In one corner of a hospital wing, there’s a snowboarder with her eye impaled by a stick. In another, a skier with a swollen, misshapen wrist that’s bruising fast. A pale, sweaty, middle-aged snowshoer slumps on a chair, struggling to remember her name. A man still in ski boots moans and writhes on the ground with his leg twisted sideways.
Amid the chaos, 23-year-old Meghan Doremus strolls past the examination rooms with a serene smile. She stops to touch up the red paint on one patient’s third-degree burn. She sprays a little more glycerin on the heart-attack victim’s pale-painted face to resemble beads of sweat. A National Ski Patrol (NSP) member since the age of 15, she’s lately learned moulage—the art of makeup application to resemble injury and illness—so that her fellow patrollers can earn or renew their Outdoor Emergency Skills certification. Prior to this role, she had acted as a patient for five years, screaming in pain to simulate various injuries.
“The performance was a lot more effective when you had a realistic-looking scenario,” Doremus says. “It strengthened the simulation of approaching someone who has a real injury at our ski resort.”
Doremus is one of almost 100 NSP volunteers who patrol at Oregon’s Willamette Pass Resort. Draw an equilateral triangle upside down with Eugene and Bend as the base, and the Resort becomes the third point. It’s an intimate venue with five runs descending past forests of fir, cedar, pine, and hemlock trees. It’s best known for a super-steep slope called RTS—“Real Tough Stuff”— which, at a 52-degree angle, is one of the country’s steepest runs. Patrolling isn’t glamorous work; volunteers are often cold and wet or sweating with exertion. They’re pulling on latex gloves to handle blood and saliva while fielding visitors’ complaints about long lift lines or—in the backcountry—gloving up to clean restrooms and scoop abandoned dog feces while listening to snowshoers snarl about signs admonishing them to steer clear of ski tracks.
Willamette Pass Resort hosts as many as 1,000 skiers and boarders daily during the winter season, a lot for a small ski area of just 555 acres. Add to that a couple of low-cost bonus weekends offered last April and May—attracting first-timers and families to play on the late-season snowpack—and patrollers find themselves dealing with numerous injuries and illnesses daily. Often, patrollers put their own physical and mental health on the line to do so, all for no pay and little glory. This call to service spans ages and generations, but its motivations are personal.
One of the youngest patrollers at the resort, Doremus first joined Ski Patrol Youth as a teenager, inspired by her father’s role as a patroller. Patrolling is a critical piece of winter sports infrastructure, making skiing and snowboarding safer for those who didn’t grow up participating in winter downhill sports.
Today, she’s a full-time landscape architect student with a part-time job caring for a boy with autism, and she has thought about taking a break. NSP volunteers commit to 12-hour shifts every third weekend day, from December to the last snow of the season (in 2023, families skied on Mother’s Day, May 14). Some patrollers are EMTs. Others are physical therapists. Many are teachers. They all take courses in avalanche safety, search and rescue, CPR, toboggan transport, and chairlift evacuation. They also spend 50 hours in an online and in-person emergency care class, with an annual refresher course, learning skills that range from how to help a heart attack or stroke victim to what to do if someone’s eviscerated themselves with a ski pole.
Doremus has treated skiers and snowboarders with broken femurs and dislocated shoulders, but the most dramatic experience was a small laceration. A father had taken his young daughter for her first ski trip, and had accidentally run over her hand with his ski. When Doremus began treating the wound, both father and daughter were distraught; she had to tend to their emotional needs as much as the physical injury.
Doremus asked the girl to choose one of the stuffed bears in the aid room and give it a name and hold onto it as she cleaned and bandaged the cut. She told the distraught father to focus on filling out an incident report. Perhaps sensing Doremus’ calm, both eventually calmed down and, hopefully, felt confident enough to return to the slopes another day.
Half a mile northwest of Willamette Pass Resort, cross-country skiers gliding through the trees might find Don Elting in his red and black jacket, chopping wood and shoveling snow and ice from the path to the Gold Lake Sno-Park cabin. Built in 1986, the cabin is a two-room log structure maintained by the U.S. Forest Service. A wooden sign mounted under its peaked roof reads “Welcome Skiers, Warming Area and Information.”
