What have I gotten myself into?

Well, it’s been a while, but that’s kinda how things go, isn’t it? For those of you who don’t have Facebook or have somehow creeped out from under a rock and immediately gained access to the internet, here’s a quick summary as to what I’ve been up to lately. I went to ranger academy last Fall in Flagstaff, Arizona and then spent the Winter in Park City, Utah ski patrolling at Park City Mountain Resort. After the season was finished (and it ended 6 weeks early for me due to lack of snow) I moved back up to Alaska and picked up where I left off and I got a dog. Was that a quick enough summary? Good, moving on.

So when I got back to Alaska, I moved into park-supplied housing, where I have been living for the past 8 months. I’ve been essentially housesitting for another ranger and his wife who were gone for training for the past year. I’ve been eating on their plates, breaking their glasses and using their furniture while they’ve been gone. It was kinda like moving into a vacation home where everything is already supplied! It’s been pretty cushy. I’m really fortunate to have such great friends that let me come in and invade their home completely unsupervised for a year. The dream had to end at some point though and I will be moving out on January 1, 2013.  So, where to go from here?

The park only has one place to live that is both winterized and allows pets and that is the house that I’m currently living in, so I have to go out into the dark and cold world of private rentership. I’m lucky enough to have found a neighbor across the street from me (as across the street as it gets in Alaska, probably about a mile and a half away) who is renting out his 2 story log cabin. He’s splitting it up into an upstairs and a downstairs apartment and it looks like I’ll be moving into the upstairs.

This cabin has some, well, character, you could say. It was last decorated (as far as I can tell) in the late 70’s (green shag carpeting, stained glass windows and 117”X74” mural of a woodland scene included). I’m not one who has ever been picky about décor, but the fiesta red raffia cabinet in the bathroom has to go.  The outside stairwell (my access into my portion of the house) has to my knowledge, has also not been updated since that date, which if you’ve ever been to Alaska, wood doesn’t fair well here and they’re beginning to look a little dicey. Other than that, it’s a great “big girl” house and I’m really looking forward to moving it. So, all things considered, I’m doing beyond all right. I’ll have 2 bedrooms, bath, kitchen and large living room. It’s almost like I’m a real person.

So along with all of this newfound power, comes the responsibility of furnishing it and making it a place for friends to always be welcome in. When I left California, I sold/gave away every piece of furniture I owned. I’ve been fortunate enough to have made it this far without furniture, but it looks like my luck has run out and it’s finally time to get some more. If you’ve never been to Alaska or even thought about Alaska, then you may or may not be aware of the cost of living differences and shipping challenges that we face here. Things are staggeringly expensive (my hummus sandwich and a soda cost $14 before tip at the local deli) and shipping large items nearly breaks the bank. I also live in a remote town and the largest “big city” is Juneau, which is 7 hours away by ferry or Anchorage, which is 16 hours away by car. This is all just to say that buying furniture can be challenging. My town of a few hundred is definitely not large enough to have a furniture store either (our hardware store has a few pieces, but see above for prices).

So what does a girl have to do to get some furniture up here? Well, buy it second hand (or in this town, more like 5^th hand), pay for it dearly or build it yourself. I have chosen the latter. I am going to build all of my own furniture from scratch.

Yeah, I’m about to go crazy. No, apart from time spent in my Uncle Ray’s woodshop as a kid where I pretty much did the sweeping and he did the building, I have absolutely no experience whatsoever. Anyone who has ever dealt with me and anything maintenance related can attest to that. I’m going to pick up some really good life skills and make some furniture that I can tell stories about for years to come. What have I gotten myself into?

This all really came about when I was aimlessly surfing the web one day and happened across this website called Knock-off Wood (http://www.ana-white.com). Ana, the founder of the website, is a homemaker (every pun intended) up here in Alaska and she encountered the issues I outlined above in getting furniture. She decided to start breaking down Pottery Barn, Anthropologie, Restoration Hardware and many more companies’ furniture into “simple” designs that supposedly “anyone” can do at a fraction of the cost of buying it from the store. I’m going to put that to the test.

