I had some pretty insane experiences during my Summer Mentorship. First off there was a call on the radio for a snowboarder on one of the runs that was injured, normally I don't really tag along much because I don't hear the calls on the radio because they don't give me one. For this call I was skiing and I was just about to get on the lift and one of the patrollers asked me if I would like to tag along and so I did. When we rolled up on scene we saw the snowboarder laying in the snow conscious and two other people were with him uninjured. We started doing our normal assessment of asking what's his name, what happened, where do you have pain(if they have any), etc. We also asked who the bystanders were and it was two people related him. We asked the two bystanders what happened and they explained to us what they saw and they also told us that it was the patient's birthday today and that's why they were snowboarding. We diagnosed him of having a concussion. We got the toboggan ready for the patient and Jeff(the patroller) strapped him into the toboggan and I carried the snowboard down the run and Jeff's ski poles and helped Jeff get the patient to the base room where he did a further assessment. I thought this was pretty insane because I've never seen anyone have a concussion that bad where they didn't remember that today was his birthday. That day I realized that skiing and snowboarding are very dangerous sports and that I take the risk of getting hurt every time I ski, but yet I still do it because it's my passion.
Another thing I experienced during my mentorship, was perhaps the most scary thing I've ever been through. I woke up and it was super windy at my house and I figured it was even more windy at the ski lifts so I decided to wait a while to see if the wind would die down, then I would go skiing if it did. Around 10a.m. the wind started to die down so I got all of my skiing gear on and went skiing. When I got to the base room to check in one of my fellow patrollers told me that Chair 3(the main part of the mountain) was closed due to high winds and that only bunny hill was open. I was about to go home when we got a call to open Chair 3. I tagged along with Jeff to open Chair 3 and I helped him set up the lift lines and then he told me to go on the lift and check out the conditions and set anything up that wasn't set up at the top and then go check out some of the runs and clear them of any debris. So, I got on the lift and at first everything was fine, it was cold(about 20 degrees) and then as the lift got higher up the mountain the wind started to pick up in this gulch and I was starting to get scared because the my chair was rocking back and forth and I was alone on the chair. I saw the chairs coming down almost hitting the towers as they were coming down. I was almost to the top and the lift operator stopped the chair lift and as soon as they stopped the lift the wind picked up and the chair was rocking back and forth to where it felt like it was going to tip over and I was like 200 feet above the ground. Right then and there I seriously thought I was going to fall to my death. I held on tightly to the chair and hoped for the best. Eventually the lift started up again and I made it to the top safe and sound. Everything was set up at the top so I made my way down one of the runs and cleaned up debris the best I could, considering that the wind had moved so much debris on to the run. I got to the bottom of the run and went to the base room to relax and calm down. That moment I was on the lift where I thought I was going to die was a moment of realization of ski patrol is a high risk job, with many patrollers dying every year, mainly from avalanches.
The last experience I got was a quite fun but rigorous experience. One of the patrollers asked me if I would like to try and find a buried beacon using your beacon. This was very difficult because the sense of direction was new to me and I had no idea where the buried beacon was. When I began my search I was doing it right but my mentor told me I was doing it wrong and going the wrong way because he thought I was, but it turned out I was right all along. I finally found the buried beacon up on a hill. Before this experience I had no idea about beacons and avalanche rescues. I really enjoyed this experience.
