far off from passing, however.

I'm not going to go into the other person who didn't pass, other than to say I was more than a little disappointed in how things went down on Saturday with regard to his performance and some of the things he said.

The four apprentices who passed looked pretty solid, and I'm pleased to see more of them finish up. I'll get to see them finish OEC as well, since I've signed up as I usually do to help out at OEC finals night next month.

Ski Day 23: Another Tune-Up

2011-03-27T21:36:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday the 26th was a big day. Not only were a handful of the patrol trainees that I worked with last weekend going to take their toboggan tests, but I was putting on another tune-up clinic for the folks we hope to have ready for the next weekend of testing. In the morning, coaches John, Jeff, and I gave a pep talk to the folks going over to Ski Bowl to test, then I went with Jeff and a group of 6 trainees to Meadows to train.

It was a freakin' great day to ski. Almost a shame that we weren't there to free-ski. But we had work to do - the gang we had with us needed more work to be ready for their toboggan-handling tests coming up. So Jeff and I set about getting them ready. Most of what we worked on was stance and balance stuff. We did manage to get in a free run, though. The gang needed it, and it was epic.

No real exciting or memorable moments came from the day's session, however. Pretty routine day of toboggan training. We started off with some drills, then dragged sleds around, pretty much like last time.

When we got done, however, we called one of the coaches that was up with us last week. He was with the group that was being tested, so we wanted to find out how things went. We were very pleased to find out they all passed. After we got back to Govy, it was congrats all around, and we did some shots from the shot-ski at Charlie's. Congrats to the apprentices who passed, and best wishes to the ones testing this weekend.

I'll be away from the hill this weekend, but back coaching next week for whoever is still preparing. Hopefully there will be more good news on Sunday.

Ski Days 21 & 22: Tryouts and Tune-up

2011-03-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday the 13th was Day 21, and the first day in a long time that I wasn't training patrol apprentices. Instead, I was helping evaluate candidates for next year's group, same as back on Ski Day 4. One thing was different this time, however - I got put in charge of the ski test portion of the tryouts program.

Since this one was kind of my baby, and we were expecting maybe half of the number of applicants we had in December, I thought we'd try a station-based approach instead of having it group-based. So, we had pairs of evaluators looking at all the candidates doing different ski/ride skills instead of groups of evaluators only looking at 8 or so candidates doing all the ski/ride skills for the test.

The weather wasn't as bad as we had expected, but it did rain on and off at Ski Bowl. Our scorecards held up better, thanks to some better paper and better use of zip-loc bags. The tryouts went pretty well. I paired up with "Tool Time" again, and we were evaluating the candidates' ability to handle bumps and off-piste skiing. We ran laps on Calamity, and the snow and bumps over there proved pretty much perfect for seeing what the candidates were made of.

After the last group came through, we packed up our stuff and headed back over to the patrol building in Govy to wrap things up. Mother Nature had other ideas, however, and it wasn't too long after we settled into the discussion that we lost power thanks to what turned out to be downed trees. We had a nice little thunderstorm going on as well. After a flurry of phone calls and everyone at the patrol building waiting anxiously for word on whether or not we'd have to run off to one of the areas to help with lift evacuations, we got word that we weren't needed.

We'd heard a lot of different reports about road conditions and blockages due to fallen trees and so on, so tried to check and see what the trip home would be like. We didn't get any good indications one way or the other, so we headed home on US26 per usual. We encountered stop-and-go traffic maybe halfway to Sandy, and it was pretty slow going even after we passed where the major power-line problem was. There was no power to anything in Sandy - it wasn't until we got to the A&W just west of Sandy did we see any lights or evidence of power.

Day 22 was Saturday the 19th, and it found me back coaching again, this time at Meadows. As part of my bid to become an Instructor-Trainer (IT) for the patrol, I was asked to put together a training plan for a more focused clinic than our usual training days call for.

I put together what I felt would be a good tune-up for the skiers, focusing on getting back to some of the fundamentals and really exaggerating some of the movements and stance stuff that they all were still having issues with, to varying degrees. I split the group up into two groups: one group that would work on more ski-skills stuff to try and get some of the more basic things addressed, and the other group would work more on fine-tuning their technique running the toboggans. I probably could have done a better job in the initial briefing to make sure no egos were bruised, but at the end of the day, everyone seemed to have gotten what they needed out of the training.

It was a gorgeous day, too. Sun, fresh snow, light and smooth. We made sure we didn't go off and track out all the good stuff early, so we stuck to the groomers - which had probably about 3-5" of fresh on them anyway. Glorious warm-up runs on the smooth stuff.

I was with the second group, and we started off with some rope-handling drills to make sure everyone was getting on the same page as far as hand position, and focusing more closely on what they were doing with the hands at transition. So we had them out of their skis, walking the ropes in and out, with tension. I think it worked pretty well, and we moved from that into rope-a-goat, and then started working on some more stance stuff. I wanted to get the apprentices to really square up their shoulders, and we did a drill where the 'driver' takes the inside hand off the handle and puts it on the downhill thigh. To keep the toboggan under control, we had tail-ropers, empty toboggan, and we ran on a gentle slope. Pretty neat little drill, as it works the driver and the tail-roper on different things. The tail-roper kind of gets some rope-a-goat practice, while the driver works on body position. Seemed effective.

We did sneak in some turns in the trees over on Star just before breaking for lunch, and it was glorious. Managed to find a few untracked lines over there, which was a bit of a surprise after 11am.

We moved on to the steeper stuff after lunch, loading 'em up and working on transitions in the steeps in chunky snow and getting some traversing in as well. We moved on to the really steep and challenging stuff later on, and while some fatigue set in, we saw some really good things from the apprentices on the last couple runs. They were really clicking, for the most part, and apart from a couple tactical bobbles that caused some falls and frustration, they looked good. Some of them looked to me and the other coaches to be ready for testing next week.

Ski Day 20: Training in the Glop @ Ski Bowl

2011-03-06T16:15:00.000-08:00

Saturday was another training day, and I found myself back with B Team once again. One of their regular coaches couldn't make it, so I joined them for some more toboggan training over at Ski Bowl.

It was snowing, and with the temps where they were, in my mind it was threatening to rain. Thankfully, the precipitation on the hill remained snow, but it was pretty wet stuff. The fresh/overnight snow was fairly heavy, kind of like mashed potatoes. Good snowball snow - the kind of stuff that ends up causing a lot of slow, twisting falls that end up needing patrol help.

Skiing this kind of glop concerns me more than most, having had/repaired/rehabbed a torn ACL, but some recent little tweaks to my technique had me actually fairly unconcerned with the snow after a few tentative turns. Some of the glop-skiing was actually fun.

The apprentices all still need to work on the same things, which is a little frustrating at this stage in their training. I think they are understanding what we are telling them they need to do, and why it's important for them to make the technical adjustments we're giving them, but it seems like they're having trouble applying it. I think they need to spend more time making the adjustments out of the handles, on gentler terrain, then get back in the handles.

That said, some of them made some really good progress this week. Test weekend looms ever closer, so hopefully they all make strides this coming weekend.

Since I didn't want to get up at 3am to do it, I had to do my P90X workout when I got home. Legs & Back / Ab Ripper X is not the workout you want to have to do after a day on the hill.

Ski Days 18 & 19: Flippin' Cold and Flippin' Awesome

2011-03-02T17:20:00.000-08:00

Day 18 was another training day with the patrol. I was covering for one of the A Team coaches at Ski Bowl, and it was VERY cold. Probably the coldest day I've skied since coming out here to Oregon. Temps were in the single digits as the day started. Not as cold as that GS at Burke that one year, but pretty darn chilly.