I’ve pulled designs for 10 different pieces of furniture (bed, kitchen table, kitchen benches, coffee table, console table, end table, media center, desk, bed side tables and recycling center) and I am going to build them.  They are all pretty classic designs (see my Pinterest at rangerliz if you want to see the plans for yourself) and to my completely untrained eye, I think I can do this.

One lesson I have learned in life is that the value of friends’ skills cannot be undervalued. One of my coworkers here was a member of the carpentry crew last year and has done a lot of maintenance work in the park and he is conveniently unemployed and out of housing when I’m looking to begin the build, so I’m going to put him to work for room and board to teach me the basics. I figured feeding him and putting him up in my spare bedroom were a small price to pay to minimize the inevitable screaming and throwing of tools. Hopefully with his knowledge and the knowledge of others, (who have already begun teaching me the basics) we can make this happen.

I have begun somewhat maniacally researching building techniques, tools and lumber in a vain attempt to somehow be ready for what’s about to come. I spend a good chunk of time most evenings trying to plan for something that I know nothing about (I mean, what else am I going to do? It gets dark at 2:45 in the afternoon and it’s COLD. I’m not going out there.) I’m hoping that all of this effort will pay off in a relatively inexpensive and stress-free as possible build that gives me only half-wobbly furniture.

I spent a good bit of my day today breaking down my lumber costs and trying to figure out the best way to go about buying it (Do I go down to Juneau on the ferry and have to spend 2 nights until the next ferry?  Do I drive to Whitehorse, Canada and how much will the exchange rate, credit card foreign transaction fees, and taxes add up to? Will the road even be open because of the avalanches that time of year? Do I wait til I go to Anchorage for training in April? Do I buy it locally and just pay several hundred dollars more? Do I hope the magical lumber fairies drop it from the sky? The logistics go on and on. This is life in Alaska.) The answer is, TBD. Ick.

Well, hopefully this catches everyone up with me and will provide some more material for some blog posts to come. I felt like I was becoming redundant before, but I think there will be lots of challenges and learning for me to write about and for everyone to laugh at me for to come. If you feel like coming up here around late February/early March, I’ll put you to work helping me build some furniture!

Til then,

Liz

So it's been a while...

My bad folks. Sorry I've been slacking on the blog updates and thanks to everyone for getting on me about it.

I'm currently sitting in the Seattle airport in the exact same booth as when I was writing one of my original blog posts. I learned my lesson about the big backpack and this time I only have my computer bag with me. I trusted the airlines and checked all my climbing gear, so we'll find out if I'm ever going to see it again.

Back to my slacking. I can attribute the slackage to a few things. First of all, I lost my internet access at my cabin in Dyea, so getting to the internet became a much greater chore (about a 25 minute drive into town). Second of all, I didn't really have any more placeholders in my summer to write about. Things just kind of went on without any great big events. I'd hike into work and do my patrols and hike out and try to figure out how to kill time on my days off. "But you're in Alaska! Why aren't you out on epic adventures?" Primarily, because I was in Alaska, where the stakes in solo epic adventures are a little bigger. It's challenging to find someone who has the same 6 days off at a time as you do, or even the same 3 days off as you. In California or anywhere else, I felt comfortable enough with my surroundings to go out on backpacking trips by myself or to go and explore on my own. In Alaska, there are brown bears everywhere and traveling in the woods alone isn't always necessarily the best idea. The weather is also unpredictable and can be incredibly harsh, so if I were to get injured and not be able to hike out I could be in real trouble in a real hurry. So those are my excuses, take them as you will.

This summer passed by like a dream. It seems almost surreal that 3 months have passed since I graduated. If you told me it had been yesterday and I was just starting my trip up North, I'd probably believe you. I saw so many things including all of the wildlife, but it became commonplace to me so the daily sitings of eagles and seals lost its effect on me. Everything just blurred together, as I had a sneaking suspicion it might.

I'm currently in route to California, where I will pick up my car and finish my move to Flagstaff for academy. I left Skagway yesterday, got to Juneau last night, get to California today, drive to Flagstaff tomorrow, start academy Wednesday, drive back to California on Thursday for my friends' wedding, then drive back to Flagstaff on Friday night for academy on Saturday. It's going to be a wild week.

