After a fun weekend leading the avalanche class, I was back on the hill the following Saturday for another patrol day in February. As usual, Shaun and I showed up early and unloaded our gear in the patrol room before parking the car and getting ready for the morning meeting.
The morning started off nicely, and I headed out to help open Twilight by taking a sled up the lift. After making a run back down to base, I headed up on EPA and opened RTS, which was in good condition. The rest of the morning was spent making turns and doing various patrol work, before I headed in for lunch a few minutes early so I could meet Julie who was bringing up Carson to ski for the afternoon.
Right about noon and just on time, Carson and Julie showed up and pulled into patrol. I helped Carson get his skis and gear out, and we got him situated in the patrol room before saying goodbye to Julie who was heading back down the hill.
A few minutes later Carson and I headed out and he was ready to rip. After making a run or two off of EPA, we headed over to Peak 2 and skied down Boundary Pass and then Where’s Waldo. Next we sampled Escalator before heading back over to the front to make turns down Eagle’s Flight and Good Time Charlie.
Fortunately for me, it was a slow day from the patrol perspective, and we only had a few incidents that needed management, so Carson and I were able to ski together most of the afternoon. Before we knew it, it was time for Peak 2 sweep so we made our way to the top of the lift.
Carson was excited to get to help sweep, and we took Boundary for our sweeping assignment. Shaun was sweeping Escalator, so he headed down upper Boundary with us and Ken was gracious enough to snap a picture of all three of us together on the run.
After sweeping Peak 2, we headed over to EPA. I snapped a few pictures of patrol just before upper mountain sweep started, and then we headed down. Carson and I headed in ahead of lower mountain sweep so I could review incident reports and get the bean dip going, and soon after the rest of the patrol started to trickle into the patrol room.
After clearing the mountain and calling dispatch, we held a quick evening meeting and then it was time to enjoy the bean dip and crack open a few beers. My beer of choice for the evening was a tasty Hazematic Hazy IPA from Ninkasi Brewing, and it was quite refreshing after a good day of skiing.
Eventually the bean dip was completely consumed, and folks started to trickle out to the parking lot to head home. Once everyone had left, I locked up the patrol room, made a few notes for the crew coming up on Sunday, and grabbed Shaun, Carson and our gear and loaded the truck to head back to the valley, happy with another fun day of patrolling at the Pass.