The cold, plus the recent fresh snow, made it a pretty damn good day to be on the hill. Too bad we had to spend the bulk of the morning on the gentler groomed slopes. All the apprentice groups seemed to have jumped right into the steeps a little before the trainees were really ready for it, and some of them were really showing that they needed a little more time working the fundamentals.

So, we spent the morning over on Multorpor, tweaking things and working on reinforcing stance/balance and their importance to good, smooth transitions in the handles an on the tail rope. I think it helped - they all looked like they had made improvement by the afternoon. Good day of training, and some of the stuff in the upper bowl was still pretty good skiing, even in the afternoon.

Day 19 was today. I'd gotten permission to take the day off because it'd been just DUMPING snow on the mountain the last few days. Fellow patroller NoPoGirl and her friend were already planning to ski, and invited me to tag along.

It was awesome. Snowed all day, a little breezy, but some freshies and wind-blown stuff were to be found all over the hill. Place was practically empty, and we just cranked out run after run. I saw Grant Myrdal (the photog from Day 14) over on Star, so we skied by to hopefully get a few shots taken. He managed to get a handful of each of us, which we got to check out on the big screen in the lodge at lunch. We called it a day a little early, but I wasn't complaining - Bex and I recently started P90X and today was Plyo X, so my legs were pretty beat anyhow.

Ski Days 14-17: Some Me Patrol, Some Ski Patrol

2011-02-20T17:08:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been too long, so much of the detail will be absent from the recap of the last 4 ski days.

Feb 11th: Took the day off from work to go skiing. This was a brilliant plan, really. The roads were in good shape, there was plenty of snow, it was sunny and relatively warm. Not much goodness in the off-groom, but the groomers at Meadows were in fantastic shape. The mountain was pretty much empty, so I started off making gigantic high-speed turns off the Vista chair for a good chunk of the morning. Later in the morning, I decided to head off over to Shooting Star, but I saw that the area photog was shooting on the face at Mt. Hood Express, so I decided to find out what the deal was there. I made some decent turns there and stopped to chat with the guy.

His name is Grant Myrdal (on the web: grantmyrdal.com), and he's one of those really cool guys who has a neat job and enjoys it a great deal. We talked a little about what he does and what drives his decisions to shoot where, etc. He told me he just shoots and shoots and shoots, and people can either check the photos out online and order, or drop by the lodge in the afternoon and do the same on the big screen. Then he recommended I make a few more runs and make some larger-radius turns next time.

So I did. And it was FUN. I made about 4 runs through there, talked to Grant a little more, then set off for Shooting Star.

My best shot. Photo by Grant Myrdal

I made a bunch more runs, then dropped in to the lodge to check out my photos. Grant was still uploading when I arrived, so we shot the breeze for a bit. Once the upload completed, we reviewed my photos, and I picked a few to buy. I skied a little more after that, and called it a day kind of early. I had skied pretty much non-stop, so I felt good about packing it in around 2:30.

Feb 13: Training with C Team. Um...it was windy. That's about all I can remember. One of our snowboarders had kind of an unsettling first run with a loaded toboggan, where she felt like she was on the edge of losing control, but she regained her composure and really just kicked butt the rest of the day. The skiers continued to make good progress, but they all still need to square up their shoulders. I think they've figured out why, now they just need to do it.

Feb 18: More 'Me Patrol' at Meadows. I took another Friday off work, and had hoped to ski with Barkernews, but he couldn't get the day off work to join me. I had a late start, and was just generally bumming the whole day. I was having a great time while I was skiing, but I just didn't feel well all day. Kinda like having a mild cold, or maybe really faint flu-like symptoms. Every chair ride seemed like a chore that I didn't want to do, but once I got off the chair and making turns, that all kind of went away. My right foot was hurting a lot, though, and after a while the skiing just wasn't enough to cancel out how I was feeling. I should have gone up on Wednesday or something. I did manage to find some stuff out in the canyon, though, and had a great time shredding it. But at the end of the day - which for me was about 1pm - there just wasn't enough fresh epicness to cancel out my illness and the fact that I was flying solo again.

Our view of Mt. Hood, from the top of Ski Bowl

Feb 19: Training with B Team. Holy crap, was it windy. We were training at Ski Bowl yesterday, and it was CRAZY windy. Upper Bowl was on standby, with the telemetry reporting 60+mph winds. Since it was that windy at the bowl, it was worse at Meadows and Timberline. I took a look at their Twitter feeds, and it sounded like all of T-line was on wind standby for a large chunk of the day, and the same for Meadows. Ski Bowl was super busy, and there were two races going on. But we managed to get some really good training in. Not only that, one of the regular B Team coaches was shooting some video, so we got to review and critique some of the training afterward. B Team are definitely a fun bunch, and they work hard as well. I'll skip some of the details to protect the guilty, but there were some...interesting moments unloading toboggans from the chairlift. Nobody was hurt, and no equipment was damaged, so all's well that ends well. And they definitely learned from it.

B Team!

Slacker

2011-02-19T19:38:00.001-08:00

I haven't posted about my ski days in a while. I'll get to it.

Ski Day 13: Big Windy @ Meadows

2011-02-05T19:11:00.000-08:00

I know they've had days of higher winds at Meadows, but I'm calling today's post "Big Windy" because I got to witness the destructive power of the wind firsthand. But I'll get to that in a bit. Don't worry, nobody was hurt, and we didn't have to evacuate a chairlift.

Today was my first time back with A Team since the opening weekend of training. I hadn't seen them ski/ride in about a month, so I was excited to see their progress. I'd been told they were really doing well. The rain changed to snow just about the time I pulled into the patrol building in Govy, so I was hopeful that the "chance of snow" that was forecast would hold up.

It kinda did. But it wouldn't be all snow all the time. We got a little sleet, a little rain, and a whole lot of wind.

The A-Teamers were almost as good as advertised. They were handling things pretty well, but it's my personal opinion that they need to take a day and go back over some fundamentals. Especially now that they've run loaded toboggans, since they now have the experience of trying to control all that extra weight. I gave them my usual feedback (get the upper body square to the fall line, get the feet apart, etc.), since the skiers on the team were all pretty much having the same problem. It was working, until they got into some steeper stuff and probably panicked a bit. Once they trust the stance/technique, they'll be money. They'll get there.

After a bunch of runs over on 3-D and O-Ring, I was skiing down behind the group, watching them run the toboggans on the flats, when I heard and felt a pretty mighty gust of wind. I was approaching the trail merge where Voyager/Nettie's meet, so looked uphill to my right to ensure nobody was coming down the hill. I just happened to see what I estimated to be about a 70-foot-tall tree snap off about 10 feet above the base and fall to the ground. The snap from the breakage was LOUD, as was the mighty WHUMP of the tree impacting the trail. I skated, then hiked uphill to make sure no one had been hit, but I already knew nobody had, since I saw nobody to my right when I checked at the trail merge.

I radioed it in, and had a couple apprentices grab some nearby signage while I directed traffic. Another patroller in the area came up with a drill so we could get the signage in the ground, and they later set more markers. They ended up having to shut down Shooting Star due to the wind hazard. I wasn't surprised by that - there were some trees near the lift that were swaying an awful lot after the one I saw went down.

After lunch, we worked on some even steeper terrain, since the team's coaches felt the gang could handle it. They did fine, but we had a couple of instances where things got a little dicey. Nobody was hurt, but a couple apprentices sure owe one of their compadres a pitcher of beer at least. With fatigue setting in, the team's coaches made the call to pack it in for the day, and I was glad they did. I'd developed a pretty nasty headache by then. The weird thing about it was it didn't hurt when I was skiing - only when I stopped or sat on the chairlift.