At 73, Elting is one of the oldest ski patrollers in the division; he’s volunteered for Willamette Backcountry Ski Patrol for three decades. One of his duties is helping to maintain the cabin, which functions as the patrol’s home base. It houses a picnic table that seats 10, a woodburning stove, and another table for complimentary coffee and hot chocolate. Several trails emanate from the cabin, snaking up and around rolling, forested hills to lakes and three-sided shelters equipped with tables, sleeping lofts, and woodburning stoves. Some visitors head out for half a day; others ski or snowshoe to the shelters for an overnight adventure. Elting is a people-lover with a passion for history and for making sure everyone’s safe, whether they’re one of his grandkids or a first-time skier who shows up in jeans and a cotton t-shirt without a clue about hypothermia.
Despite their age gap, Elting and Doremus shoulder similar responsibilities, and confront the same question: Given the demands of the role, will ski patrollers continue to volunteer decades into the future?
It’s been 86 years since Charles Minot “Minnie” Dole established the National Ski Patrol. In 1938, he was 39 years old and a passionate outdoorsman. Two years earlier, he and his wife and another couple were skiing in Vermont when he fell and broke his ankle. The women skied off to find assistance, returning hours later with no one and nothing but a piece of tin, which they used as a makeshift splint.
Dole healed up, but months later, one of his best friends suffered a catastrophic fall on the snow and passed away. In response, he founded the National Ski Patrol with volunteers dedicated to making the winter slopes a safer, more hospitable place to recreate. By the time he retired in 1950, the NSP had 4,000 members volunteering for 300 ski patrols. In 1980, Congress recognized NSP with a federal charter. These days, over 30,000 members serve in 650 patrols across the U.S. and Canada, and in Asia and Europe.
A few months after Doyle founded the National Ski Patrol, Oregon’s outdoor enthusiasts founded Willamette Ski Patrol. Eleven core members took first-aid classes from the American Red Cross, the better to minister to leg and knee and back injuries sustained by newbies who liked to show up in the mountains on hand-me-down wooden skis buckled to their boots with leather straps.
Today, Willamette Pass ski patrollers worry less about inadequate equipment—thanks to the resort’s rental shop—and more about groms bombing down the hill on icephalt and having yard sales (i.e., hotshot snowboarders shooting down icy runs at top speed and suffering epic wipeouts). Snowboarders hoping to go viral on social media leap 20 feet from moving chairlifts into powder, or jump over unsuspecting skiers on the hill. Skiers spin, airborne, and slam into empty lift chairs or attempt to emulate 4FRNT Skis team member Noah Maisonet’s “death-defying flazzelfloop boulder gaps”—a stunt Powder Magazine last year declared was “breaking the internet.” Some crash into snowy boulders. No one wants to see spurting blood and bones poking up through bruised skin, but there’s something in the typical ski patroller that longs to put broken people back together with a backpack full of bright orange splints, brightly-colored cloth slings, sterile bandages, and gauze.
A busy day at the Resort means 1,000 skiers and snowboarders ranging in experience from first-timers to experts. On one icy day after rain showers this year, volunteers attended to broken wrists and arms and twisted knees, as well as injured thumbs and parents whose kids had wandered off. Patrollers’ days begin at the mountain at 8 a.m., and runs begin to close at 3:30 p.m. At 4:30, patrollers do a final sweep to make sure no one’s left on the mountain. There’s a debrief in which patrollers gather in the aid room to talk about the day’s wins and losses and how to be even more effective the next day. If you’re Meghan Doremus, you drive home with your dad and sit down to your mom’s homemade chili.
Doremus grew up visiting Willamette Pass Resort with her twin sister and older brother and their dad, but the first time she skied there, rental technicians put her boots on the wrong feet. “I thought skiing was the worst. It was so painful,” she says, laughing.
“No one wants to see spurting blood and bones poking up through bruised skin, but there’s something in the typical ski patroller that longs to put broken people back together with a backpack full of bright orange splints, brightly-colored cloth slings, sterile bandages, and gauze. ”
Patrollers also confront tragedy off the slopes. Last year, another patroller was driving up to the Resort and discovered a couple who had overdosed and died. The patroller arrived for his volunteer shift distraught, which inspired hill chief Toby Newburgh to implement a color system: Green means you’re up for all patrolling duties that day, while yellow and red are reserved for those who, for example, have just witnessed an overdose or a parent skiing over their child’s hand. In those cases, patrollers may opt for less public interaction or less demanding physical tasks. “If someone is having a bad day, Toby doesn’t want them to feel like they have to do all the volunteer duties and not address how they’re feeling mentally and emotionally,” Doremus explains.
