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One snowy morning a few winters back, a single ski lying by itself near the edge of a cliff caught Scott Moore’s “lifeguard’s eye.” The Manhattan Beach lifeguard and Big Bear Mountain ski patroller cruised over to investigate.
A woman was resting against a boulder, several hundred feet below the edge of the cliff. She had tried, but was unable to climb back up the icy face of the cliff. Ski Patrollers would need ice screws to get enough grip on the slope to lower themselves down to her using pulleys.
“In another 20 minutes, her ski would have been covered with snow. If we hadn’t found her when we did, we probably wouldn’t have known she was missing until the end of the day,” Moore said.
Moore has been a Los Angeles County Ocean Lifeguard and a ski patroller on California ski hills for the past two decades. His seniority makes him one of the last few lifeguard recurrents, the county’s on-call lifeguard reserves, who can work almost full-time year round. He patrols the slopes at Big Bear Mountain in Big Bear Lake on his days off.
And while it might seem like a dream job, the lifestyle of a dual-environment rescue specialist does have its drawbacks. For starters, you get almost no sympathy when you complain about your job.
“No one’s going to feel sorry for you when there’s a swell coming in and you tell them you have to go to the mountains, or when you’re scheduled to work the beach the next day and it starts snowing,” Moore said.
And while that doesn’t seem to really outweigh the benefits of keeping your tan year round or working in a cubicle-free environment, being a professional lifesaver is no cakewalk. Whether they’re wearing the red vest and white cross of a ski patroller or a lifeguard’s red swim trunks, rescuers must brave hostile environments to rescue those who find themselves in dangerous situations.
On the slopes, ski patrollers aid injured skiers and snowboarders and try to identify unsafe conditions before they cause accidents. Along with being expert skiers, they’re trained in emergency medicine and have the skills and equipment to rescue skiers stranded in mountain backcountry or dangling from the top of a ten-story ski lift.
Los
Angeles County lifeguards are members of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
They are responsible for marking off unsafe areas and patrolling the waterfront
for injured beach goers. They man fire-fighting Baywatch boats and rescue swimmers
and boaters from the surf zone, even in high seas.
More than a quarter of Big Bear Mountain’s ski patrollers do double duty, working as lifeguards during the summer, said Moore. Working both jobs not only gives a ski patroller a paycheck in the off season, but helps lifeguards sharpen some of the skills they don’t get as much practice with on the beach. Because of skiing’s inherent hazards, patrollers get exposed to more different kinds of injuries than lifeguards.
“I get my medical credentials on the beach but I hone them on the slopes. Over 20 years on the mountain, I’ve probably seen 1,000 broken legs, and more trauma than I care to remember. On the beach, I may have seen two broken legs. But when something does happen down there, my comfort level with the situation is very high,” Moore said.
The two jobs share many similarities. They’re the kind of thankless jobs that are usually only appreciated when they’re needed. But when a guard or patroller does get thanked, it’s almost always genuine.
“Helping people when they’re in a situation where they can’t help themselves means a lot to me. It may sound corny, but as a guard or a patroller, you’re a part of the solution to at least one person’s problem when they need it most, and that’s really worthwhile” Moore said.
He remembers one rescue in particular where an out of control skier barreled off the side of a trail into a small canyon. The man, a firefighter, hit one of the trees below, sliding down to the canyon floor. Ski patrollers had to use their “erector set” of extrication equipment to pull the man out of the ravine so that they could get him to the base of the hill where a medical helicopter was waiting.
Moore followed the man’s progress until he was released. Doctors had found a third of one of the lenses from the man’s sunglasses in his eye socket.
“I told them to save it, if he sent it back to Vuarnet, they would give him a free pair of sunglasses,” Moore said.
Two years later, as he was getting off a ski lift, a man he didn’t recognize flagged him down and thanked him for saving his life. It was the fire fighter he had helped rescue two years before.
“I’m not sure I saved his life. Any other ski patroller would have done the same things I did. But when you think about helping a rescuer out of a tough situation, you’ve not only helped them out, but you’ve saved everyone they’d have saved for the rest of their career,” Moore said
As the skiing scene has changed over the past 20 years, ski patrollers have had to change with it. The job has become increasingly professional, and according to Moore, the legal training a patroller receives is now equal to the time they spend learning first aid. Documenting accidents and how they occurred is a vital part of their job, both to protect themselves and their employers.
“We were just scratching the surface of that in 1980,” Moore said.
Since the ‘80s, ski hills have also changed dramatically. Areas that were formerly out-of-bounds now have their own ski lifts and snowboarding has changed the slopes’ profile, adding terrain features like half pipes and table-top jumps.
Moore started snowboarding three years ago to keep up with his then 13-year-old daughter. At the time, snowboards were just becoming acceptable equipment for ski patrollers.
“If you’re a waterman you do as much as you can to be in the water -- surf, swim, row dories, paddle. If you’re a mountain man you do the same thing, ski, snowboard, and mountaineer. It all goes together,” Moore said.
Last year his skis sat in the corner as he spent the winter on a board. He is now certified to patrol the slopes on his board.
“Snowboarding
is fun, because every day I go out, I’m either getting better or I get hurt!”
Moore said.
Ironically, when he did get seriously hurt, it was at the beach not the mountain. In 1992, while sprinting into the surf, he twisted his knee, tearing the anterior cruciary ligament. A surgery using other ligaments from his knee and titanium screws as well as a lot of physical therapy got him back on the slopes.
“I keep hearing that I’m getting too old for this. But the more you bend the less you break. Or someone will ask me when I’m going to go and get a real job. I tell them ‘ this is as real as it gets.’” Moore said. ER