I'd brought a Terrible Towel up with me, ready to give it a twirl and chant "Here we go, Stee-lers, Here we go!" at any Steelers fans I saw on the hill wearing their gear, but I didn't see any. Oh well. Didn't see any Packers fans, either, so I'll chalk it up to game-day preparations or something.

Ski Days 11 & 12: Sunny Training and Foggy Captaining @ Timberline

2011-02-01T22:08:00.000-08:00

Got lazy again and haven't posted, sorry about that. But back on the 22nd, I actually had a patrol day where I didn't need my pack cover. Or rain gear of any sort. I even had time to take some pictures.

Ski Day 11 was a freakin' GREAT day. Clear skies, warm temperatures, and pretty fast snow awaited us, and I was guest-coaching with B Team. They're a pretty fun bunch, and they all seem to 'get it' - not just in terms of picking up the stuff we're trying to give them, but understanding the big picture. They have a good set of coaches, too, so I don't know how much more time I'll get to spend with them this season. I hope the 22nd wasn't the last time before they test out.

We worked on a lot of sideslipping fundamentals and some carving work throughout the day, and the morning was focused more on 'rope-a-goat' - drills without the toboggan where we get them used to handling the tail rope of the toboggan. Tail-roping is the toughest aspect to get totally wired, so we're giving extra emphasis on it and starting early.

They did get to drag empty toboggans around, too, and learn how to upload them on the chairlift. Later in the day, a couple of them got to feel what it was like to lock the handles and have a little weight behind them. It was a good exercise to help stress the importance of all the stance and balance stuff we'd given them earlier in the day.

Ski Day 12 was last Sunday, and while it started out beautifully, the weather didn't stay that way. I was Hill Captain for the first time at Timberline, and things there are a little different than at Ski Bowl. I think I did okay for my debut there, but there are a handful of things I'd like to do better next time. I had a good crew, though, which is always a good thing.

It was a pretty busy day, and the terrible visibility on the lower part of the mountain didn't help things. I don't know if any of the cases we had could be attributed to the visibility, but it certainly seemed like it could have been a factor if people weren't careful. I ended up spending a lot of my time covering for some bump shifts, since we had so many cases in the late morning to mid-day. But I managed not to botch anything up, sweep went okay, and everybody made it back for the debrief.

I did manage to visit with the training group very briefly, and it was nice to see the C Teamers again. Looked like they've continued to make progress.

Ski Day 10: Drenched at Ski Bowl

2011-01-19T14:48:00.000-08:00

I'm writing about this one only because it happened. The only thing spectacular about coaching this past weekend was the amount of water that fell from the sky as rain and didn't freeze.

We knew going in it was going to be a VERY wet training day. To their credit, C Team generally had a good attitude almost all day. We did a lot of work in the morning, since the decision had been made to close off portions of the area to preserve the snow coverage. Since there were almost no guests on the hill, it probably made little or no difference.

The skiing over off the Multorpor chair was excellent, however. Despite the rain and warm temperature, the snow was fast and held up well. We got a lot of good work in doing carving and sideslipping drills.

But the rain just kept coming, and much of the day it was a downpour. We could barely hear ourselves think over the sound of the rain hitting hoods/helmets. I don't think I've skied in that much rain in my life, and we've had some doozies back at Smugglers' in my youth. Not to mention the day we closed Ski Bowl after I completed my ski patrol training that year. Brutal.

The one positive was that it reminded me that I'd forgotten to wash my parka and pants with the NikWax stuff at the end of last season, so I did that as soon as I got home. Might be time for a new parka next season.

Ski Day 9: First Training Day @ Ski Bowl

2011-01-13T15:41:00.000-08:00

Saturday the 8th was our first on-hill training day with the current crop of ski patrol apprentices, and it started out pretty well. I joined A Team at Ski Bowl, since they were minus a coach, and we headed off into the fresh snow.

We helped out with the area opening, like the training teams usually do, and I got tapped to drag an empty toboggan over to the Warming Hut. This prompted a quick Toboggan Anatomy 101 session at the Palace before we took off.

Once we finished helping with opening, we rounded up to Rescue Center to give the apprentices their orientation there, then headed off to the Outback. The visibility wasn't what you'd want when doing the "Peak Hike", but the fresh snow looked to make the trip worth it.

For the most part, it did. We skied the West Boundary, and with some exceptions, the fresh stuff was nice. Underneath, there was some crusty stuff, but by and large it wasn't too shabby. After we finished some "area orientation" in the Outback, we headed off to get to work. The first few days of the on-hill training is focused on building the fundamental skiing/riding skills that will facilitate effective toboggan-handling, so most of what we worked on were carving and sideslipping drills, focusing on correct balance, stance, and movement for transitions.

One of the guest coaches we had up with us is a PSIA-certified ski instructor, so we were getting some really good instruction and feedback for our apprentices. The coaches even picked up some new drills to try out. The improvement in the apprentices' skiing was pretty remarkable for just the short time we worked with them.

The afternoon got a little interesting, as the "witching hour" took effect and pressed some of the coaches into service. We had three area guests get injured on the same run, within minutes of each other, so the apprentices got to watch several cases through the assessment and transport phases. I got to do the transport on one of the cases, providing the apprentices with a good example of what their end product will look like. Lower Reynolds isn't a challenging run, by any stretch, but it was a good place for an easy skill demo.

We got through the cases just in time for almost all of the skiing apprentices to join the sweep team for the Outback closure. The snow that fell throughout the day made most of the Outback run pretty enjoyable, and a nice way to finish the day. After sweep, it was off to the Palace and time to head back to Govy and Charlie's for paperwork and de-brief.

Ski Day 8: Dumping at the Bowl

2010-12-30T18:36:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, I was back on duty as the Hill Captain at Ski Bowl. Most of the crew from Monday's extended patrol day were back, as well as a couple extra folks including one of the guys from my OEC class. It had snowed quite a bit overnight, and the drive up was on packed snow all the way from Sandy. I thought about chaining up, but the Sorento was handling things just fine at 35mph, which was about as fast as anyone in front of me dared to go.

We had a bigger crew today than on Monday, but the previous day's rain combined with all the new snow overnight made progressing through the opening assignments a slow task. Everything seemed pretty well stuck in place, and there was rime ice on every inch of rope on the hill. Things were further slowed by the dud explosive from the early avalanche control (AC) work, which kept us off the upper bowl.

Since things were moving slow and I couldn't get up top anyway, I went down to help the lower bowl opening assignment get their work done. I checked, cleared, and re-set quite a good amount of rope line. It wouldn't have been much work, but the height of all the rope needed to be adjusted for all the fresh snow. Tedious, but important.

We were light on bodies up top when the upper bowl chair was finally cleared to load, so I headed up to help out. I relieved one of my patrollers who was on outback gate duty, explaining to the anxious public that the outback was still closed, and that it wouldn't open until all the AC work had finished. It was pretty cold up top, but I managed to stay warm whilst chatting away with the folks who kept asking when we'd open up the outback. I saw a couple off-duty volunteer patrollers, as well as a couple off-duty paid patrollers - one of whom was the guy who helped us out of the woods on Monday night. He definitely earned his turns today.

I finally got word over the radio that I could open up the outback, and I damn near got trampled to death by the crowd that had amassed. I had told them I would need to pull the rope gate, but as soon as I said, "we're opening 'er up!", everyone started rushing me. I finally got the rope out of the way, and got clear of the Running of the Bulls. Crazy. I can understand it, though - all that fresh snow, untracked except for the 4 patrollers who were doing the blasting to make it safe.

I stayed out of the outback, though. I was going to head out there, but kept hearing that the snow wasn't that great in some spots and that the Log Road out of the outback was still pretty dicey. I guess there was plenty of break-thru crust out there that could kind of mess you up, and it was kind of wind-scoured in a lot of areas. I ended up finding a lot of nice little stashes of sweet pow in the upper bowl area, either around the trees or on certain faces of the bowl. Pretty much anywhere you skied was nice, though. There was enough fresh on top of the groom on Reynolds that I was getting face shots even over there.

