Joining Patrol - The French way

[Idris]

400 meters of surface lifts sounds painful, although I guess you never have to practice lift evacuations.

No lift evac, but one of the lifts is as old as dirt and has a tendency to trip it's safeties. Reset is manual at the top of the tower!

[snoqpass]

No lift evac, but one of the lifts is as old as dirt and has a tendency to trip it's safeties. Reset is manual at the top of the tower!

They never make it easy, I like this thread both as a patroller and having skied over there at Sestriere and just across the border, I’d do a patrol exchange with you

[Idris]

First day at work small crew who run lift ops patrol etc. Age varies form 20 to 70!
We have 3 Pomma's a rope tow and a Cable/handle tow.

Quite a view from the top



The other main lift isn't to be snifed at either



The boss surprised us with a snack

[paulster2626]

I like your boss. Mine just surprises me with annoying questions.

[Idris]

First rescue - didn't expect ne this early, was half expecting to do none, 2020 they did 2 and 4 in 2019!

Just as I start taking down the signage and fencing at 4.15pm (we close at 4.30 as it's dark at 5).

12 year old snowboarder, very simple damaged (probably broken) wrist. Se was quite calm and would instantly stop sobbing when answering questions...had to keep talking. Massive vacuum spling thingy on her arm. Loaded her onto the rescue sledge and off down the hill.
She was happy to walk to mum's car. Mum was fine about everything...grandma less so.

Finished taking down signs in the dark!

Don't have any photos.....so here is yesterday's first light from the top saftey bar

[garyfromterrace]

First day at work small crew who run lift ops patrol etc. Age varies form 20 to 70!
We have 3 Pomma's a rope tow and a Cable/handle tow.

Quite a view from the top



The boss surprised us with a snack

Subscribed. For spectacular views and euro epicurean sensibilities.
Right on Idris, you're dialing it buddy. Thanks for documenting and hope you have a great season over there. Allez!

[Idris]

A few days ago, instead of working with Pascal my usual boss (he was at dentist). I got to work with Pierre, he is a retired municipal snowplough/excavator driver.



He lives a few 100m from the main lift, which his grandfather installed. He himself installad the longer flatter lift in 1981.

At the end of the day one of the saftey/derail detection pullies threw a bearing and started screaming. Once everyone had gone home we went to replace it.



Its the small rubber wheel on the end of the arm, usually running on the cable, we have it in the service position.
Working with Pierre, being old school and no nonsense, we just climbed the 8-10 m pylon in ski (touring) boots with no saftey gear (didn't even have my normal ski helmet) and changed the offending pully.



It's a 2 man job and Pierre was up the pylon as fast as me, in fact, when we needed different sized spanners he went down to fetch. But as he sat astride the main pully to get one side of the mounting bolt, I had to hang out and one handed get the other side. I eventually ended up with a leg round the saftey rail (me on the outside of it) and both hands on the spanner.

[img]https://www.alpinehike.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Downcable-576x1024.jpg[img]

An intersting view of the sunset.