FYI: I will be out of state 2/1-2/8 but will likely have cell service. I should be able to field OLMC calls.
This has been a rough winter, if the season we’re in can be called winter with hardly a flake of snow landing in town.
I remember a similar season, almost 14 years ago, in 2011-12′ when I started at Park City Mountain Resort as a rookie patroller. The Alta snowfall records show that the 11-12′ season clocked 329″ total snowfall, down from 553″ the year prior. Crowds on crowds had booked their winter and spring vacations in Park City, remembering the prolific year prior, and arrived to find only a fraction of the terrain open, pasted over with strips of icy manmade snow.
As a rookie, I had plenty of things to learn to keep busy. Still, on account of little snow, there weren’t many early mornings of avalanche control work, and the powder skiing that was supposedly part of the compensation package didn’t come through very often. I imagine that patrollers who had been working at the resort for several years struggled to find the motivation to get out the door in the morning. Why bother? This season sucks!
I had that feeling this morning thinking about heading out to skin up the resort. I was in the doldrums: the area around the equator with no wind for your sails; the fictional place in The Lands Beyond from The Phantom Tollbooth where the Lethargians live. Why ski when there’s so little snow? Why stay fit? For what?
The inhabitants of the Doldrums, the Lethargians, fill their day with a strict schedule of doing nothing, and Milo, the main character, finds that the only way out of the doldrums is by thinking, by daydreaming.
We might be stuck in the doldrums now, but the time when the winds are slack is our opportunity to tend to the ship, fix what’s broken, and get ready for the next storm.
Here are some ideas for how to stay fresh:
-Review the gear on in your vest/pack. Check expiration dates, get rid of old yellowing supplies and make sure everything is where you want it when you need it.
-Run through the protocol table of contents. Which call would you least want to be sent to? What do you dread? Pick that complaint or that skill and learn about it. Mentally simulate what that call could be like if you totally crushed it.
-Make sure you’re dialed on critical skills. CPR, AED, Airway tools (NPA, OPA, iGel, Pocket Mask, BVM), Tourniquets.
-War game the most annoying rescue scenario that you can conceive of. Out of bounds on Tott Butte in hot spring powder with a sick asthma exacerbation? Woman in premature labor in the West Bowls? Demented and confused patient wearing jeans at the bottom of Northwest who refuses to go anywhere with you? How would you solve the problem?
-Learn something completely new and potentially useful.
CPR for Dogs
-Steal the attitudes and mindsets of people on the cutting edge of prehospital care:
John Hinds – Cases from the Races
Cliff Reid – Making Things Happen
-Ski bad snow, intentionally, and figure out how to do it well. Vivian Bruchez, steep skier, seems to make an art of skiing any kind of snow gracefully. Sylvain Saudan, pioneering steep skier, trained for poor conditions by skiing on rocks. We used to call ugly stem christies in bad snow “hate skiing” and made it into its own sport retrieving dropped items under closed chairlifts. What’s the most contrived and technical line you can come up with?
-Work on making yourself durable and injury proof:
Rob Krarr – The Equalizer
Uphill Athlete – Scott’s Killer Core Routine
I’ll do my best to bring you a new patrol case soon, and hopefully also some micro-skills videos.
Stay strong out there!
-P
Big Mountain Medical 