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2018-2019 season

Dwight

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The season has started in the Midwest. I haven't had a shift yet, sense the hill keeps staying closed during the week to make more base. Though next Wed should be the first for me.

Everyone have good and safe season. Our Central Directory had a serious injury in MN last week. Speedy recovery to him, though it doesn't sound too speedy. https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jtskibum/journal/index/0/0/asc
 

Carolinacub

Yes thats a Cubs hat I'm wearing
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wow, not a good start to the season for him...best wishes to him and it sounds like he's maxing out the pt.
 

Carolinacub

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No shift for me yet either, doing a ski and snowboard seminar on Sat and Sun at another hill and I start on my hill next week.
 
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Dwight

Dwight

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On snow refresher is this Sat. Ski skills and evac.
 

Carolinacub

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This is a ski/ride instructor/patroller clinic. It's basically a train the trainer program. I'm taking it as preparation for my S&T instructor certification. Hopefully I'll end up with my Senior Certification before the end of the year.
 

firebanex

Making fresh tracks
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Fairbanks, Alaska
Question, you guys mention "shifts" are you assigned times to be there or sign up for them? My patrol is quite small and our area is only open friday-sunday normally, we sign up for our days and have anywhere between 1 and 8 patrollers at a time depending on how things are in everyones life. I always patrol if I'm going to ski, no reason not too and we don't have the numbers to go free ski.

We've had a delightfully light first two weekends compared to last year. Last year we had 3 accidents a day for the first 2 weekends, this year we had 1 per weekend. We did have a fun bleeder though, intermediate snowboarder found a jagged rock in the landing of a jump with his knee. Just below the knee cap he had a very nice 1.5" long cut that went down to the bone and bits in his knee. The patient was a champ and was holding it closed until we got there and staying quite calm for his age even as he spoke to his mother on the phone to ask which hospital to have the ambulance take him too.

My goals this year is to actually complete becoming a toboggan instructor; I started last year but with everything going on and my duties as Patrol Director, I never finished it.
 
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Dwight

Dwight

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We have shifts. If you take the same day every week you get scheduling preference. I do every Wed night, 4:30pm-9:30pm. Hill is open every night + Friday-Sat-Sun and holidays.

We have to schedule 13 shifts for the year. If we show up during different times, when can sign on or not. I used to sign on, but now I usually don't, because I'm with friends and family. This way I can go into the bar/restaurant during the day.
 

Carolinacub

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Question, you guys mention "shifts" are you assigned times to be there or sign up for them? My patrol is quite small and our area is only open friday-sunday normally, we sign up for our days and have anywhere between 1 and 8 patrollers at a time depending on how things are in everyones life. I always patrol if I'm going to ski, no reason not too and we don't have the numbers to go free ski.

We've had a delightfully light first two weekends compared to last year. Last year we had 3 accidents a day for the first 2 weekends, this year we had 1 per weekend. We did have a fun bleeder though, intermediate snowboarder found a jagged rock in the landing of a jump with his knee. Just below the knee cap he had a very nice 1.5" long cut that went down to the bone and bits in his knee. The patient was a champ and was holding it closed until we got there and staying quite calm for his age even as he spoke to his mother on the phone to ask which hospital to have the ambulance take him too.

My goals this year is to actually complete becoming a toboggan instructor; I started last year but with everything going on and my duties as Patrol Director, I never finished it.
Were open 7 days a week . our paid patrol is there mon- fri and sunday nights, our volunteer patrol covers sat day and night and sunday day, we have three teams of volunteers so we are scheduled every third weekend. The reality is we almost always have people who are not scheduled show up and supplement those who are. Generally on weekends we open with 4-6 people a second group comes in at 10 or so and they stay till close. during the 6 hour overlap we'll have 8-12 people working.
My goal is also to become a toboggan trainer this year, that is why I'm doing the Clinic this weekend. It's called the snowsports trainers workshop.
 

ZionPow

Making fresh tracks
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I work 5 days a week on paid patrol. I started working for set up on Nov 19 and we opened on Nov 20. We first started out working 4 day weeks but we have received so much snow that we are expanding our terrain rapidly and most of us are working 5 days now. Last week our patrol director was on the phone calling every paid patroller who had not started yet and begging them to come to work the next day! Last weekends storm brought 47" in 3 days. We have already had about 5 avy mitigation days. We are off to one of the best early season starts in memory. We have all lift areas open except 1 which will open soon. Our expert terrain lift opened yesterday with amazing conditions for early Dec. We have received 83" of snow with a 48" base. All is well in the Wasatch :yahoo:
 

kayco53

Getting on the lift
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We open on Dec 14 if we get the forecast dump of snow. We have done our evac training etc. Skis waxed. Eagerly waiting. Our shifts are every second weekend both days on the CSP patrol.
 

firebanex

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Interesting, thanks for the insights on how your patrols handle duty days. We are 100% volunteer and our area is open Friday-Sunday and require 3 days per month, that said I'm there Saturday and Sunday every weekend and I'll even pull a half day on some Fridays if work will let me just so I can go ski a couple runs. Did that today infact, skied for 2 hours, set some ropes and helped start training a new candidate before I went off to my day job.
 