My day was largely uneventful, but my patrollers sure got busy. We kept getting radio calls for all sorts of things - dropped ski poles, missing persons, and of course, injuries. The handful of cases we had were fairly routine in terms of the type and severity of injuries, but some of the circumstances of the involved folks made things kind of peculiar. Everyone was handling all the craziness very well, and I'm proud of the crew I had up there.

The missing snowboarders that KGW reported on yesterday was kind of a crazy story. I don't know how much I can really go into detail, but there was a bit more to the story than was reported. One of my guys got the initial call from the tickets booth at the east side of the area I think sometime after 2pm, and after a lot of radio and telephone conversations with the paid patrol staff, we had started to prepare to coordinate a search operation. Turns out the missing boarders' friends had already called 911 and thus already gotten the county sheriff's office involved. Since the missing people were out of bounds, that's ultimately who would be doing the SAR work anyhow.

I coordinated our sweep of the outback and had one of my experienced guys lead it while I manned the radio at Rescue Center and waited to be relieved by the night crew. The radio chatter about the missing 'boarders kept on going after we were relieved, but before we packed up and left the Palace for the evening, it sounded like things were fairly well in hand.

Traffic, on the other hand, was fucking terrible. Going over the bridge over US-26 to get back to Govy, I looked uphill towards the east, and it was a colossal parade of headlights. Good thing I'd been invited to have a beer with some friends staying in Govy. I left there about 7:30pm and while pulling out of Govy was easy, I quickly caught up to the tail of the parade creeping down the mountain at 20mph. It's nights like that one that I wish I had a place up there to stay.

Ski Days 6 & 7: Routine at Timberline, Outback After Dark at Ski Bowl

2010-12-28T12:51:00.000-08:00

Holidays got me slackin', y'all. I patrolled at Timberline back on the 18th, and aside from some confusion during sweep, it was largely unremarkable. Just a regular patrol day for me, no hill-captaining. The only thing out of the ordinary was that I got to give another one-off tryout. This time, one of our associate patrollers who wants to learn the art of toboggan-handling and become a hill patroller needed a ski test. I spent a shift in the first aid room early in the day, then took the associate out for some ski drills to see if she had the skills to make it in the hill training program. She skied pretty well, so there's one more candidate for toboggan training this season.

After Christmas, I like to take the week off and patrol a couple of midweek days. The weather is usually better than on the weekends, so I figure the patrol days will be good ones. Yesterday was forecast to be snow showers all day, and that's pretty much what we got. I was hill captain, and my crew consisted of a good group of folks who I've patrolled with before, plus a couple newer faces - including one of my D-team guys from last season.

We were a little understaffed, but we made it work. We had one patroller pretty much camp out at the first aid room, but we made sure she wasn't stuck there all day. There was a lot of fresh snow, so opening assignments took a little longer than usual. I think it was close to 10:30 by the time we hit all the tower pads, rope lines, and other stuff.

One of the off-duty pro patrollers caught up to me in line at the bottom of the upper bowl lift and asked if I'd get someone to re-fill one of the 5-gallon water jugs up at Rescue Center. Seeing as everyone else was busy, I decided to do that myself. I strapped the empty jug to my pack, and set off down Skyline, since this was still early in the day and nobody had checked the rope lines down there. I should have had someone take a picture of me with that water jug on my back. I imagine it looked ridiculous.

I got it re-filled and headed back up. 5 gallons of water in one of those water-cooler type bottles is unwieldy at best, but I managed to get it back up to RC. Thankfully, I ran into another off-duty patroller - this time, one of our volunteers - at the bottom of the upper bowl chair, and he took my pack and poles to make it easier on me. We had a good chat about how things were going, and I pretty much ended up spending the bulk of the middle of the day manning the radio at RC. I snuck out for a couple runs in the fresh stuff once we had a couple more folks up there. The snow was really excellent in the upper bowl, and it felt good to finally make some turns for myself.

After getting in a little tree patrol in upper bowl, I went back in to RC to organize the Outback sweep. The original plan was that I'd stay in RC and man the radio until we were relieved by the night crew. That fell apart pretty rapidly, as we got a call literally in the same minute the sweep team started out the door. After a brief discussion, I decided that since we would need to take a Cascade 350 out there (one of the 4-handled toboggans), and I was the most experienced with the 350, that I would go. I took my D-teamer with me, and I took the tail of the sled, since running the 350 in the front isn't all that different from the regular 2-handled toboggans.

We got to the patient, who had a knee injury, just near the 5 Lakes Basin sign in the outback. I had my driver flatten out a spot for the toboggan, and decided I would keep it in place. One of the sweep team came by to help my driver splint the patient and load him into the toboggan. Once my driver was ready, we started off, with the goal of getting to the traverse we could see in front of us. I knew that if we could stay high enough, we could make the traverse, and it would empty us out onto Bob Strand's Downhill, which would likely be a much easier route than taking the toboggan all the way down to the Log Road. The Log Road sounded like it was a nasty trip down, so we wanted no part of that.

But we couldn't cut up high enough to make the traverse. I knew we could get down to Kelly's Cut, which empties out onto the bottom of Downhill, kind of on the low side of Powder Keg. We headed down Upper Cutoff, and onto Kelly's Cut.

Kelly's Cut isn't exactly a good trail to take a toboggan on. It's a really narrow traverse, and not really much of it is downhill. In fact, the parts that aren't flat are kind of uphill. We were making really slow progress, and I got to thinking we could use another patroller to help move things along. I had radioed for help, and the pro patroller I spoke with kept insisting that I was taking the wrong path, and that I would end up being stuck on the cliff band that separates the main part of upper bowl from the outback. I was pretty sure we were in fact on Kelly's Cut, but the seed of doubt had been planted.

Some poachers almost hit us as we were trying to figure out exactly where we were and how best to continue. Some of our sweep team managed to catch up to us, so we had them help out for a bit. One of them took the handles of the toboggan, and we sent the other one to scout ahead to make sure we were going to end up where I thought we would. I was really dreading having to figure out how to turn the toboggan around and get down the fall line and down to the Log Road. If we were where I thought we were, then doing so *would* have stranded us on that cliff band. I decided to press on, but progress was dreadfully slow.

It was starting to get a little dark, and after having my first driver dig out a little bit of the trail for us, I could see we weren't too far from the lights of the upper bowl, so my confidence grew a little bit. Once our scout radioed back that we were in fact on the right track, I was feeling a lot better about getting the patient out of the outback safely. In the meantime, one of the other pro patrollers was making his way to us to help out. We tried to signal him with whistles, but he couldn't hear us. I told him the path we had taken, and he finally saw the toboggan tracks and found us - on Kelly's Cut, exactly where I thought we were.

After more digging, pushing, and pulling, we reached the corner where we could see the lights and the chairlift in the upper bowl. Once we got around to Powder Keg, the pro patroller took the front handles, and I stayed on the back. We were literally and figuratively not out of the woods yet, but he and I quickly picked out a route through the trees on Powder Keg and then finally onto Dog Leg. We paused a bit to catch our breath, then headed on down. Some of the sweep team had waited at the bottom of Fire Hydrant, and I was very happy to finally be almost at the bottom.

We got down there, and the pro patrollers towed us in the rest of the way, up to the first aid room, via snowmobile. Thankfully, they took over the case from there, handling all the paperwork and stuff. The patient was a real trooper through it all, and was very appreciative of the effort to get him off the hill, even apologizing for getting hurt out there. We gave him the usual "no need to apologize, it's our job..." lines, and after a quick hand-off of the case to the pro patrol, we headed off to the Palace.