All of my past moves have been characterized by a moment of paralyzing panic somewhere on the road be it on an airplane or in my car, when it finally hits me that I'm about to do something new and unknown. I get totally overwhelmed and question myself as to why in the world I would ever voluntarily do whatever I'm on my way to. I guess my advice to my friends looking for adventures of their own is that the bigger the moment of panic is before an adventure, the more rewarding that adventure will be. I don't think I've ever been so nervous as when I drove up to Yosemite. That was the best summer of my life. I was fairly confident I was going to keel over and quit breathing on my trip up to Alaska, but I had a good summer there too.

I haven't had that this trip. Maybe it'll happen in the car tomorrow, but I don't think so. This time I'm confident in what I need to do and why. There is no question about my choice this go round. I've known for 5 years that this was a step I needed to take to do what I love. Sure, I'm a little nervous about the academy and having to "hang with the boys," but my training has prepared me for this. Again, this is all just talk at this point, we'll see how the drive goes tomorrow. 

So now we're caught up. I had a good summer and now I'm on to academy. Hopefully I'll be better now that I have easier internet access, but life is about to get crazy, so no promises.

Miss everyone and give me a call if you're in the area!
Liz

Alaska time

If you've ever watched the movie "Tuck Everlasting" then you might recall the scene where the Tucks teach Winnie about the speed that life moves at in their world. Things just move a little slower there and they take the time to do things right, because they're afforded that time by their lifestyle.

This is the way I feel about Alaska. We have the time to slow down and take our time doing things. We don't have any pressing obligations to hurry off to. We spend our days walking up and down the trail setting the markers for the route and patrolling the trail corridor. There's no rush to our work and really no time constraints. We move at our own pace. I take my time on the trail to look around and notice what has changed even in the few days since I last walked the trail.

When you take the time to slow down it's amazing to watch how nature changes so much every day. The first time I walked the trail, most of the upper half was covered with snow. Now there are only a few snow patches left and the flowers have really started to grow. It seems like every trip down the trail there are more Columbine blooming and the Cottonwood trees are raining their cotton down everywhere! In some places it looks like the snow has come back because there's so much cotton around.

Our trail mentality also relates to our town life. We rarely make time contingent plans and getting together is more of a "whenever you can stop by" idea. We have 21 hours of daylight now, so it's not like light is a commodity. All but 2 of the stores in town close at 6 o'clock, so there are no late night errand runs. We just accept you'll have to wait til tomorrow or depend on your neighbor for that cup of sugar. It's a really great life.

This lifestyle is exactly what I needed to step back from my life of going to school full time, patrolling and working 2 internships for the past few years. I needed to learn how to slow down and this is the perfect school for that. I take nightly walks by the river that flows by my house because I can and why not? I don't have tv or internet to distract me, so I take the time to read and go on daily hikes and runs. I'm learning to appreciate the simple life again. I wonder what it will be like this coming fall when I'm back in the "big city" and whether I can continue to feel this sense of contentment or whether it will be back to the old grind. Regardless, I will have my memory of my summer in Alaska and hopefully I'll be able to tap into the lessons I am learning here and bring some of them back with me.

Happy in Alaska,
Liz

When the rescuer became the victim

So I'm going to Tarantino this blog post. I'm ok and everyone else is ok. No one was ever in a position of imminent danger. All is well that ends well.

Now we got that out of the way, let me tell you what went down on Tuesday night. So, it all started as a very nice Tuesday in town. I went on walking tours at the park to learn a little bit more about the history and had a really quiet, but productive day. That afternoon, one of my coworkers was hiking out from our ranger station and sometimes rangers from town come out and give us a ride across the river in a raft to cut the last 1.6 awful miles off of the trail. We decided we'd help her out and go get her from the trail and then work on our boat handling skills on the way out (we just completed a swift water course last week).

We picked up my coworker and headed down the river and we decided to let her practice handling the boat because she didn't get to go to swift water training and she needed the practice. One of the law enforcement rangers sat across from her so he could take over the boat if necessary and help her steer. We rafted most of the river without incident and it was in the next to last bend when we ran into some issues. We saw the debris in the river coming up so we started to turn away, but it really didn't seem like big stuff so we weren't all that concerned about it. Our coworker was unable to steer the boat away from the debris, so at the last second, the law enforcement ranger took over and tried to spin us away from the danger. Unfortunately, it was too late.

