Our latest adventure has been entering a year long training program to serve as Ski Patrol at Chestnut Mountain Resort near Galena, IL located along the Mississippi River. We are pictured below in our patrol candidate vests taking a break from skiing.
We make the 1 1/2 hour drive east to the resort about every other weekend for training classes and ski skills lessons. It will take all of this year and potentially part of next year before we are certified and earn our red parkas. During training, we already get to enjoy a lot of the ski patrol benefits. We don't get a paycheck, but we do get to ski, eat, and stay at the resort for free. Essentially we just have to pay for the gas it takes to get us there....not a bad deal if you like skiing and helping people!
There are 11 candidates in our class this year. Only 2 (including me) are female. Most are skiers. A couple of them snowboard. This is a photo of some of our fellow candidates taking a break from skiing. Jonathan has been having fun with "da boys" as he likes to call them. Above (left to right) Jason, Jonathan (who is borrowing Matt's short ski blades in this photo), Mark (his twin brother Steve is also a candidate), and Jordan. As you can see several of them are quite tall. Some of the older patrolers like to tease Jason, Jonathan, and Jordan about their size. One calls them the "half ton of fun" and another says that it sounds more like we are trying to put together a basketball team with a starting line up of 6' 6", 6' 5", and 6' 6".
You may be able to tell that overall the Chestnut ski patrol has a pretty good sense of humour. All of our class instructors are also patrolers. They keep our classes practical, fun, and light hearted. This is a photo of Kathy (one of our instructors) demonstrating a pressure bandage for a head wound while Jason goofs around for the camera.
Last weekend was all about bandaging wounds and dealing with blood. This is a photo of Jonathan practicing how to take off gloves that are covered in blood (we used ketchup for practice) without contaminating himself.
This is another one of our instructors, Deb, showing us what critical blood loss looks like in the snow with some red cough syrup. We also talked a lot about shock and practiced how to assess injured guests.
This is a picture of the view from the lodge at the top of the hill at Chestnut Mountain Resort. It is looking down on the Mississippi River. You can see this view from all of the ski runs. It is really beautiful. Not a bad way to spend our weekends! You can check out more info at this link: https://www.chestnutmtn.com/
Come and ski with us!
As you can see, after a month, it has already started to fill in and "plump out." I have been cleaning it daily and putting neosporin on it. So far no signs of infection etc. It is just a very slow process of growing skin and scar tissue. They say most of it will grow back and I might have to trim my thumbnail a little slanted. Thanks for bearing with the photos. A little gruesome I know, but I thought it would be a good idea to document some of the healing and see how it actually turns out. For now Coban (a.k.a. Vet Wrap) bandages are my friend.
This is a random group of students out on the trail. It has been bitterly cold and if it weren't for the snow the students would probably be pretty miserable outside in classes all day. I think the snow ends up being more of a distraction (in a good way) for them then the cold. It also means that we can teach them cross country skiing and snow shoeing as part of their classes. It has been really fun teaching and watching kids try these things for the first time. It reminds me of the first time that I tried them and fell in love with winter sports and playing in the snow.