We started the case somewhere around 3:30, when sweep began, and I think it was about 6:15 by the time we arrived at the Palace. What a long day. Beers and cheers, then paperwork and getting all the radios and transceivers turned in and locked up.

And I'm going back up to patrol again tomorrow.

Ski Days 4 & 5: Waterlogged Tryouts, Damp Calibration

2010-12-13T11:21:00.000-08:00

The first of (hopefully only) two back-to-back day weekends on the patrol started out with a nice wintry morning at Ski Bowl for the patrol's annual tryouts. I was one of many evaluators for the ski-test portion of the day's activities, and it was looking like it'd be a nice snowy day on the hill. But we knew it would switch to rain at some point in the day, so we weren't getting too excited about the new snow.

I got paired up to evaluate with one of my first coaches on the patrol, a guy we call "Tool Time" who patrolled at Smugglers' when he was going to school at St. Mike's in VT. After meeting some of the new candidates, we sat around for a bit waiting for the interviews to finish so we could take our first group over to Ski Bowl to put them through their paces. The snow changed over to rain before we even finished our first run, and our evaluation cards were soaked pretty quickly. We ended up having to improvise with our "Rite in Rain" notepads.

Tool Time and I were "lucky" enough to also have the last group of candidates for the day's tryouts. So, after we finished our first group, we went inside to try and dry off a little bit. This didn't really work. We got our eval cards for the group, and got back out on the hill. We tried to move things along a little quicker the second time around, and I think we managed to do that. After going over all the scores and making sure we had accounted for everything we did, we finally got back over to the patrol building in town and finished things up.

I got home, peeled off all my wet clothes, pulled everything out of all my pockets and tossed it all in the dryer. I had other pairs of gloves and goggles ready in case they didn't dry out (didn't want to over-'cook' the gloves, so was cautious with the dryer), but I didn't need 'em.

Sunday was the coaches' calibration clinic, where we get all the toboggan coaches together to get on the same page regarding everything from the paperwork aspect to the points of emphasis for the season. This year, we spent a little less time talking, and headed out to Meadows for the on-hill part. We expected rain and wind, and we got it, though not as bad as I figured. It was good to be out there, and aside from having to wipe off my goggles constantly, it wasn't a half-bad day after all.

We have a couple of PSIA instructors on the patrol, so we got them involved in our calibration clinic. They were able to provide a little more perspective on the teaching process as it relates to skiing fundamentals, as well as show us old dogs a few new tricks. As good a skier as I am, I picked up something I could work on, too. I can't wait to get out there and start coaching.

Ski Day 3: Dog Day Afternoon

2010-12-05T22:05:00.000-08:00

Today ended up being one of the wackiest days I can recall in my relatively brief patrol career. But we'll get to that later. For anyone reading this who was there, the post title is probably enough.

I got an early start today, mostly because of a mild case of nerves, or more accurately a stronger than usual desire not to be even a tiny bit late. Today was my first day as a Hill Captain on the Mt. Hood Ski Patrol.

For the uninitiated, the Hill Captain's job is essentially to lead/coordinate the efforts of the usually dozen-plus volunteer ski patrollers for the day. It's a bit of paperwork, plus ensuring everyone has what they need to do their jobs (radios, working passes, transceivers if the avy danger warrants, etc.), plus making sure assignments and tasks are covered, and be the Shell Answer Man (or at least know where to find the answers). More or less. A great crew of patrollers makes the HC's job a walk in the park, and today we had a great crew. I needn't have worried about much.

My stellar crew included Barkernews and NoPoGirl, who were doing one of their split-shift days, where they each do a half-day patrolling and spend the other half with their adorable daughter, Hazel. They're both excellent patrollers, and I was also blessed to have a host of other very experienced patrollers, including 3 guys who I've worked for on countless occasions when they were Hill Captains, and even a former President of the patrol. I knew some of the rookies we had today from helping train some of them last season (and I had worked with some of them already this season), so I had confidence in them as well.

By and large, the day was pretty uneventful. Only 2 cases all day, which wasn't much of a surprise, given how few guests came to Ski Bowl today. The cold and the hard-pack probably kept people away, but with decently-tuned skis/boards, there were good turns to be had on the groom. We did some avalanche transceiver practice, which is always a good thing to do regularly.

But things got weird in the afternoon. The short version is that we added "Animal Control" to the list of tasks.

Apparently, today was a popular day for people to bring up their dogs and let them off their leash. We had one patroller basically chasing dogs for the bulk of the middle of the day. This one pooch must have been some kind of endurance champion, as it had covered a ridiculous amount of ground - almost the entire eastern half of the ski area. Once the first one had been corralled, it wasn't long after that a second loose dog was called in. The same patroller who had worked the first dog case got on the second one as well. On top of that, we had yet another off-leash pooch a little later on. This time it was a couple of cross-country skiers that had their dog with them, but at least this one didn't run all over half the area. Lots of 'guest education' happened this afternoon, with regards to dogs and leash policy.

Once the canine misadventures were behind us, things quieted down for the rest of the day. We had an unplanned early closure of one of the lifts (decision of the area, not mechanical), which we adapted to fairly quickly, and once relieved by the paid patrol night crew, we were done after sweeping the closed lift. Paperwork, check in radios, hand out vouchers, do a little de-brief, and call it a day. Great work from everyone.

Dusting Off The Blog, Ski Days 1 and 2

2010-12-04T20:04:00.000-08:00

Wow. Again, Twitter and Facebook (and a host of other things) have kept me from updating here. With the ski season well underway for me, it's past time to start posting again.

The summer and fall have been busy, with kitchen remodeling and preparing for another season on the Mt. Hood Ski Patrol. I got all my refresher stuff out of the way fairly early, and started my season back on November 21st at Timberline. I would have preferred to get a free-ski day in before starting patrolling, but I just didn't get around to it.

Sadly, I've let my physical conditioning slide. Big time. Close followers will probably recall that I had lost about 22 pounds during my apprentice year with the patrol. I'd say I've put almost all of that back on since. The easy excuses are the shoulder and knee injuries/surgeries/rehab, but the bottom line is that I got lazy. I paid the price for that on my first ski day (no, I didn't get hurt). I decided that since the doc said I could go without the brace this season, I'd give it a shot.

Day 1 began with snowy conditions. I carpooled with NoPoGirl, and we picked up another patroller in Sandy on the way up. The coverage at Timberline was about average for early-season, with some bare spots here and there, but overall not too bad. I drew the Floodo opening with a patroller who was one of the apprentices I trained last season. Off we went, into the blowing snow and flat light that would pretty much be what we would deal with the whole day. Tower pads were what we started with, and when we got up top, we found that there was a good bit of equipment missing from the top shack. I sent my apprentice off to finish the tower pads while another patroller and I went to go get the equipment we needed. It was shortly afterward that I made a huge mistake.

I decided to drag the toboggan full of equipment (mostly just 2 backboards with their packs) down West Leg Road instead of down Uncle John's Band. This was incalculably foolish, since WLR is so damned flat. I did it because I had heard the bottom pitch of UJB was kinda sketchy, and I didn't want to hog up a good line. I had to skate to pull the sled, and basically wore myself out doing it. I think even if I had been in decent shape, I'd have been pretty wiped after pulling that sled over those flats. That sucked. The next run I skied after that, I felt my quads almost cramping up. Never felt that on the hill before.

Anyway, I did my dispatch shift, talked with the Hill Captain about Hill Captain-y stuff, since this is my first season as a HC, and went in for lunch. I don't remember if I helped out on a case before or after I ate, but I got to do one later in the afternoon. For those of you unfamiliar with Timberline, there's a run called Cruzer, that's well, a cruiser - really long intermediate run on the west side of the area. I don't know the linear distance, but it's long. Probably somewhere around a mile and change. I had to take a toboggan down Cruzer to transport a young skier with a knee injury. Most of the trip on Cruzer was with an empty toboggan, so it wasn't too bad. The brutal part was coming up.