What appeared to be a small stick that was just above the water line had hit our boat at just the right angle and ended up caught in the lacing of the bottom of our boat. (We have a self-bailing raft and the floor is essentially tied on to the rest of the raft). We spent about 15 minutes bouncing the boat and pushing of the debris and trying to make the boat move at all, but it quickly became clear that we weren't going anywhere. This is when all 4 of us who have all worked extensively with search and rescue began to face one our biggest fears head-on. We were going to have to call for help.

After you've worked in the search and rescue field for a while, many people start to develop "Rescuer Syndrome" where you will do anything to avoid calling your coworkers for help. We've seen so many dumb people doing dumb things and waste our time that we promise ourselves we'll never become a victim. This issue has actually lead to the death of several rescuers over time and I've been lectured on more than one occasion about the implications of this mindset and to not be afraid of making the call. Well, turns out I've got a little dose of "Rescuer's Syndrome".

We were coming up with elaborate scenarios where one of us goes swimming in 38 degree glacial run-off water and pulls the boat free, or maybe lasso a stick and pull ourselves off that way or maybe building a paper airplane and flying us out of there. Each scenario was as bad an idea as the next.

We had more debris below us so if someone went for a swim, first off they'd be apt to become hypothermic fairly quickly and secondly they might get caught on that debris, which is a really good way to die in a river.

Luckily one of the law enforcement rangers was big enough to step back from the situation and recognize that at this point we were all dry, fairly safe and everything else we were planning was a bad idea, so he made the decision to call for help. He caught some flack for it at the time, but when it comes down to it, it was absolutely the right thing to do.

So I really came to appreciate how long it seems it takes help to come after you've made the call when you're sitting on a river wearing chacos in Alaska. They responded incredibly quickly, but it still seemed like FOREVER. We had plenty of time to plan the funerals of our professional careers, plan on where we could move to so we could escape the morning gossip the next day in a town of 600, have some good laughs about how ridiculous this whole situation was and then realize again that we were really in trouble. Eventually, help arrived.

We saw the raft with the 3 rescuers show up and things started to look up. Fun fact: the best part about all of this is that our primary rescuer was our swift water instructor. All four of us jumped free into the rescuers' raft and were then brought to the gravel bar in the middle of the river. That's when the real work started. We thought that the boat would break free the second it was unweighted, but no such luck. We rigged a 9:1 mechanical advantage system and had 7 people pulling on it and the boat still wouldn't break free. (That means for every pound we pull, the system pulls 9 pounds on the boat). It turns out we did a really really good job of getting the boat stuck.

Eventually we got the boat out and successfully completed the river. It turns out the guys from the fire department who we called didn't even put a page out on the radio and came on their own time to help us out and to help us save face. We really appreciated that. In a town of 600, news travels fast.

Anyway, long story long, all was well and none of us were hurt. The experience definitely helped put our egos in check and remind us that we too are vulnerable even though we're usually on the other end of the rope. This was honestly a freak accident and we still don't know how we got ourselves so stuck. We bounce off of debris like that all the time and never have had a problem before. We've decided that we're going to chalk this up to experience and move on with our lives and hopefully we can go to the coffee shop sometime in the future without being met with, "Hey, aren't you that little red-headed ranger who had to get rescued?"

Oh so humbly,
Little red-headed ranger who had to get rescued

By the way, our caring friends who were oh-so-concerned about us, came out to the river to watch the show and videotaped the whole thing. I'm trying to get ahold of it right now and I'll put it up when I get a chance.

Alaska, I made it!

Wow, what a crazy week. Let me try and get you caught up. I started work last Tuesday and within 3 hours of showing up, I was on a train to Bennett, Canada for Rough Terrain Rescue Training with the Canadians. My park and the Canadian park that borders it work as one international park, meaning that the American rangers go over to Canada to patrol and the Canadian wardens come over the US side a lot as well.

