Ski Patrol

The first step outside is still always a shock to Neal’s body.  At 5am it is five degrees farenheit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  Neal is covered head to toe in ski patrol red and white, but he still coughs sharply after his first icy inhalation reaches his lungs.  He likes the pain and smiles in return to the bitter coldness that said “good morning.”

Neal has been worked ski patrol at Jackson Hole for the last three winters, and maybe only one day has felt like work.  He gets to be outside, he gets to help people, and best of all… he gets to ski.  Neal has a picture on the night stand near his bed of him and his dad skiing, when Neal was only two years old.  It is one of those pictures where size is comical.  Baby Neal can’t see under the rim of his fluffy orange hat with a big white cotton ball on top.  His clothes make him look like a starfish, and baby Neal’s skis resemble two butter knives.  Starting so young paid dividends, though, and now Neal moves effortlessly through any condition on the mountain, from heavy powder days to slick icy days and slow spring rain days.

Tuesday mornings are usually Neal’s favorite, because he is on avalanche control Tuesday mornings.  He gets to man the cannon that shoots torpedo-shaped shells filled with TNT into cornices ready to fall on unsuspecting skiers.  Much like a firefighter creates a burn zone to starve a forest fire, avalanche control induces an avalanche before the ski day starts, so it doesn’t slide when skiers are around.  Neal likes to shoot the cannon, but he prefers the treks like he is on today, up on the ridge above avalanche-prone areas.  Last night, he worked to fill a backpack with various sized sticks of dynamite, and he fashioned multiple fuses of varying length.  Depending on the snow pack, he might need a bigger boom, or more time to get to a safe spot.

There’s something about carrying 40 pounds of explosives on your back, up to the top of a mountain and being the only one up there.  Neal is atop a chute known as “Andre’s Chute” re-named recently for a skier who passed away due to a self-caused avalanche ramming him into the jagged and rocky side wall, and then tumbling him 1000ft further down the mountain before he came to a stop.  Before Andre, it was just named “Chute 3”.  Neal prepared the smallest of his sticks of dynamite, with a short fuse.  The first blast is always a warning blast in case birds, rodents or even the occasional mountain goat was in the chute.  Before Neal learned the ins and outs of avalanche control, he had wondered about the animals in and around avalanche-prone areas, and what the ski area did, if anything, to protect them.

He lit the fuse and let the crackling of the fuse warm his hands for a split second before chucking the stick out over the chute.  It spun end over end for two seconds and then exploded in a loud BOOM.  Neal’s gloves were over his ears long before the explosion, but he still felt the shockwave on his face and chest.