Timberline is what I call an "upside-down" ski area, in that the base lodge area is above most of the skiable terrain. In years past, we used to run the toboggan down to the nearest lift, pull the handles off of it, put a special bracket on the chair, put the toboggan on the chair and take it up the hill. This is pretty time-consuming, and probably irritating to the public, since it takes maybe 5 minutes to load the chair, and another 5 or so to unload, so there are two lift stoppages. What we do now is get a snowmobile to pick us up and pull us up West Leg Road. Basically, you wrap a rope around the toboggan handle and the snow-mo pulls you and the toboggan up. It's like water skiing, but a lot more work.

The trip up was just brutal. I would guess it took somewhere on the order of 15 minutes, maybe longer. I was absolutely wiped at the end, and had to stretch my quads out while other patrollers unloaded the patient, as my quads had started to cramp up again. All of this caused me to miss sweep, but I would have been skiing so slowly on sweep that it was probably for the good of everyone else that I was inside.

Ski Day 2 was over at Ski Bowl on November 27th, and was a much better day. Still cloudy and flat light, but the recent snows had things in great shape. It wasn't too far into my day that I got a case. I had finally finished up my assignment on Lower Bowl, and went up to do my shift at Rescue Center.

When I got to the bottom of the Upper Bowl lift, I was approached by the liftie and a couple boarders, who told me they had a friend who had hurt his leg up on Calamity. I radioed it in, and they sent one of the newer patrollers to respond. By the time I got up top, another patroller was right there with a toboggan for me to take. I headed on down, helped the rookie get the patient's leg splinted, loaded him in, and let the rookie drive. He did well, from what I could see from the tail-rope position. We got him down the hill, and I headed back up top.

We had a guy come up for a one-on-one tryout, since he couldn't make the tryout date because of prior plans. Several folks really wanted to make sure we gave the guy a shot at getting into the training program, since he was one of the rare folks who was interested in both nordic and alpine patrolling. Over the course of a couple runs, I'd seen enough - the guy could ski and did it pretty well. With some minor tweaks, he'll be a good sled-driver.

I let him shadow me on my afternoon assignment over on the Multorpor lift, and it didn't take long before he got to see just what we do. I got a call that there was an injured boarder in the terrain park. We had just been talking about how the parks are case-generators, too. We were one run over from the park, but I found a nice little cut through the trees and we found the injury. The boarder had broken his arm, so into a splint/sling/swathe he went, and I took him down to the bottom in the toboggan that another patroller brought us. A quick snow-mo tow across the Lake Road to the west-side aid room, and that was pretty much that. I re-packed the sled, and took it back over to Multorpor.

The rest of the day was pretty mellow, more or less uneventful. So far, through two ski days without the brace, the knee is feeling just fine. Still gets a little sore by the end of the day, but I think that'll fade as the season goes. Even if it doesn't, I can live with that.

Back to Ski Bowl tomorrow, for my debut as a Hill Captain. Should be fun!

PS - forgot to post about Nuts & Bolts back in June. First day was crappy weather for the toboggan instructors' shop-talk session, but the second day was freakin' EPIC. I got to really crank and bank out on the west side of the glacier, and learned a bunch of stuff from the PSIA guy - not only about skiing better, but being better at watching people ski and picking out things they need to work on. Nuts & Bolts is a great weekend for patrollers to get together and work on honing ski & toboggan skills. Usually always the first full weekend in June, and we get patrollers from all over. I skied with some guys from Michigan at the one this year.

An Evening With The Ski Patrol

2010-05-09T00:04:00.000-07:00

Saturday night was the annual Mt. Hood Ski Patrol awards banquet. I hadn't "suited up" in a while, and Bex hooked me up with a sweet new red tie to go with the white shirt and dark pinstripe suit. I was feeling pretty dapper, and ready to go hang out and have a nice evening with my fellow patrollers.

The usual drill for me at these things is to get a certificate indicating that I put in a bunch of days, and get some kind of recognition for being a sled coach. The peculiar thing about the last couple years had been getting Honorable Mention for the Hill Patroller of the Year award. I know there are few better skiers on the patrol, but plenty of better overall patrollers. To get that at last year's banquet was baffling, as I'd only put in 12 days between coming back off the shoulder surgery and ending my season early with the knee.

All I'd really managed to do this year was stay healthy and coach some more sled-drivers. I kind of felt like I had a shot at Alpine Coach of the Year, since I'd had to 'fly solo' a few times this year and try to get D team ready for their tests with a more challenging training schedule thanks to a few days where we didn't get to really get much training done. Putting in as many days as I did, I figured on getting that certificate again, and figured to get a mention as one of the guys who'd done Senior S&T, both of which happened.

I was slightly disappointed that I didn't get Alpine Coach of the Year, but the guy who did get it was certainly deserving. He was one of the guys that coached me during my apprentice year, and I knew he was an excellent coach. What caught me totally by surprise was winning the Hill Patroller of the Year award.

A little while prior to that, the patrol president had read out a fairly moving story about the guy for whom the Hill Apprentice of the Year award is named. I got to thinking about the company I was in - I am a past recipient - and I have to admit I got a little choked up at the story. So, I was already a little emotional, and then was quite literally stunned to tears when I was announced as the HPotY. I wasn't bawling, but there were tears, and I couldn't compose myself enough to make a speech, even if I'd been asked to. It was all a little much.

I like to think I have a fairly long ski patrol career ahead of me, so it never really entered my mind that I'd be considered for the award in any of my first few years, much less win it in my 4th. I'm sitting here shaking my head as I type this.

Well, since I couldn't regain my composure and coolly dispense some humorous or heartfelt comments at the time, I'll take the time to thank some people here.

First and foremost, my wife. Without her support and understanding, I wouldn't have had the opportunity in the first place. Of course, I thank my parents for getting me into the sport I love so dearly in the first place, for putting me into lessons and joining the ski club and supporting my racing habit. Naturally, all my race coaches (Brian, Deb, Paul, Cas, Sandy, John, Heidi, et al) deserve tons of credit for turning me into a good skier. My friend and co-worker Jeff deserves all the credit for getting me interested in the patrol, and my coaches from my apprentice year for turning me into a competent patroller. And I can't thank my orthopedic surgeon and physical therapist enough for putting my shoulder and knee back together and putting me back on the hill. I want to thank all the patrollers I've worked with since joining - each of you has taught me something, and you all make it a joy to come up to the mountain 20-odd times a season to work and play.

If I forgot anyone, I'm deeply sorry. I also apologize if this is sappy. :)

Equally surprising was being designated a Hill Captain. I had thought that required some shadowing or on-the-job training, and for some reason I thought there was some minimum level of patrolling experience required (5 years?). I'm definitely honored, for that and for being named the runner-up for the Alpine Coach of the Year. Unbelievable evening.

Ski Day 26: May Day @ Timberline

2010-05-01T22:31:00.000-07:00

Bruce Campbell's voice rumbled from the Sorento's speakers as I pulled into a parking space in front of the patrol building in Government Camp this morning. I had forgotten all about the audiobook for "Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way", until recently, so I'd put it on my iPhone earlier in the week, listening to chunks of it on my commute. Unsatisfied with Saturday morning radio, I'd put the audiobook on, and since I was kind of running on fumes, I'd hoped the interesting part of the story would get me going.

