N.S. Nokkentved/The Olympian
Crystal Mountain ski patroller Corey Meador learned to ski through The Evergreen State College ski school.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Longstreth
Ski patrollers at Crystal Mountain and other ski areas help control avalanches, help injured skiers and snowboarders and generally try to keep slopes safe.

Safety on the slopes

Patrollers help keep skiers, snowboarders safe

N.S. NOKKENTVED, THE OLYMPIAN

CRYSTAL MOUNTAIN -- Though it happened outside the boundaries of the ski area, a recent fatal snowboarding accident has focused attention on safety at local ski areas.

But for some, skier and snowboarder safety is a way of life.

"I think about it every day," said Paul Baugher, ski patrol director at Crystal Mountain near Mount Rainier.

Baugher and other ski patrollers say the most important part of their job is preventing accidents.

Ski patrollers are the skiers in the red jackets with the white crosses on the back. They tell skiers and boarders to slow down, warn them of dangers, and are the ones skiers depend on when they are in trouble or hurt.

A sense of satisfaction comes with helping people, says Corey Meador, a ski patroller at Crystal.

"If you can keep somebody from getting hurt, that's even better."

Safety steps

The most important function ski patrollers perform is maintaining safety on the slopes.

Skiing and snowboarding are no more dangerous than other active sports. Speed is involved, and there is a risk. It is the ski patrol's job is to make skiing and snowboarding as safe as possible -- within the boundaries of the ski area.

Patrollers perform an important service for the ski areas -- educating skiers and boarders and trying to prevent trouble.

Ski patrol duties include avalanche control, marking safety hazards -- such as rocks, stumps, slow areas -- and controlling speed in congested and beginner areas. Patrollers talk to skiers and snowboarders who are going too fast. Sometimes they have to revoke lift tickets of reckless skiers and get them off the mountain.

But sometimes people do collide or fall and get hurt. "When things go wrong, we have to get them off the hill," Baugher says.

Jim Matthews, a 15-year ski patrol veteran, had that experience just a couple weeks ago when he helped tend to two skiers who had collided. A man in his 50s was knocked out momentarily after he and an 18-year-old collided.

Matthews and other patrollers got both immobilized on backboards, then transferred them to sleds and pulled them to the first-aid station at the lodge. Neither was seriously hurt, but both were taken to a hospital for observation.

Caring for injured skiers is only one of the things the ski patrol does.

Meador, 44, of Olympia, remembers one day when a skier asked him for an aspirin. Meador thought the skier had the flu. But the man didn't look quite right, so Meador took him to the first-aid station where a doctor looked at him. The man was suffering from an aneurysm in his brain, and he was taken to a hospital in Tacoma for treatment.

Another time, Meador encountered a terrified skier on the slopes one day during icy conditions. Meador put a sling around the skier and helped him off the mountain.

Path to patrolling

Meador learned to ski through The Evergreen State College ski school and as he got better, the people he met on the mountain whom he liked most were ski patrollers.

He decided to join and worked 10 years as a volunteer. Last year he became a paid patroller.

"I like being outside and up in the mountains," Meador says.

And he likes helping people and preventing accidents.

"Seeing somebody hurt tugs at your feelings," he says.

Many ski patrollers, like Meador, start as volunteers, but Matthews started out as a paid ski patroller -- in part so he could ski more. When the snow melts, he stays in the mountains as a U.S. Forest Service wilderness ranger.

Matthews, 38, started skiing when he was 18. He grew up on Long Island in New York and had long wanted to come West. He applied as a ski patroller at White Pass.

"This was the first ski area that hired me," he says.

N.S. Nokkentved covers the outdoors for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5445.

Slope numbers

Statistics on skiing-snowboarding accidents:

- Fatalities: Average 34 per year past 17 years. Fatalities in 2000-2001: 47 of 57.3 million reported skier/snowboarder visits or .82 deaths per million visits. Of those, 35 were skiers -- 28 males, 7 female; 12 were snowboarders, 11 males, 1 female.

- Serious injuries: Average, 34 per year -- paraplegics, serious head and other serious injuries. Serious injuries in 2000-2001: 44 of 57.3 million reported skier/snowboarder visits or .77 injuries per million visits. Of those, 33 were skiers, 28 male, 5 female; 11 were snowboarders; 9 male, 2 female.

- Source: National Ski Areas Association.

Injuries at a glance

- Reported injuries have declined by 50 percent during the past 25 years.

- The once-common broken lower leg has declined more than 95 percent since the early 1970s.

- The most common leg injury is to the knees.

- Most injured skiers and snowboarders are treated and released the same day.

- Fifty-eight percent of snowboarder/ skier injuries are typically breaks or sprains of the arms, wrists and hands.

- Twenty-eight percent of injuries are to the knees.

- Source: National Ski Patrol web site.

Comparisons

Fatalities per million participants:

- Skiing/snow-boarding: 4.27.

- Recreational scuba diving (1999): 47.4.

- Swimming: 25.3.

- Boating (1999): 54.8.

- Bicycling: 18.8.

- Source: National Ski Areas Association.

For related stories go to the South Sound Living section.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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