The ski patrollers who help keep resorts visitors safe, provide aid when they aren’t, and are always ready in a pinch are a vital part of the ski world. As National Ski Patrol executive director Tim White says, his group is the “sleep-at-night formula for resorts and for guests.” But while the National Ski Patrol is still 27,000 strong, they’re, well—there’s no polite way to say this—they’re aging, like everyone else in the business.

In the case of the patrol, this could be partly a result of the NSP’s decision to suspend its junior patrollers program back in the early 1990s (the NSP relaunched it last year and is taking steps to make the junior patrol 21st century-worthy). Or could it be, as White wondered, that patrolling has somehow lost its “cool” appeal?

“Think about it,” he says. “Back in the 1950s and ’60s when so many people joined, there had to be something that was just plain cool about it. We need to find what is cool about it now and communicate that. It is critical for us to go forward with this. Our young adult programs are like hybrids are to the auto industry. If we don’t get it right, we are going to fall behind.”

Patrolling, as most know, was born in the 1930s and went big time after NSP founder Minot Dole and the NSP helped create and train the famed 10th Mountain Division. With that cachet, many were drawn to the NSP and to patrolling. Then, as it does now, it takes a certain type of person: someone who first and foremost, says White, loves skiing and the mountains, and who also enjoys helping people and the kind of esprit de corps that comes with the patroller life.

Those people must be willing to patrol for free or for little, to train regularly and take complicated courses in emergency medical response, and must have a personal investment in seeing the sport—as well as their own home resort—thrive. Helping find those people and groom them is not only vital for patrol programs at resorts, its vital for the industry as a whole—many future industry leaders start out as patrols.


SERVICE AND CAMARADERIE
NSP board member Bela Mutits recognizes patrolling’s upside. He joined the NSP in 1970 as a teenager because his friend’s dad was in it at now-defunct Dutchess Ski Area in New York. He met his wife there while they were both junior ski patrollers, and now both their sons are patrols.

“It’s an interesting world because it draws such a wide range of people. We have executives from Fortune 500s right beside folks who do white water rafting tours in the summer. But when we put our boots on in the morning and head out on the mountain, we are all the same,” Mutits says. That egalitarian mix is still part of the NSP’s attraction.

Mutits thinks part of the NSP’s challenge is the disappearance of many mom and pop ski areas like Dutchess. “They were the great training grounds,” he says. “While the training hours to become a patroller were the same, the hours you had to volunteer were less, and so they were a great place for younger folks to get into it.”

George Lemerise has also seen the opportunities and challenges. He grew up with a family of Wildcat, N.H., skiers and loved the sport and the life from a young age. He got into the patrol system through his father (not uncommon; the NSP now boasts many third-generation patrollers). He worked at the Balsams long enough to realize this was not just a job, but a part of who he was. He moved on to Attitash, N.H., where he patrolled for nearly three decades. Today he’s at Cranmore as patrol and safety director, and oversees many aspects of the resort.

In all these roles he’s found good, solid and dependable patrollers by looking for people interested in medicine or emergency services, who look toward patrolling as way to learn and train. Beyond that, he says, he searches for people who are “emotionally invested from the start,” meaning that they love the sport, the outdoors, helping people and the camaraderie that comes with patrolling.

Because, he admits, the job is a bit of a sacrifice, even if you do land a paying gig. “It is evident—I’m not going to say it’s not—that this is a tough way to make a living, and most people out there are looking to make a buck.” But, he says, if you can find those who understand they’ll need another job or trade to fill the wallet off-season and love the life enough, you’ll be in good shape.

His advice to resort managers looking to fill patrol positions (other than asking him; he has only had two bad hires he can recall in 37 years of work): “Be a good judge of character. Find out what motivates them and where they want to go in life. That will tell you a lot.”

It often tells you that patrollers stay with the industry. A couple of decades ago, two teens started as junior patrollers at a now defunct ski area in New Hampshire called “The Highlands.” The two loved to ski and were hard working and determined to learn all they could about their industry.

This year, after not seeing one another in years, John Urdi and Shannon Walsh met up again, no longer junior patrollers but industry professionals. Urdi is the new director of sales and marketing for Grand Targhee, and Walsh is one of Targhee’s lead patrollers and snowcat guides.

“I got here and I saw a poster on the wall of an employee and I was like, hey that guy looks familiar,” says Urdi, “and sure enough! We were patrollers together long ago.”

Urdi isn’t that surprised, though. In his early years of patrolling he could see that the job would lead some to a lifetime in the industry. “Four of us were patrollers in high school,” he recalls. “One became a Navy doctor, another heads up a ski school and we are both here. It shows that if you get into a resort this way and it’s your passion, you make it your life.”

Urdi, Lemerise and White all agree that the camaraderie is a big payoff of being a patroller. Urdi remembers being a student at Northeastern University and finding out that a guy he patrolled with was the dean of engineering. “I looked him up and it was like having my own personal guidance counselor,” he says. Resorts—and the NSP—are looking to remind younger snow sports lovers of those payoffs to the patroller life.


BRIDGING THE GAP
It may take more than that, though. Mutits feels that this generation of young adults and teens has more choices and demands on its time than those of the past, and that could be keeping them away from patrolling. "The time demands on 17- and 18-year-olds today are much more than they were when I was a kid," he says. "They're all doing about 10 different things at once. We are competing against a whole bunch of stuff."

Mutits wonders, too, if the aging of the NSP troops he sees is hurting the ability to recruit younger patrollers. "Part of getting young folks into this is projecting the image that this is the place to be," he says. "If the average age is going up—which it is—that is the image you are projecting. People might look at this and say 'oh yeah, that's what you do when you are 40.’ We lose kids when they go to college. It’s just hard to maintain them.”

NSP is working to maintain the connection: it has hired its first-ever “young adult program head”—Matt Abbadessa, a freshman at Villanova University. Abbadessa is charged with finding ways to recruit young patrollers, and share and collect best practices.

Of course, this will involve social networking (what doesn’t anymore?) “The challenge is to appear cool to (younger people),” says White. “It might mean being more progressive online; it might mean shedding the ‘cop image’ that patrollers can sometimes have. We are going to find the answer.”

White says he’s not sure how the economy will hit patrolling, but he hopes those who love skiing and riding will remain attracted to such programs. “There is a cost to patrolling, no doubt about it,” he says, pointing out that even with discounts equipment can be costly, and time is valuable too. “But if we can continue to show generations the many benefits, we will remain strong.”