The adventure begins again - Patroling at a new resort

[Idris]

Last week I accepted a job for the upcoming winter at Megeve! Probably as different a resort as possible from last winter at La Romme, but just the oposite side of the same mountain, les Aravis.
This winter I will not be a lifty, a mechanic, an electrician. I will be a full time patroler and part time info post.
My mornings will start earlier and my days will finish later, but the drive will be shorter.
I will have to ski many runs to open them and at the end of day close them. Many more signs to put up and take down.
I will probably have to do more than 5 rescues in a season, wont be surprised if I end up doing more than 5 a week.
Lunch is provided and if I'm not to busy I get an hour to eat it. No more packed lunch on the go!
There will be co workers and Colleagues to learn from, not make it up as I go along.
There are procedures, plans and preparednes, not just thrown the keys and told best of luck.
New uniform of many parts not just a used Jacket with a name on it.
Why did I get the job, they wanted an experienced person with real English skils (They only have one other real english speaker on the whole operations staff). As a bonus I'm happy to do high wire rescue (aparently the majority of staff are terrified of it?)
Am I looking forward to it, hell yes. Any terpedation, yup they grilled me for 10 min about where my rugby loyalties lie....and I don't even have a telly!

[Buster Highmen]

Great news T!
Megeve is sort of a fancy spot, eh? As I fail, maybe I'll stop by to cruise the groom.

[shirk]

Cool. Hopefully a good season ahead.

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

Man, if I only had to lie about team allegiances during my years of employment interviews I'd be pretty happy.

[Idris]

Just done 3 days of corprate intro, training and just getting ready for winter stuff.

[Buster Highmen]

++++

[romeo tango]

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[up an down]

Just done 3 days of corprate intro, training and just getting ready for winter stuff.

Congrats and good luck!

[PB]

Seems like a lot of hangin' around ..........

[Brownski]

Awesome. This is very cool and I’m looking forward to more. I hope you keep us updated

[MakersTeleMark]

I have been following your life for almost 20 years. I am so psyched for you.

Do you feel that you are happy, now, right now?

[Idris]

I have been following your life for almost 20 years. I am so psyched for you.

Do you feel that you are happy, now, right now?

Yes

[whipski]

How many days/week? Free time is muy importante!

[Idris]

It's been over 2 months since I've updated this, sorry. In that time we got rained almost shut, got snowed on and 2 rounds of holidays (in the middle of the 2nd set).

Every morning I open runs, I am lucky we get a different circuit (we have 9) each day, some resorts you stick to one for the season. Sometimes it's so fresh you follow the piste bashers as they go home. Early season we see sunrise on the mountain.



Not all the runs can be accesed by gravity at the start of the day, so we call and uber and get a tow (these are lifties going first)



Sometmes reopening runs that have been shut for a while



Some morning there is a fair bit to fix



Mornings are usually quite in terms of rescues, so we spend time making sure things are right (in some parts of the ski world there is trail crew to do this, but here it's patrol). After the last big snowfall we had to find all the buiried safety mats and dig them up



Lunch is taken in shifts so there is always someone on call - NOW, not 5 min later after extracting yourself from a resturant. In Megeve we do eat quite well



Early afternoon is when we get most calls, I've been lead or solo on more than a dozen and aid to three times that number so far this season. A few scary ones but nothing that you can't recover from (eventually),a few anoying ones that you may not get called for in another country and whole bunch of knees!



I've only been on two heli assisted rescues so far, one was quite serious and both were in places that are hard to get out from with a person in a rescue sled.



Sometimes you end up in a corner thinking how am I going to get them out of here. When it's not a serious accident (or other mitigating circumstances) we can't just call for a heli. This one in a stream bed took a bit of thought and making a escape route on foot.



Once we've found you, stabilized you, then it's off by sled to the ambulance



At the end of the day we get to watch the sun go down from the top of the mountain



We each have a run or runs to close on the way home, sometimes they are a bit of a mess



And sometimes its nice

[Squirreljam]

Great post, way to bring the patrol stoke!

Jealous of your lunch

[Idris]

The Season is now very much done and dusted, I am back into jack hammer n drill mode (House foundation). This was my first full season of being a real ski patroler. Because it was my first I realy enjoyed it, BUT. It was full of ups n downs, especially downs caused by mother nature. Some major parts of the resort were closed and opened again 4 times.

Until mid december, I'm really going to miss seeing this at the end of my commute.



And having this for my toilet window
.


Think this is a pic of our last real fesh snow day, 4th of April or so. We've just skated over from the Teleperique (Tram) beind us and have stopped to say hi to Jean-Eves (in Blue) The Mechanic/Electrician in charge of the Caboche Telecabne (Gondola) before we ski off to open our assigned runs for the day.



On the skate accross the flats this is the view as the sun crests the Italan border to shine into France



Some days you just have to make the most of what snow you have (I'm driving not skiing).

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/M0ruyoJuS-A

Being a season of open one min, closed the next we had 140 less rescues than the revious year, but I was still involved with this contraption 4 times. (I think there was 30 or so helis called this year)



To deal with this sort of rescue, not always of piste but serious (An 11 year old with a suspectd broken Femur) case.



And towards the end of season a fair few calls like this, get there and somone let the wrong lifty use a radio, you turn up and the kid has long since picked them selves up and is back doing laps.



Way too much of the season the runs looked like this, we would love to install snowmaking here. And it's not money or resources that are stopping us. It's running a ski area with 238 different property owners, and a few (a very small few) are a PITA



Resulting in a client experience like this. These runs were actuall closed, but in France, that means please don't go. And if you do have an accident you are footing your own bills becuse you invalidated your insurance (although it will still be lesss than your co pay in the USA).



In the end we threw in the towel with the runs in the middle of the resort and bit by bit dismantled all of the signposts and safety gear. This is the tower/pylon protection.



Of course we got a few dumps of snow needing the digging out of the signs on the runs that remain open.

A fair number of people didn't understand why we couldn't just re open the closed runs. Even if everything was still in place, 30cm (a foot) of snow over mud n grass, while nice looking, dosen't make it skiable.



At the end of the season we closed the main area a week earlier than in a good year and the upper area 2 days later - it then snowed for 2 days straight, but it also rained to the summits and everything slid bigtime.

Am I going back? Put it this way I've already returned the neccesary paperwork to say yes.

[mcski]

Very cool. Congrats and keep doing updates

[Foggy_Goggles]

Fuck yeah Tom! How do you say "Redneck" in French. I hope you got some fun skiing for yourself up valle.

[Idris]

Fuck yeah Tom! How do you say "Redneck" in French. I hope you got some fun skiing for yourself up valle.

Did ski this classic line with 2 of the guys from work and one from Japan

[Brownski]

Very cool. Congrats and keep doing updates

Seconded. This all cool stuff

[JohnF]

One of my favorite threads here.

[comish]

Wow, blast from the past! We are heading back to London this summer for a reunion. Too bad we can't have a Cham reunion. Still remember skiing w/ you 23ish years ago! Crazy how time flies and how this little corner of the internet has hooked so many of us up. T- was always super gracious and helpful to us Yanks visiting Cham. Cheers!