Last week’s post got a bit lengthy, so I had to abandon parts of the annual Haldeman ski trip to avoid writing a novel instead of a blog. Fortunately, I can add those stories on the next blog, so there’s that. 

T-patrol – This is a new term soon to be submitted to Websters for consideration. The eventual definition will be an avid skier that combs the slopes solely for the purpose of finding skiers in distress so that he can help those skiers. The story behind the word will be all Tayden. See, Tayden will always get our money’s worth on ski trips. Risking dehydration and starvation, he rarely comes off the slopes before they make him. On every trip, he spends significant time skiing alone because the rest of us are hungry or thirsty or need a bathroom. He used to be content just meeting interesting people on the lifts, but with the Covid lift restrictions, he frequently found himself on the lifts alone… which makes it hard to meet other people. I mean, other than the people he may make up in his head to keep him company when his family abandons him. Anyway, this year, he started T-patrol. As the definition implies, he finds strangers who have fallen and need help getting a ski on. Many times, Tayden knew most of the people on the slopes, and they knew him, exchanging pleasantries in passing. Frequently, he knew their names. And they knew his. It seems that he would lead them to paths that were more to their ability than the one that he rescued them on, so he ended up skiing with them for an hour or so. We usually couldn’t find Tayden when we came back out skiing after lunch. By the third day, we knew that he was over on the greens with his newest adopted family in distress (the one that wouldn’t abandon him for their hunger) and that he would turn up back on the blacks soon. 

Tayden had a couple of frequent fliers. By the third day, we met Cooper, who Tayden spent dinner skiing with for most of the trip. It seems that Cooper’s friends were better skiers than him and didn’t care to teach him. We also met a pack of very cute girls that weren’t very good at skiing… or very good at staying off runs that they had no business being on. Maybe they liked our little T-patrol as much as he seemed to like them. Mmm-hmmm. Now I understand. The savior on skis! One time, we got to watch T-patrol in action as he flew up to a skier missing a ski. The actual ski-patrol was already there, but as we watched from the chair lift, T-patrol talked amicably with ski-patrol, eventually taking over for ski-patrol, who actually skied away. Apparently, Tayden knew ski-patrol too and had developed enough of a reputation that they absconded responsibility to him as an equal. We should get a discount on lift tickets!

There is one more story worth mentioning. It happened when Taryn, Trent, and I returned to the slopes after a lunch break. Taryn and I were waiting by the lift line, wondering where Trent was. He usually flew past us on the hill. After waiting a while, we decided to go up and see if he was in need of T-patrol, as we couldn’t do anything for him from the bottom of the hill. Just as we settled on the chair lift, we saw him come sailing down the hill, covered in fresh snow from what must have been a glorious wipe out, which was witnessed by nobody (ugh!). We turned in our chair just in time to witness the odd events happening right behind us on the lift. There was a family of four behind us. Two of them pushed into the location to catch the chair, but had missed the chair right behind Taryn and me. Not noticing that they had missed the chair, the other two members of the family pushed into position for a chair, right behind their other two family members. Now, it was a four person chair lift, but it’s usually a bad idea to go two by two. In addition to the problem with the line-up, they also appeared to be way to far to their left. The lift operator did not catch on to the emergent situation developing quick enough, and the chair came around. The dad sat comfortably in the middle/right of the chair, one kid got pushed forward and was nowhere near the chair (lucky kid), the second kid was in front of the mom, who got pushed up and onto the left armrest of the chair, and pinned there by her child who was thrashing around in front of her, tangling up the skis. Fortunately, the chair stopped at this point, but the poor mom was in a precarious situation. Inexplicably, the dad slid to his right, which tipped the balance of the chair, lifting the mom up off the ground, suspended, stradling the cold hard pole that acted as an armrest. Now the dad was so low to the ground on the chair that it would have been difficult for him to stand because his knees were in his chest. The mom was dangling, and pinned in by her child, who had fallen back toward her. 

At this point, Trent realized the situation was dire, and came and pushed down on the mom’s side of the chair. As soon as the mom’s skis hit the ground, the chair operator extracted her and her child in one big clump. The dad failed to recognize his opportunity to get off the chair while it was at a normal height, so it slammed back down once the woman and her child were removed. He must have outweighed Trent by a bit (shocking). It took awhile for the poor operator to get them all sorted out and settled on the chair in a normal fashion. 

Then, the lift wouldn’t restart. This left Taryn and me contemplating how we would get off the lift if we were stuck… wait for the cherry picker to get us or pop off our skis and boots and try to angle towards the lift pole, which had a ladder on it, and was fairly close to our chair. Luckily, some guy on a snowmobile came and fixed the problem after about 10 minutes, and we were on our way, leaving the question of what we would do dangling like that poor mom behind us. 

Have a great week everyone! And make sure a chair is available before committing!