The annual Pacific Northwest Division Nuts & Bolts clinic for the patrol was this past weekend, and while I didn't ski all 3 days, I had a great time. The weather was, for the most part, perfect. I say "for the most part" because it was a tad breezy on Saturday.Okay,

Crap, I forgot to blog about last weekend. Sunday the 17th was another day of toboggan training for some folks who needed a catch-up day to be ready for testing. Glorious partly sunny day, that started out in the high 20s.Not much else to say except that the off-piste st

After taking a weekend away from patrolling, I was kind of excited to get back into it. I'd been sick the couple days prior, which meant missing out on dragging pal Barkernews up for night skiing on Thursday night. Pretty frustrated about that. But Saturday was looking to

Last Saturday the 26th was a big day. Not only were a handful of the patrol trainees that I worked with last weekend going to take their toboggan tests, but I was putting on another tune-up clinic for the folks we hope to have ready for the next weekend of testing. In the morning, coaches John, Jeff, and I gave a pep

Sunday the 13th was Day 21, and the first day in a long time that I wasn't training patrol apprentices. Instead, I was helping evaluate candidates for next year's group, same as back on Ski Day 4. One thing was different this time, however - I got put in charge of the ski test portion of the tryouts program.

Saturday was another training day, and I found myself back with B Team once again. One of their regular coaches couldn't make it, so I joined them for some more toboggan training over at Ski Bowl. It was snowing, and with the temps where they were, in my mind it was threatening to rain. Thankfully, the

Day 18 was another training day with the patrol. I was covering for one of the A Team coaches at Ski Bowl, and it was VERY cold. Probably the coldest day I've skied since coming out here to Oregon. Temps were in the single digits as the day started. Not as cold as that GS at Burke that one year, but pretty darn chilly

Well, it's been too long, so much of the detail will be absent from the recap of the last 4 ski days. Feb 11th: Took the day off from work to go skiing. This was a brilliant plan, really. The roads were in good shape, there was plenty of snow, it was sunny and rel

I haven't posted about my ski days in a while. I'll get to it.

I know they've had days of higher winds at Meadows, but I'm calling today's post "Big Windy" because I got to witness the destructive power of the wind firsthand. But I'll get to that in a bit. Don't worry, nobody was hurt, and we didn't have to evacuate a chairlift.Toda

I'm writing about this one only because it happened. The only thing spectacular about coaching this past weekend was the amount of water that fell from the sky as rain and didn't freeze. We knew going in it was going to be a VERY wet training day. To their credit, C Team generally had a good attitude a

Saturday the 8th was our first on-hill training day with the current crop of ski patrol apprentices, and it started out pretty well. I joined A Team at Ski Bowl, since they were minus a coach, and we headed off into the fresh snow. We helped out with the area opening, li

Wednesday, I was back on duty as the Hill Captain at Ski Bowl. Most of the crew from Monday's extended patrol day were back, as well as a couple extra folks including one of the guys from my OEC class. It had snowed quite a bit overnight, and the drive up was on packed snow all the way from Sandy. I thought about chaining u

Holidays got me slackin', y'all. I patrolled at Timberline back on the 18th, and aside from some confusion during sweep, it was largely unremarkable. Just a regular patrol day for me, no hill-captaining. The only thing out of the ordinary was that I got to give another one-off tryout. This time, one of our associate p

The first of (hopefully only) two back-to-back day weekends on the patrol started out with a nice wintry morning at Ski Bowl for the patrol's annual tryouts. I was one of many evaluators for the ski-test portion of the day's activities, and it was looking like it'd be a nice snowy day on the hill. But we knew it would

Today ended up being one of the wackiest days I can recall in my relatively brief patrol career. But we'll get to that later. For anyone reading this who was there, the post title is probably enough.I got an early start today, mostly because of a mild case of nerves, or more accurately a stronger than

Wow. Again, Twitter and Facebook (and a host of other things) have kept me from updating here. With the ski season well underway for me, it's past time to start posting again. The summer and fall have been busy, with kitchen remodeling and preparing for another season on

Saturday night was the annual Mt. Hood Ski Patrol awards banquet. I hadn't "suited up" in a while, and Bex hooked me up with a sweet new red tie to go with the white shirt and dark pinstripe suit. I was feeling pretty dapper, and ready to go hang out and have a nice evening with my fellow patrollers.

Bruce Campbell's voice rumbled from the Sorento's speakers as I pulled into a parking space in front of the patrol building in Government Camp this morning. I had forgotten all about the audiobook for "Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way", until recently, so I'd put it on my iPhone earlier in the week, listening to chun

Sunday was all kinds of cool for me. It was my first trip to Mt. Bachelor, for starters. I know what you're thinking... (Actually, I kind of dislike that phrase. Quite impossible, I'd have to imagine, to know that. Let's try again.)I can guess what you might be thinking.

One year ago today, I started the long road back to skiing. A month before that, I had destroyed my left knee quite handily in a stupid little crash on the way out to check out Scotty's Way (AKA East Wall) at Ski Bowl. I won't go over the whole thing again - if you want to read that story,

I guess I should call it "we patrol", since there were 3 of us. But that sounds kind of odd. Anyway, I'm finally getting around to blogging about last Friday. My blogslackery knows...uh...well, SOME bounds. I guess.After looking at the week's forecast after Ski Day 22, I

This past weekend was another one of those skiing weekends where I skied both days and the experience on each day was completely different. I kind of like those - because different is interesting and interesting is good - but when you start out with the sunny bluebird day, you don't want the second day to be different

Yeah, it snowed at Meadows today. Quite a bit. And it was windy. Quite a bit windy. I had figured on having to go it alone coaching the apprentices today, but was pleasantly surprised to find a coach who happened to be patrolling up there willing to help me out. That was cool.It was Andrew, who not only co

Hey, look - I didn't wait almost a week (or longer) to get around to blogging about a patrol day. I'm proud of myself, but not to the point that I'll be testing my flexibility by patting myself on the back.Or did I just do that?Whatever. Anyway, Sunday was another day of apprentice coaching for

Sunday found me in a familiar place, not surprisingly - Mt. Hood Ski Bowl. Other than having to 'fly solo' as a toboggan coach for the patrol, there was really only one thing noteworthy about Sunday.It had been just one day shy of a year since I blew out my left knee up there at that very ski area.

Another bout of blogslackeritis has brought about a dry spell here, and also what could be a massive missive, if I were to write as much as I could about basically all of February from a skiing/patrolling standpoint.But I won't.Feb 6th was my avalanche refresher course, and I certainly was plea