Day 1 RTR: Myself and 6 other American rangers hopped on a train to Bennett after running around like crazy making sure we were all geared up for winter travel (ice axes, avalanche beacons, probes, shovels, snowshoes, gaiters, the whole nine yards). We took a beautiful train ride into Bennett, a historic gold rush town. When we arrived in Bennett, we were met by a few Parcs Canada wardens who took us to a boat, where we were able to drop our heavy packs. The 3 new rangers had to make a 7 mile hike into Lindemann City, while the rest of the staff took the boat up the lake to get there. It was a really nice hike and it was even better since we didn’t have to lug our heavy packs with us. We arrived in Lindemann City around supper time and we met the rest of our Canadian counterparts and began what became the food tour of Canada. I’m pretty sure I’ve never eaten so many cookies in my life. The Canadians have these cookies called Mr. Maples and they are AMAZING. They’re like grown up Oreos with a maple filling. I may be in love with Canada for their cookies alone…

Day 2 RTR: We woke up early and got started on our first official training session (which ended up being a 12 hour long training session). It was a full day of emergency medical services refresher lectures and hands on scenarios. I won’t bore you with the details, but it was a great day getting to see what the Canadian medical standards are and how our treatment and extrication options may vary for Canadians vs. other nationalities. For example, Canadians don’t have to pay for helicopter medivac, so it’s a much more feasible option for them vs. someone who has to pay the $16,000 bill for a flight to Juneau.

Day 3 RTR: We again woke up early and began the trek to the Chilkoot Pass, the border of Canada and the US. It was a long hike, 9 miles, where we were post-holing (breaking through the snow up to our hips) with heavy backpacks on. We finally made it about halfway up the pass to the Happy Camp Campground where the wardens put on some tea for us and we were able to warm up and put on dry socks before we made the big push for the pass. The snow had also become consistent enough to begin snowshoeing, which made a world of difference. We finally made it up the pass, despite the gusting wind that seemed to be blowing us back down the mountain. We all spent the night at the warden’s hut and played some great team-building games before we all passed out from exhaustion.

Day 4 RTR: This morning we were met with misting rain blowing sideways and the temperature reading about 40 degrees Fahrenheit (this is after we had some confusion over the Canadians saying it was 3 degrees outside, which as you can imagine lead to some reactions from the Americans. We quickly sorted out that it was Celsius and not Fahrenheit and that made a huge difference to our day). This day was our avalanche refresher day and we mixed classroom refresher lectures with scenarios outside. We all survived the morning, despite Mother Nature’s best efforts. That afternoon the full international staff headed over the border and down the “Golden Stairs,” a slope so steep we had to use ice axes to get down. We said good-bye to the Canadians after we inspected some search and rescue equipment that is stashed on the trail and the Americans headed on to Sheep Camp Ranger Station, my home for the summer. This place is the Taj Mahal of all backcountry ranger cabins. It’s a 2-story cabin where we have running water, hot and cold, lights, bunk beds, a full kitchen and most importantly a HOT SHOWER. I was completely blown away by this place. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. I really won’t mind going out on 8 day patrols now that I have a SHOWER! (pictures to come, I promise!).

Day 5 RTR: After getting a campground orientation, I hit the trail with another ranger to head back to the front country. It is a 13-mile hike out of Sheep Camp into Dyea, AK and let me tell you that I felt every step of it. This week I hiked 33 miles in 3 days and my city-slicker bones and joints were letting me know how they felt about it. Despite the aching joints, I was able to enjoy the trail, which is really cool because it’s littered with artifacts from the Gold rush. There are still shoes hanging out on the side of the trail from the late 1800’s. It’s crazy to think that stuff sticks around that long. It will be a great place to be for the summer. After surviving the long trek out, I went out for pizza at the Red Onion down in Skagway, with some of my fellow rangers. We had a great night out and I’m pretty sure pizza has never tasted so good.

Today I’m headed up to Whitehorse, Canada to meet up with one of the Canadian wardens to check out the local hot springs and do some shopping in “the big city” a huge town of 30,000 people. Tomorrow, on my time off, I’m going to swift water rescue training, which I’m fairly certain is going to be miserably cold, but I’ll hopefully survive and not drown.

