After a fun trip to Leavenworth with Julie, Shaun and Carson for some skiing and to celebrate the new year, I found myself back at the Pass for a couple of days of patrol activities. On Saturday, I headed up to the mountain with Shaun for a day of Senior OEC training. Shaun was on duty and I was working to become a trainer evaluator for Senior OEC training, so we headed up early and arrived at the hill to find a couple inches of fresh snow. After the morning meeting, the crew headed out to open the hill, and I made a lap down RTS before heading in to get oriented for the training.
Laurie and Anne were up to help assist with the day, which ultimately wound up running like a clinic. Hannah, Toby, Brian, Shannon, Matthew, Ian and I were working on becoming senior trainer evaluators, while several other patrollers were working on becoming Senior OEC certified. As we prepped for the opening scenarios, I snapped a few photos of our crew.
We ran through several scenarios, which ran the gamut from the usual multiple issues such as a diabetic with a broken elbow to a pregnant woman with a broken leg. Since this was the first on the hill training for the senior candidates after a few evenings of in-town practice, it was a bit challenging as they navigated through the scenarios but they all did well and showed improved skills as the morning went on.
We trained until about noon or so before breaking for lunch, and I spent quite a bit of time working as an evaluator for the scenarios, although I still found a bit of time during breaks between the action to get a few shots, including the three below…
After lunch, the group headed back out for more training that lasted throughout the afternoon. Brian and I needed to attend to other business as the PD and APD, which included meeting with area management to go over a number of items related to patrol business. By the time we were done with our meeting, I had enough time to head out for sweep before the day ended. When sweep was over, it felt great to relax in the patrol room for a bit and enjoy a tasty hazy IPA from Goodlife Brewing Co. while chatting with the rest of the patrollers.
Since we were on the next day, Shaun and I left our gear in the patrol room and headed down to Oakridge to stay the night at Brian and Shannon’s. As usual, the Millington’s provided great company and an awesome dinner, and it was nice not to have to drive all the way home to just turn around and come up the next morning. On Sunday, we woke early, enjoyed a good cup of coffee, and the four of us headed to the hill in my Outback. On the docket for today was a sled instructor calibration clinic, and I was looking forward to it since a bunch of instructors were going to be running the sleds, which is always a good time.
Joe was up, which is always a good time, and since he was still recovering from a shoulder injury, he volunteered to be sled ballast while the rest of us took turns in the handles and on the tail rope of the Edge sled. We did a few runs down Eagle’s Flight, and discussed the fine points of how we wanted our training regimen to go for our new crew of candidates, who were beginning sled training the following weekend.
It was particularly fun to get to work with Paul, a transfer patroller from Mt Hood, who has a lot of sled training experience and is just fun to hang out with in general. As usual, I took quite a few pictures to document the action.
After a couple of runs and after everyone had a turn in the handles and on the tail rope, we put the sled away and finished the day by enjoying a few runs, and of course getting busy with incidents that required sled rides and helping patients. I managed to get a run down RTS with Shaun, who was skiing with Jesse who was up for the day.
We finished the day as usual with sweep of Peak 2, the upper mountain, and then finally lower mountain, before holding our evening meeting which capped of another fun weekend of patrol activities at the Pass. Below is a parting shot from Sunday of Toby running the Edge sled down Eagle’s, while Joe sits as ballast and Shannon manages the tail rope!
