Quitting, Part 2: Ski Patrol

This essay is second in my "Quitting" series, but it's the one I wrote first (back in October). For me, fall has always been the time to start thinking about winter. It was the time to check out Warren Miller's latest offering. Winter meant skiing. And for the past decade, skiing meant ski patrolling. That's me, pointing at the snow under the guise of teaching an avalanche class:

During my 10 year ski patrol career, I became an instructor in every National Ski Patrol discipline (First aid, Transportation, Avalanche, and Mountaineering), took on the role of regional representative for the Mountaineering program, and received a National Appointment for my efforts and accomplishments. By all metrics, I was into patrolling. I even half-considered quitting my day job at one point to become a pro patroller. I spent $100s on gear (and sold $100s worth), went to seminars, and traveled a lot to classes and to teach. I loved the idea of helping people out while following one of my true passions--skiing.

But a lot of factors conspired to change all of that.

The "new" wore off. The years of limited snowpack when Pajarito Mountain didn't open dampened my zeal. Adding kids and side job as musician and piano teacher ate up too much energy and time. The hustle of the industry became too grating. The straw that did my patrol career in, though, was a back injury that manifested itself two years ago. Actually, this injury was probably a result of a significant fall ten years earlier that left me in the hospital for a day, but the symptoms finally caught up with me in 2011 and the herniated disk pressing on the nerve root between L4 and L5 left me in pain and unable to lift (dorsiflex) my left foot or even curl my toes upward. Sitting for long periods of time was a problem (the position of sitting on a chairlift with your feet unsupported, incidentally, is one of the worst for your lower back). In addition to spending time in recovery and physical therapy, I took the season off from patrolling, mostly because I didn’t trust my back not to give out during a toboggan run in the process of attempting to save someone’s life. It was nearly a soul-crushing experience to be unable to do the things I loved, including picking up my then 2-year-old daughter without wincing in pain. 

I actually, unexpectedly, enjoyed the season off, so much so that I took the next year off as well and elected “Alumni” status. I managed 5 days of skiing last winter, none of them lift-served, a fact that most die-hard snowsports enthusiasts probably don’t consider bragging rights. I taught one Mountain Travel & Rescue class. This year, I didn’t even (and don't plan to) refresh my OEC (first aid) skills (I'll do CPR through work). While I miss the free season pass and Patagonia pro deal, and had a hard time letting go of the effort I’d put into my accomplishments as a patroller, there are a lot of things I don’t miss.

First on the list: downhill skiing has become really expensive. Skis, boots, poles, bindings, clothing, gear, food, lift tickets, 4wd vehicles, and gas for a family to go skiing adds up fast. A day of skiing for my family at our little local area would cost roughly $150 just for lift tickets; a season pass costs $300 each for adults. When it was just me skiing or just me and my wife, it was manageable (though I ate a lot of Ramen noodles and cheap microwave burritos); now there are two more folks in my house to outfit. While it's true that patrollers pay less money for their time skiing--a fact that almost made me not quit--there’s a lot of effort and time commitment involved for that privilege. Some of that work just isn't fun for me any more, things like "courtesy rides" and talking people down slopes they have no business being on and policing closures.

Next: skiing has changed to something I don't enjoy as much. It's not folks herringbone-ing up a slope in their knickers and sweaters to catch a few powder turns, or one or two double chair lifts going up a remote mountain hours from any definitive medical care. It's not just mountaineers going skiing because they love it. Now it’s big business. It’s millions of dollars of infrastructure and investment, it's gondolas and trams and high-speed detachable six-seat chair lifts, it's condos and golf courses, it's grooming and snowmaking and a whole host of other expensive conveniences. It is often development on public land for the financial gain of a few (Pajarito Mtn. is a notable exception). It is stocks and bonds and money.

And machinery. In-bounds, it’s a constant hum and buzz. Next time you go skiing at your local ski area, take a look around at everything that requires power. The lifts, snowcats, snowmobiles, base-area buildings and cafeterias, and buses and shuttles all require electricity or fossil fuels. Snowmaking, a necessary part of having a ski area open in Colorado or New Mexico in November (with the exceptions, I suppose, of Silverton and Wolf Creek), requires electricity and water. Unless your local ski area has installed or insisted on sustainable energy options, there’s a good chance it runs on coal, a fossil fuel that has dire implications for climate change, public health, and environmental impact when it's mined and burned. Here we should also acknowledge the use of transportation fuels: a typical Denver-ite will drive his or her SUV or sport sedan 1-3 hours each way for a day (6 hours?) of skiing. Hopefully the SUV driver has a car full of friends to decrease his or her carbon footprint. But that’s just the skiing public. Trucks haul food and other goods for consumption, area employees drive to/from work, and on and on. Consider your carbon footprint carefully with your outdoor activities, especially lift-served skiing. The ski industry as it exists today runs largely on fossil fuels, despite its green-washing efforts.

As I approach middle-age, my time spent outdoors is needed to get away from noise and the trappings of modern society--cars, motors, electricity, and controlled environments. And maybe it always has--as a teenager I mountain biked alone, a lot, in the desert hills and mountains North of Gooding, ID. I rarely saw a soul and came to crave those doses of solitude. Now that I'm a parent, I’d rather take my kids hiking, snowshoeing, or cross-country skiing deep in the woods, away from machinery,

than spend my day listening to the chug-chug-chug of the lifts, the roar of the snowmobile, and the traffic (and rap music the high school and college kids insist on blasting) in the parking lot. Or I’d rather skin up some tree-covered ridgeline for a great view and some solid aerobic exercise, where all I can hear is the whisper (or roar) of the wind in the trees and the crunch and “shussh” of the snow under my skis,

where the pace is slow enough that I can notice, stop, and appreciate things like these bird tracks.

The crux of it for me, though--and this really should have been enough justification for calling it quits--is that time spent patrolling meant time away from my family. The summer OEC instruction and fall refresher cycles were just not how I want to spend my evenings and weekends anymore. My wife was my best, most reliable, and most fun ski buddy for many years--in fact, she was a patroller for a couple seasons--but after we had kids, if we wanted to ski in-area, we had to ski separately, wait for grandparents to come visit, or hire a babysitter. I missed hanging out with my wife on weekends!

And with kids, it’s a no-brainer. It’ll be almost a decade from now before my kids are even eligible to patrol, so there’s a good chance that waiting for them to reach high school before I spend time with them on the weekends will backfire, that they'll be strangers. Being gone most weekend days is just not a viable choice. My kids seem to change almost every day, and I miss them enough during the week when I’m at work and they’re in school.

Maybe someday I’ll go back to patrolling, if my obligations and interests change again. Granted, if you really want to learn to ski well, there’s no method that’s more efficient than spending many, many days working on your turns in-bounds with the lift to whisk you back to the top of the mountain after each run, and I don't see myself leaving the sport altogether. I’m thankful that I had the opportunity in my 20s to have 40+day seasons, that my dad combed ski swaps for deals for my sister and me when we were young, and that we had small, inexpensive ski areas close to home when I was a kid. But I’m also glad I met my wife who enjoys cross-country skiing so we could avoid the contrived modern ski area. If you want to ski in-bounds, save your money, and weigh the “hidden” costs. After a while, you may come around to the point of view I outlined above.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week!