I don’t have access to the internet where I live and I don’t get access to the internet all that often, so I apologize if I’m late on responding to you. I also don’t get cell service when I’m in the backcountry, so I’m totally out of contact, apart from park contact. If you need to get ahold of me, still feel free to email me or facebook me, because that will come directly to my phone, so hopefully I can get back to you sooner rather than later. I hope you’re all enjoying your summer and I’ll be back in touch soon!

Love,

Ranger Liz

And the adventure begins!

So this is going to be a really quick post because I'm currently sitting at the Seattle airport waiting on my flight to Juno. I graduated yesterday and I was so lucky to share that time with lots of friends and family! Thanks to everyone who came out, it really meant a lot to me. Hopefully some pictures to come soon!

I also successfully completed the mission of packing up the chaos of my room into my car and my bags for Alaska. Let me tell you, this was no walk in the park. After countless trips to the dumpster, countless attempts at pawning off all of my worldly possessions on my friends and two Salvation army movers damaging my floor moving furniture, it is complete. I now own about half of what I had before and I'm hoping the next few moves will be easier. It all easily fits into my car, whodathunkit! I even found a nice Alaska airlines employee who let me through with 2 pieces of overweight luggage without charging me! That made my day!

So, here I am. I'm carrying my ridiculously overpacked 65 liter backpack with my rope, climbing rack, harness, books and other odds and ends in it. I'm also rocking my new hiking boots because they were too big and heavy to get packed. I wish I could take pictures of all the people who are staring at me funny. It would make a priceless scrapbook to share with my kids someday. "Look kids, see how dorky your mom looked when she moved to Alaska...These are all the people who stared at her for it..."

Oh well, such is life. Alright, I should probably move down to my gate (I'm currently sitting at Wolfgang Puck's Express Kitchen, where I just had an amazing pizza, yes at 9:00 in the morning, don't judge). I'll reach the end of my flights tonight and then hop on the ferry tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get some great shots in and I can share those with you soon.

Until then,
Dorky traveler with a large backpack

I was raised in Tennessee, but I'm growing up on Ski Patrol.

Ok, this is the second nostalgic post in a row and I promise I'll knock it off, but recently I've been doing a lot of reflecting on how I've gotten to where I am and a huge part of that is patrol.

The summer before my senior year in high school my dad walked into my room one night and asked if I wanted to join our local ski patrol. It turned out that he had called Cataloochee Ski Resort in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, to see if he could participate in the doctor on-call program. The program included my dad, a cardiologist, skiing with a radio and he had to only respond to big incidents, but he got free lift tickets for the family. The patroller my dad spoke with tried to talk him into being a full volunteer patroller, but Dad told them that he wanted to spend time with me during my senior year and he might reconsider once I was gone. The patroller then told him that I should also join the patrol and we could go through the process together.

Dad came in that night and pitched the idea to me and I was all for it. It meant quitting soccer, which had consumed my entire life since I was 6 years old, but I was ready for a change. Soccer took me out of state several weekends a month, I had practice, workouts and weights every night of the week and I spent most of my seasons limping in and out of the orthopedic surgeon's office. Honestly, I was burned out and I needed a way out. Patrol was that way out for me.

I had never really thought about being a patroller. I started skiing late relative to most of my friends and I hadn't really ever skied seriously due to soccer. I thought patrollers were amazing skiers who could do anything and I decided that I was going to be like them. I knew I had a lot of ground to make up so I threw everything I had at the program to make it happen.

Dad and I went through Outdoor Emergency Care together and that was a really cool experience. Dad's a doctor, so he didn't have to take the course, but he chose to so he could spend time with me. Not many people get to take classes with their parents and seeing my dad in the classroom put a whole new spin on our relationship. He also had me stuck in the car with him on the 2 hour commute from Tennessee to North Carolina and back again, so we got to talk far more than we normally would have. Outside the classroom, studying with my dad and comparing notes was a lot of fun and I learned how to be a good student from the example he set. During our OEC class I was in school 6 days a week, (combining my high school and OEC time) but it was well worth the hard work. It all paid off when my dad and I passed our final exam on November 4, 2006. I was 17 at the time and I had no idea what lay ahead of me.

