I was looking forward to a three-day weekend with an extra day off of work, and the plan was to head to Sunriver with the family to enjoy a couple days of vacation. Shaun and I had a patrol day smack dab in the middle of our weekend, but we were happy to get some turns in and headed out early from the east side and made the trip south on highway 97 before arriving at the Pass. Our morning meeting went well, and soon we were out opening the hill.
I could tell it was going to be a busy day, and soon the chairs were full of skiers and riders and the lift lines started to queue. The first couple hours of the morning went pretty smoothly, but then things started to get interesting….
As it sometimes does, things started to happen in a flurry, and within an hour we were managing 6 different incidents that included a broken wrist, a seizure on the Peak 2 chairlift, a diabetic that hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for hours, a very small girl with a fractured leg, and concussion, and a single leg amputee that had fallen out of the chairlift from 20 feet. Needless to say things got busy. After dispatching all my patrollers, I ended up treating the broken wrist until Toby could come and relieve me, and then I took the toboggan down to the skier who fell from the chairlift. While skiing down, I came across another injury, a twisted knee, and let them know we’d get to them as soon as we could.
After dropping off the sled and riding back up the chair, I grabbed another and headed down to meet up with Patrick who was treating the knee injury. We took the patient down to the bottom of Peak 2 and I bid Patrick farewell as he headed off around the haul road for the front.
I managed to get over to the front and the aid room was like a MASH clinic with patients everywhere. After a bit, we were able to get things somewhat calmed down and I found 20 minutes to eat my lunch before heading back out on the hill when we started to get more calls from dispatch. Another knee, a concussion, etc., the calls just kept coming.
Eventually, things calmed down and the day moved to an end with sweep, but not before one more incident which brought the total for the day to 11, not including courtesy rides. Sweep went off smoothly, and I was pretty happy for that, and I managed to capture a few pics of Amber as we closed RTS.
Back down at the patrol room, we held the evening meeting and it was clear everyone was a bit weary from the day. We recapped the day’s incidents, discussed learning points, and then it past time to enjoy a well deserved cold one. My beer of choice for the day was a fitting Mountain Rescue Pale Ale from Good Life Brewing, and it hit the spot after a stressful day on the hill.
An hour or so later, after looking over the incident report forms and closing up the patrol room, Shaun and I headed back to Sunriver. Both of us were looking forward to getting back with the rest of the family and taking a dip in the hot tub, before coming back to the Pass the next morning to ski together with the cousins! The next day was definitely fun and a lot more relaxing. Below are a few shots from our day…