It kind of helped. But the temperature and precipitation weren't what I had expected when I stepped out of the SUV in Govy this morning, so right back into Do-I-Really-Have-To-Do-This mode I went. Clearly, there had been snow overnight, but it was raining. "Ah, hell. Maybe it'll be snowing at Timberline," I muttered to myself, and trudged inside.

I had been expecting maybe one other hill patroller, and had received an e-mail earlier in the week from the APC for Timberline telling me I'd basically be playing Hill Captain today. I wasn't particularly looking forward to being short-handed in the first place, since there had been a decent amount of snow during the week, and that usually means there's lots to do. I was pleasantly surprised to see one of the triple-digit-patrol-number types (AKA old-timer), grabbing the 'pouch' for Timberline - this meant we had a 'real' Hill Captain. Things were looking up.

Bruce was talking about being fired from the film he was working on, but I had to cut him off when I parked the Sorento up at Timberline. I was right about the snowing, but it didn't seem like it was cold enough that it would snow all day. I grabbed all my stuff and headed in to boot up and get ready for the day.

One of the A-team apprentices was there, getting a shadow day in (shame on you, D-team - where were you guys?), so at least we had one more guy for sweep and another sled-qualified guy if things got dicey. With a limited number of lifts in operation (it is May, after all), there wasn't as much to do as there is on a typical day at Timberline. With the weather, it was looking like there wouldn't be many guests on the hill, so hopefully that'd mean few (if any) injuries. Of course, the low visibility and flat light seemed fully prepared to conspire against us in that department.

Having checked the forecast Friday, it looked like it was supposed to be between 27 and 29 up there today, so I went with my yellow wax rated for 25-32 degrees when I prepped the skis last night. When it started changing over to a kind of misting rain as we walked out to the Pucci lift, I got to wondering if I'd made a mistake. But once I got the skis on the snow, they felt good. Fast, actually. We finished our opening assignment (Pucci lift wasn't running, but the terrain was open to skiers, so we still had to dust off and adjust tower pads over there), and headed off to the very cruisable terrain over off of Floodo.

The visibility was better lower down, so we could really open 'em up and crank the big turns. The only thing that sucked was that we had to keep stopping to attend to some more opening tasks that appeared to have been left undone by whoever was opening Floodo. Good practice for the rookie anyhow. Plus, the faster we get the opening stuff done, the better. We were on the second bump shift, so we got to go turn and burn until 10:30. The mountain was fairly empty until a little before 10.

The day pretty much passed uneventfully, until the afternoon. With the early closing, we were preparing for sweep at 2:30, and naturally someone gets hurt just as we're getting prepared to sweep. Unfortunately, the liftie who called it in over the phone did a poor job of describing the location of our injured party, so it took longer to locate the person. At least it was something we could do a snowmobile transport for, and it didn't take long before our sweep was in full swing.

Aside from one person slipping past the sweepers somehow (I was standing around up top, since I was "dispatch"), the day ended without further incident. I never did feel 100% "into it" today, but I figure even a week off the hill isn't enough at this stage of the year for me to recharge. It's been a pretty busy season, particularly for a "comeback year". With nothing on my patrol plate between the banquet next Saturday night and the Nuts & Bolts clinics in June, it looks like I'll have the break I'm thinking I'll need.

Ski Day 25: Closing Time @ Ski Bowl

2010-04-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

Mt. Hood, from near the top of Radical

Despite all the late-season snow, we got word last week that this weekend would be the last for Ski Bowl this season. I was a little bummed, but I could understand it. At least it was looking like Sunday would be a nice day, weather-wise.

It was.

The upper bowl was SWEET!

It got pretty warm rather quickly, and it was definitely a vest day pretty much from the start. Brett and I had two of our D-teamers up for toboggan tests, and we picked up a guy from A team that had failed his test a while back. We got to make some awesome runs on the sweet groom on upper bowl, then got the guys working with the sleds for some last-minute coaching tips before taking their test runs.

The apprentices getting ready to take a toboggan up the lift...

Liftoff!

The skiing was just fantastic spring stuff all day long. I took a fairly long break after we got the guys tested (and passed), which kind of gave me a little second wind. I took a whole bunch of runs in the afternoon, and was feeling great.

Towards the middle of the afternoon, I decided it was the right day and time to go officially face my demons, AKA the East Traverse - the scene of the crime, as it were. A year and ten days prior, I'd blown up my left ACL over there. I wanted to see if I could pick out where it happened, and see if I could find the route I ended up taking out of the woods to help my rescuers reach me. It was kind of surreal. I skied it slow and cautious, but everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. I instantly recognized the site, and recalled what it felt like. I started grinning when I saw the little cut through the trees that I traversed to get to Oh Shoot, then the open spot where I turned on my uninjured leg to the runout that empties onto Accelerator.

I made a couple turns down Oh Shoot, then zipped out the runout onto Accelerator. I felt awesome. I was acting like I'd won a race or something - hands up, victoriously fist-pumping, big stupid grin on my face. I looked back and sneered at the run that had taken my ACL last season, muttered something that I won't repeat here through clenched teeth, and skied down to the lift.

I know, I know. Just a TAD melodramatic.

Made a few more runs, and it was time for sweep. The two D-teamers and I loaded up the remaining toboggans from Rescue Center with the spare backboards, the drills, and some other stuff, and headed on down to Multorpor. We thought that hauling the sleds down might have earned us a tow across the flats to the Palace, but only the toboggans got towed anywhere. We got to hike back. Beer awaited us, but we had to get the sleds inside, and then get our crap together and leave, since we were being told that the operations people wanted to close and lock the parking lot gate. Lame.

Ski Day 24: Senior Moments @ Bachelor

2010-04-13T18:51:00.000-07:00

Sunday was all kinds of cool for me. It was my first trip to Mt. Bachelor, for starters. I know what you're thinking... (Actually, I kind of dislike that phrase. Quite impossible, I'd have to imagine, to know that. Let's try again.)

I can guess what you might be thinking...how could I have not been to Mt. Bachelor yet? I've been out here for 13 years (oh HOLY CRAP, really?), and I LOVE to ski, so it really is kind of mind-boggling, but I just never got around to it. Until Sunday, when I went there for the regional Senior Ski & Toboggan test (I guess you could consider it post-graduate work for sled-drivers, or whatever kind of beyond-basic-skill-level type of thing you can relate to). I had to get up stupid early, drive up to Government Camp, and carpool from there with Doug (the other patroller from MHSP who was doing the Senior S&T test with me). Doug drove, since he has a pickup and we were asked to haul the toboggans back from Bachelor. I was certainly glad not to have to drive the full 3 hours and change from my place.

Anyway, we got there earlier than we'd planned, but it was looking to be a beautiful day. We met up with a patroller from Hoodoo (I think) that we had trained with a couple weeks ago, and then the rest of the candidates rolled in, as did the evaluators and advocates (apparently, you get to have someone 'in your corner' on the Senior S&T evaluation, in case something comes up during the evaluation that needs to be addressed). We went through a briefing about the day's planned events, and headed out on the hill.

Pretty much from the start, things were a little disjointed. The first instruction I recall getting was that we'd all meet outside the lodge and do some stretching exercises. This ended up meaning, "meet at the top of the lift and do some stretching exercises". Okay, no problem, the view was better up there anyhow. We were each assigned a number, which would indicate the order we'd go in for the evaluations. Doug and I were 1 and 2, respectively, so I guess you could say we had the advantage of doing most of our waiting around after we demonstrated our skills instead of before.

I wouldn't say there was added pressure for going 1-2. Doug and I both had a lot of confidence going into the test, since we had a good training session a couple weeks prior at Meadows. "Just a walk in the park, Kazansky," I said to Doug (that's from Top Gun, for you kids out there). I made sure I didn't say that too loud - I didn't want to be known as "that cocky jerk from Hood'.

