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.
Terrific post Liz. I can guess at the meaning of "wreck" from the context, but would you define it for me, a non-skier?
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