Joining Patrol - The French way

[Hacksaw]

33 years of paid ski patrolling would lead me to wonder if patrolling is indeed a "a real and sensible profession".

I retired 2 years ago and miss my team members a lot. I enjoyed my time in the trenches and have a lot of great memories. Too bad in the US a patroller must eat so much shit over the years before they can start to come close to making a living wage and even that involves having a good summer gig.

Best of luck to you.

The sunrises and sunsets were the best part of the job.

You retired?!!!

[Dromond]

Is pay for ski patrol much better in Europe than in the US? I've heard that is the case for mountain guides.

[subtle plague]

Guides in Europe make lots of money? They are expensive, but I doubt the money making part.

And ski patrol here is probably not made of 5 bucks per hour stoners, but I don't think it's a dentist alternative.

[ötzi]

This thread is like some sort of missing persons roundup.

[Idris]

Yesterday I had my final exam - I passed.



Graduating class



(More training info to follow) Our final exam was over 2 days, 1 practical, 1 theory.

Day one Beacon search, area 100m by 80, 2 beacons, 10 points if you get under 3min20, progesively less after that (I was under 2 min).
Sled decent of 200m vert with single ender with brakes, Sled decent with double ender no brakes 400m+ vert, stop n swap ends part way down. Max 20 points each
Simple first aid case (suspected broken humerus in my case) 10 points
Complex first aid case + extraction (Severe lumbar pain, lower limb paralysis on uneven ground is what I got) 40 points
Day 2
3 questions, Snow, Weather, Legalities, 10 min to prepare 10 min or so to answer (verbaly), some were grilled for 20 min...6 for me.
The jury were a mix of Ski Patrol instructors, First aid instructors, Mountain Specialist doctors, heads of Patrol, City administrators, PGHM (Mountain arm of the police), CRS (normaly know for thir SWAT style teams but also do mountain rescue). I got 90.5 out of 120 which puts me squarely in the middle of the pack, max score was 105 and 3 failed, 1 only just on the points and the other 2 for first ad responses that would probably have killed somone.

[Idris]

We had a half day of major avalanche exersize along with a do team, a couple of mountain doctors and a few others, Basicaly how our skils fit into working as a big team. Beacons first + Recco, then dogs then probe line. Dig teams and doctors to elp with extraction. Team leader, secratary and radio control to keep it all orgonised. Idea to go from aleart to everyone found in under 5 min and everyone evacuated in 30. We were not that quick but we understood how it could be done.



Recco, I played with one of those 10 kg huge board things 20 or so years ago, this is the current one. Works about as well as a beacon of 25 years ago - analoge and 20m max range BUT it works without the victim wearing a beacon, so good for finding idiots....sometimes dead idiots.



Brand new rescue sleds vs low tide off piste + rough traineeies. Luckily I know a thing or 2 about fiberglass repair - took me best part of a wekend to fix, they all go bashed up again next day, but only one got properly destroyed.



Almost without exeception every serious case gets extracted in a vaccum matteres, this was one of our early attempts outside...I France an unconicious victim gets put in a Vac mat in the recovery positon, then if no medical evac available (weather, major road acident/other disaster) put in a doubble ender and carted down the hill.

[Idris]

A couple of traing vids

Sled



Backboard



Pelvic belt



Confined extraction

[up an down]

Congratulations Tom

[JohnF]

Congratulations!

Sent from my SM-G970U using TGR Forums mobile app

[subtle plague]

Woah. Impressive.

[Bunion 2020]

Nice work.

Edit to add. What is your native language and how fluent are you in others? Thx.

[::: :::]

toutes nos félicitations
bien joué

[Vets]

Congratulations!

[Idris]

Edit to add. What is your native language and how fluent are you in others? Thx.

Celtic Welsh (Cymraeg), Fluent in English and now after 5 weeks of imersion french (most of my class had hardly any English on a good day), not bad in French. I have about 50 odd words in Japanese and German, I can order food in Italian.

[MakersTeleMark]

BRA FUCKING VO! Wow, what a journey, to say the least.

[Buster Highmen]

Yeah! Congrats Idris!

[Idris]

Group avie training

[garyfromterrace]

Kudos! I can't imagine how tough this would be in a foreign language. Even in English this wouldn't be a gimme for most of us. Solid work mag!

[Idris]

It begins. Just landed my first patrol job. It's at La Romme (Nancy sur Cluses). A community run ski hill (As it's run by the town hall this makes me a French Fedal Employee). with 5 surface lifts and 400m (1320ft) of vert.



Officialy I am a patroller. But really I am a lifty, a maintanace guy, driver etc, etc. The head of operations does the same as me + he is in charge of everyone, there are 3 other lifties (if they manage to hire one more) and a piste basher driver (if he turns up) . It's relatively short term, Chrismass till end of winter school break (3 months total). Starting small, but I count as a partoller, which in France has a few perks

[Shredhead]

Congrats!
Hope you have a great season!

[shirk]

Congrats Tom.

That looks to be about an hour from Cham, not such a bad spot to be.

[Vets]

magnifique

[telefreewasatch]

magnifique

D'accord

[old goat]

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

[subtle plague]

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

Apparently you've never been to arolla. 900m vertical of drag lift heaven. That's about (just a rough estimate ) three times the vertical of Tahoe.