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Dwight

Dwight

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First shift in the books. Foggy with some fresh snow that was surprisingly not slushy. Patrol 1, Incidents 0.
 

Carolinacub

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Let's see how to tell this tale of woe.

Down here in the great SE we were expecting a ton of snow on Saturday and Sunday. So I stopped at the local Southern States store (a store for farmers) and got 200lbs of Ice melt for the low low price of 5.99 per 50lb bag. When I took it out of my trusty rust rocket. (92 corolla wagon, 329k) it felt like I tweaked my back just a little bit. I didn't think much of it at the time and I still planned on doing my two day clinic on Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday morning I got up feeling all chipper and excited as could be to getting on the hill for the first time. I got to the mountain early and had a nice breakfast with the rest of the participants. The downside- it was my first day on ski's and they were ski's that I had never ridden before. We were doing quite a few technique drills and precision was the watchword. Well about 2pm my back was aching and I just couldn't produce the results that I knew I was capable of so I bailed. A word of advice...get some ski time in before you try and do clinics based on precision.

Anyway Sunday I was snowed in at the house and my back was still achy. I probably could have gone skiing but my beautiful SO was freaking out just a little over the first storm of the year so being the good hubby that I am I stayed home to support her by watching TV all day why she cleaned and cooked. (just kidding, I cooked and she vacuumed)

Monday rolls around and I'm antsy. The boss has already called off work so I by golly am going skiing. Drove up to the mountain I patrol at and it's absolutely gorgeous out the snow is nice and for the first time in many years the whole mountain is open this early in the season. I did some work on my locker and then I transported some entertainment gear up to our upper Patrol Shack. (TV,Radio, books etc. One of my favorite patrollers to ski with showed up and we did some really nice runs together. Concentrated on control and linking turns etc etc. Lots of fun had by all.

Here's where it goes downhill (no pun intended) Being the bright guy that I am I decide to quit while I'm ahead. The back is holding up but is achy and I could tell I was getting ready to start getting sloppy and possibly hurt something. I go back into our locker room and start putting all my stuff away and chatting with some other team members and I can feel just a little bit more discomfort in the back. I get everything done grab my pack and walk up to my trusty rust rocket. AND THEN IT HAPPENS.

What I thought was a simple back tweak turns out to be kidney stone's moving around, as I step into the rust rocket it hits me like a ton of bricks and I go straight to the ground on all fours crying like a baby. It took 2 hours before it calmed down enough for me to drive home and today is the first day I've taken off the jammies and put on work clothes and come in to work.

But in the end it's OK. I got to go skiing.:thumb:
 

kayco53

Getting on the lift
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Well our mountain finally opened and I put a shift in finally. Thought I would help out a week early and get the legs in shape a bit before my normal weekend next week. Ok try out the new gear I got. We do two weekends a month where I patrol plus whenever else you want. We can also guest patrol at other mountains in our zone.
 

firebanex

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Nothing to note today at my area except the cold weather (-24f) during the week murdered our snowmachines battery so that was on the charger all day. Thankfully nothing happened that would have required it. We did run a make up refresher in our aid room during the day to get a couple folk who missed the region wide refresher back in October. I like slow and chill days like this, we get a lot of skiing in.
 

firebanex

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Aside from a kid who landed on a rock with his knee (we got a bleeder in here!), every single accident in the last 3 weeks has been a dislocated shoulder that reduced itself prior to the patient walking into our aid room. Sling, swath, bag of snow, and send them home with a friend. Last year was knees, this year seems to be shoulders so far.
 

Carolinacub

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Been pretty low key here also, a couple tweaked knees has been about all we've seen. went up sunday to help out and I swear 80 percent of the people had never seen a ski before and were determined to go ride the lift with no instruction...…...what a cluster.
 

CalG

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Been busy here. 30 codes a day last week, 50 per day over the week end. There is sometimes a line to get into our BFA.
I've been first on scene to a few difficult incidents already. tib-fib, hip displacement, head and facial trauma.
We have a large and very proficient crew. Pro and volly. Pro works a schedule, volly's need to get in their days on hill. It works out.
 

Carolinacub

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Miserable day at the Wolf yesterday. coming down wind is in your face blowing all the loose snow off the hill. It was so bad that on my first run just checking out a green in the middle of an easy turn the wind actually knocked me down. at the 2:00 witching hour we had 3 EMS units there. 2 were in response to a couple kids that fell off a chair from 15 feet and one was for an apparent concussion. at that point all 5 beds were full and we had 3 minor arm injuries in chairs. Talk about a cluster
 

Chris Axebiker

Recovering Meadowskipper
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Feb 26, 2018
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Wow. That’s NUTS! Surprised the lifts weren’t on wind hold! I think once we hit sustained @ 25mph, ours go on hold.
 

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