My senior year I learned so much about patrolling and my future started to take shape. That year my skiing improved about 1000% through attending weekly ski clinics, I gained confidence working wrecks, I learned how to run toboggans and build basic rope rescue systems and I started to realize that I wanted this to be part of my future. I chose a university close enough  that I could continue patrolling while going to school full time. I ended up at the University of Redlands in Southern California. It's exactly an hour from my dorm room to the slopes of Snow Summit and trust me, I've made that drive so many times now I have that down to the second.

I was welcomed into the Snow Summit Ski Patrol with open arms. I wasn't sure how I would be accepted at this bigger mountain, considering my humble skiing roots in North Carolina, but after a few shifts it was clear that I was in the right place. This larger resort offered me different challenges, like memorizing all the run names and locations which seemed utterly overwhelming at first, but under the patient guidance of the patrollers I finally caught on. Summit exposed me to new things like avalanche safety, different types of incident investigations and more sophisticated rope rescue systems due to the steeper terrain. After making some memorable "rookie mistakes" which I won't mention here, I learned my way around the resort and things starting feeling like home again.

New, unexpected doors have also been opened to me through the skills that I've learned on patrol. When I was out on a climbing trip in Joshua Tree 4 years ago, there was a bad climber fall and some of my friends and I were first on scene. We were able to work the accident for 4 hours before Joshua Tree Search and Rescue showed up and the skills that I've learned in OEC fit perfectly into the SAR system and we worked as a team to finish the extrication and evacuation. I was telling that story to someone at work and saying how excited I was about search and rescue and I wanted to get involved it in, when that person told me that he was in charge of all of San Diego County's Search and Rescue Program and he would get me into classes and an internship as soon as possible. I was totally ignorant to the resources I had around me and once I figured that out I began looking around me at my coworkers to see what new skills I could learn from them. I completed a 6 week long rope rescue course with San Diego and I have been working as a Search and Rescue intern at the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department for 3 years now. I have also been tutored in Math during some of my shifts on patrol, I've been given great job advice from other patrollers and also learned so much from conversations with people and viewpoints whom I never would have met otherwise. It's the willingness to help out other patrollers that makes this program so special.

Both Cataloochee and Snow Summit have become more than places that I go and simply work at, they've become my homes. You really get to know a person after you've worked a bad wreck with them at 9 o'clock at night with 20 mph winds in the middle of a raging snow storm and a lot of respect is gained through those experiences. You also get to know your coworkers pretty well when they're hanging you by your feet from the rafters or playing snowball baseball with them with ski poles.

My closest friends are patrollers and if anything ever goes wrong I know there's always someone to help me out. When I got in a wreck in the middle of a record-breaking blizzard 3 years ago, the first person I called was a patroller. When I got a terrible flu freshman year of college, but I insisted on working my duty weekend, it was my coworkers who made a bed for me in the back of our patrol shack and made me sleep until I could drive and then I was promptly sent home. They checked up on me every day after that until I got better. It's nice to know that even though I've moved over 2,000 miles away from home, I still have a family to watch out for me here.

Today was my last time skiing at Snow Summit for the time being. I've spent my last 4 years on patrol there and I have learned and grown so much, but it's time for me to move on. Don't think for a minute that I'll forget where I came from, or the people who got me here. Cataloochee was a great starting point in my career, Snow Summit was a great stepping stone and I hope Utah will be just as great of an experience. It seems like every patrol I've been in contact with has great people, but I'll still miss the ones I'm leaving behind. If you're in Utah next year, give me a call and I'd love to make some turns with you!

We are the children of winter, and we're blessed.
Blessed to know the thrill of speed, and the joy of air.
Blessed to welcome the shortest, coldest days of the year.
Blessed to run outside, when others run in, and realize the world is our playground.
     -Warren Miller's Playground

Liz

 Picture taken by Tom Bear Photography during my semester in Utah.

 Learning how to fly during the snow storm that I got stranded in and had to call my patrol buddies to help me out.

 A fellow patroller getting his payback for pranks he tried at work.

One of my first patrol mentors and me on a lift at Cataloochee senior year.