Anyway, we did a warm-up run over off the Outback Express chair, and the snow was fantastic. Really good day for showing off. We started in on large-radius carved turns, and the inconsistencies in the directions we were given from one evaluator or advocate to the next started showing up right away. Normally, when we train, when you stop after a drill, everyone stops below the person that went before them. It's safer than stopping above. So that's what I did. The next guy stopped below me, and so on, but then we got told to change the order we were standing in, so we had to either sideslip down or sidestep up to re-shuffle the order. This was, of course, pointless. We all had numbers, so we knew what order to go in - it wasn't like it mattered where we were standing.

Anyway, the directions on which way to line up got flip-flopped at least once more before we even finished the carved turns portion of the evaluation. At least we got to have a little fun skiing in between some of the drills, some of it due to Doug and I lobbying one of the evaluators to let us ski this one pretty sweet pitch with fresh snow on it.

Once we got all the ski skills out of the way (Doug and I basically kicked ass), we went in for a break and then grabbed the toboggans to start the toboggan-handling part of the program. The weather had been changing quite a bit all day, but for the most part, the snow was getting softer and stickier towards the afternoon. The slightly-more-grippy snow made things a little easier, IMO. That, and the added fact that we were on trails that weren't as steep as the stuff on which we train our apprentices, made me feel like maybe we had the whole toboggan part sewn up before we started.

That pretty much turned out to be the case. Doug and I both continued to represent the patrol well, and at one point, we each got paired up with one of the weaker candidates, presumably to see if that would make a difference for them. The too-many-chiefs syndrome reared its head once again, with different people telling us to park the toboggans across the fall line at one point, and down the fall line at a later point, and then arguing about it. The poor guy trying to herd all these cats did the best he could, though, so my hat's off to him. Once we finally finished up with the evaluations, we hauled the toboggans down to the patrol room and went into the lodge to await our results.

It seemed unnecessarily dramatic, the way they had us go in one by one to this 'council of twelve' kind of table arrangement, but whatever. They asked me how I thought I did, and a number of exceedingly smug or arrogant things to say flashed in my mind (I was *this close* to saying, "are you kidding me?"), but all I managed to say was, "I felt good out there." I must have had a look on my face that indicated that I felt more like what I almost said, because I swear I heard one of them stifle a laugh. Anyway, they asked me something about how I felt the test was, if it was difficult enough or whatever, and I don't really think I gave a helpful answer. I'd had a headache most of the afternoon, and I just wanted to get my certificate, help load the sleds in Doug's truck, and get the hell out of there.

Despite how I was feeling physically, I was really pleased with how Doug and I represented our patrol. It was a good experience overall, meeting patrollers from other areas and getting a feel for how they train and work. And it was definitely nice to finally ski Bachelor. I really want to go back as soon as I can and check out the rest of the mountain.

Hey, look - I went a whole blog post about skiing/patrolling without mentioning my knee. Oh wait...dammit. :-P

Happy 1st Birthday, New Left ACL!

2010-04-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

One year ago today, I started the long road back to skiing. A month before that, I had destroyed my left knee quite handily in a stupid little crash on the way out to check out Scotty's Way (AKA East Wall) at Ski Bowl. I won't go over the whole thing again - if you want to read that story, go here.

And I won't recount the story of the surgery, either. That's here, if you're interested. This blog turned into The Knee Show for a while there, so there's plenty to read if you're bored.

No, today's post is more about celebrating the journey. I've acknowledged the great people who helped me get back in the saddle, not just for skiing just for the fun of it, but to be back on the mountain making a difference as a ski patroller and a toboggan coach for the incoming patrollers. They know who they are, and I thank them silently every time I'm up there making turns. Heck, sometimes I thank them quite aloud. Like last Friday, when I was in Heather Canyon and thanked my orthopedist (Dr. Montgomery) while the Barkers and I were grinning like idiots after ripping up a pitch of knee-deep pow.

My Physical Therapist has mentioned to me a few times that my own diligence was as much a factor as anything she did for me during PT. So I guess, "Go, me!"

I also have to give a nod to the folks at Genesis Medical, who fitted me with my brace, and Bledsoe Brace Systems, who made it. Hopefully, I won't need it next season. The doc said I shouldn't have to. I imagine that since it didn't take too long to be skiing with confidence once I got back into it, that it won't take too long to be comfortable without the brace. We'll see.

Sure, there have been days where I thought it was going to take forever to get things feeling right, and some days on the mountain where I thought maybe I'd rushed back too soon, but I'm pleased with how things turned out. One of the somewhat surprising side effects of all this has been that I feel like my skiing has improved. In large part, this is due to all the balance work that Amanda had me doing in PT. I'm more body-aware, and skiing more focused than I ever did previously. Skiers, I highly recommend adding a good deal of balance work to whatever workout routine you're doing, if you aren't already. Get yourself a Bosu ball, and a 6"x36" foam roller, and use them. You'll be pleased with the results.

I don't, however, recommend blowing your ACL as motivation.

Ski Day 23: Epic "Me Patrol" @ MHM

2010-04-06T23:14:00.000-07:00

I guess I should call it "we patrol", since there were 3 of us. But that sounds kind of odd. Anyway, I'm finally getting around to blogging about last Friday. My blogslackery knows...uh...well, SOME bounds. I guess.

After looking at the week's forecast after Ski Day 22, I told myself I absolutely MUST ski that Friday. Fortunately, my boss is awesome and didn't have any problem with me taking the 2nd off to go ski. Even more fortunately, because I prefer not to ski alone, a couple of super cool people that I know also took a 'mental health day' on Friday. Barkernews and NoPoGirl are even more dedicated to skiing than I am, so I was very glad when they agreed to carpool and make turns with me.

We got up there a tad later than we probably wanted to, but I don't think it mattered much to any of us once we started skiing. It was pretty much all shit-eating grins and whooping and hollering while we tore up the fresh snow. We managed a couple trips through Heather Canyon before the avy danger closed it, but we pretty much found awesome stuff to ski in everywhere we went.

It's such a freakin' BLAST to ski with people who are genuinely having a great time, and Friday was a textbook example. If they put that sort of thing in textbooks. And they should.

My only gripe was that I didn't ski with a backpack, so wasn't carrying a proper camera. I could have taken some shots with my iPhone, but with the weather (it was snowing and pretty damn windy), I wasn't terribly interested in taking it out of my high-tech waterproof case (quart-sized ziploc freezer bag).

I was having too much fun to give a damn about counting runs, but we packed it in kind of on the early side. I was kind of relieved that B-news and NPG had to leave a little early to get their daughter out of daycare - it got me off the hook for having terrible endurance. While the knee has been holding up well most of the time, skiing all that powder was more and different work than I'd had to do for a full day all season. We were all getting fatigued by the last couple runs, though, as evidenced by the falling...

...which reminds me of why it's awesome to ski with people instead of solo. I had made a couple sweet turns in some untouched stuff on 1 Bowl when I let myself get bounced a little too far forward, causing my right ski tip to plunge. The ski felt like it dug in, and it definitely released (felt like I walked right out of it) when I fell. I swear it felt like the ski just stopped, so I asked NoPoGirl - who was above me - to help look for my ski. We didn't realize, until he held it up, that Barkernews had my ski. It had torpedoed underneath where I had fallen, and shot down the hill his direction. He pounced on it, saving me from having to search for it. I skied down to him on one ski, which was probably as stupid as it was impressive. Okay, not all that impressive. I fell twice, strangely (to me) when I was turning on it as my downhill ski. *shrug*

Anyway, it wasn't long afterward that we decided to call it a day and head home. It was an absolutely freakin' AWESOME day of skiing. I'll let one or the other of my fellow powderhounds from Friday decide whether or not the trip back to town gets any blog attention. ;-)