A lot more than just a free lift ticket

VERNON-When most people think of a ski patroller what usually comes to mind is an impossibly good skier dressed in a red jacket with a white cross on the back gliding down a mountain trail on the look out for potential hazards both animate and inanimate. And while that is one of the National Ski Patrol's main duties, a patroller's day begins long before the mountain opens and ends well after it closes. Chip Ehrhardt lives in Vernon and has been with the local ski patrol for 32 years. He started as a weekend volunteer when the resort was know as Vernon Valley and has been a full-time paid patroller for the past fifteen years at the resort now known as Mountain Creek. While Ehrhardt is paid, most ski patrol members are volunteers. The National Ski Patrol was founded in 1938 by Charles M. (Minnie) Dole. It claims on its Web site to be the "largest winter rescue organization in the world," and claims 28,500 members and 600 individual patrol units. Locally, Hidden Valley and High Point State Park's cross-country skiing facility also have units. Like nearly every patrol member, Ehrhardt began as a volunteer. "I started out doing it initially for the free skiing, but you soon come to realize that there really is not that much free skiing, especially if you work the weekends," he said. As a full-timer, he has multiple duties that begin before many of the people who will fill the mountain on any give day are even awake. "My day begins at 7 a.m. when I get here and get my equipment ready," he said. "By 7:30, I am out on the mountain." Many trails are marked by fencing, and when the snow machines groom the slopes at night, the fences are taken down. Ehrhardt's first job is to use a portable drill to make holes in the hardpack and ice and put the fence posts and fencing back up. On the way up the mountain to restore the fencing, he and fellow patrol members visually check every chair lift to make sure the chairs are seated properly on their cables. "Then," he said, "We do at least two runs on all trails to make sure that they are free of hazards and that they have been groomed properly. If we find large areas of ice we still have time to get the grooming crew to the area before the public is allowed on," he added. Ehrhardt, who was a physical education teacher in Nutley for 25 years, is drawn to the active outdoor experience that being a member of the ski patrol brings. And while he admits that there are probably fewer than ten perfect ski days a season, that's enough to bring him back year after year. "At the beginning of the season, there is very little time to enjoy the skiing because we are so busy getting the mountain ready," he said. "And towards the end of the season, it's the same thing. But there is that period in-between when you will be rewarded with a perfect day - what we call a ‘ten' day. "A ten day is usually a weekday when there are not too many skiers or boarders on the mountain, which automatically reduces the chance of the ski patrol being in demand," he added. "We are given an hourly update of the number of tickets sold so we have some idea of what we can expect in terms of potential incidents. If the count is under 500, then we know that there are approximately 1,500 skiers on the mountain, taking into account the season pass holders and we know that we will have a good day," he said. "As the numbers go up, so do the chances that we will be kept busy with various kinds of incidents." While the ski patrol polices the slopes, members are also the first to respond to accidents. They are specially trained to control bleeding and stabilize victims in accident situations and have to be recertified on a yearly basis. "Ninety percent of the incidents we are called to require taking the precaution of using a backboard and taking the person down the mountain on the toboggan to the EMS base stations," he said. "Whether it's a twisted knee, a broken wrist or head trauma almost all accidents are the result of a collision, with another skier or in the worst case a collision with a stationary object like a tree. The simple fact is that speed kills and many skiers and snowboarders think that they're better than they actually are and are skiing at speeds and on terrain that is beyond their control." Though skiing is still popular, snowboarding has become popular with young and old alike and while the snowboarder may have gained the reputation for not observing the same codes as skiers on the slopes, Ehrhardt has his own take on that. "The majority of snowboarders are nice amiable people," he said. "But there is a small fringe group who give them all a bad name. But that fringe group has always existed, and if they weren't on snowboards they would be on skis."