Since contracting COVID in 2020, she’s had more red and orange days than she cares to admit. “I went from running a three-mile [personal record] one week to not being able to stand in the shower the next week,” she says. “It felt like all my organs were shutting down.” Four years later, she’s still feeling the effects. “The brain fog has been the most challenging,” she says. “I took a year off from patrolling because I was nervous about remembering all the things I had to do.” She’s dealt with heart palpitations and shortness of breath—issues that complicate the physical demands of volunteering.
First responders deal with trauma, death, and threats to their own safety or health. A ski patroller in Salt Lake City this year suffered a leg injury after getting swept up in a slide during early-morning avalanche mitigation before the resort opened for the day. A patroller riding a chair lift in Park City died after a tree fell on the cable behind him and he plummeted 25 feet into a snowy ravine. Physical threats aside, mental health risks abound. Search for “confrontation with Ski Patrol” on Instagram or TikTok, and you’ll find videos of resort guests yelling and cursing and spraying snow in the faces of those who volunteer to keep them safe on the slopes.
Doremus longs to prove her capability, both to others and to herself. She struggles with the suspicion that some of the more seasoned volunteers don’t see her as a valued peer. “It’s frustrating, because a lot of times I won't be taken seriously by other patrollers … it's almost always older men,” she says. “It doesn’t help that they knew me when I was a kid.”
Her hill chief shuts down ageism and sexism whenever he sees it. The patrol has a diverse age range and more women than men; among them, you’ll find lawyers and retired police chiefs, college professors, wilderness guides, and a high school art teacher. Laurie Monico is a 66-year-old retired firefighter who has been a patroller for over four decades.
“It can be hard, because as a full-time student and someone who has a chronic illness, I don’t have a lot of extra time or energy,” Doremus says. “But life just isn’t as fun without the patrol.”
While Doremus patrols the slopes, Elting ministers to backcountry skiers. Both Backcountry and Willamette Pass Resort patrollers take the Outdoor Emergency Care class, an EMT-level course that helps them learn lifesaving techniques. But after the term is over, they volunteer together only a few times a year—once at the annual fundraising ski swap that consumes three full days in October, and once in August at an aid station near Willamette Pass during the annual Waldo 100K Ultramarathon. Still, they can hear each other on their radios, and everyone in both patrols knows when someone’s hit a tree.
Elting recalls pulling a skier with a hip injury in the patrol’s toboggan, at an accident site miles away from the safety of a cabin. Without enough patrollers to drag the sled, Elting recruited passersby to help.
“It can be hard, because as a full-time student and someone who has a chronic illness, I don’t have a lot of extra time or energy. But life just isn’t as fun without the patrol.”
This is where backcountry patrol can get challenging. Volunteers sign up for at least five weekend days per season; however, that’s not always enough to keep the cabin fully staffed. Elting hopes to see younger people step up to join the organization’s board. More than 40 Boomers and Gen-Xers volunteer for Willamette Backcountry Ski Patrol—along with a couple of Millennials and Gen Zers. Elting’s best friends are patrollers his age with whom he’s been volunteering for decades;they’re role models for other retirees who come up to Gold Lake Sno-Park to ski or snowshoe and end up joining the Patrol. Elting has been the patrol’s finance lead for 25 years.
“Our board is old,” he says, referring to the fact that the majority of backcountry board members are in their 70s. “But I like to be of service.”
An older board means a potential loss of institutional knowledge: Who cleans the chimney on the wood-burning stove in the cabin—and how? What happens if the generator breaks down midway through a shift, leaving patrollers and guests in the dark? Where exactly do the digital master copies of daily checklists and protocol sheets reside?
Noah Palmer, 27, has volunteered for Willamette Backcountry Patrol for two years as a way to gain education and practice in outdoor emergency medical care. New to snow sports, he explains that his generation generally gravitates toward alpine skiing, snowboarding, and skate skiing, eschewing the less adrenaline-pumping Nordic skiing and snowshoeing. He notes that the time commitment and financial constraints keep a lot of people his age from volunteering for the National Ski Patrol. “We, in our 20s, are still figuring life out!” he says.
This winter, Palmer took lessons in Nordic skiing. A fast learner with downhill patrol friends at the resort, he’s nevertheless joined the board of the Willamette Backcountry Patrol and helped to create a wiki on which volunteers—interviewing veteran patrollers—document job duties and equipment, contacts and procedures, schedules and onboarding. “A lot of fundamental ‘tribal’ knowledge has gone undocumented for quite some time,” he explains. “Working with several members of our patrol, these trusted processes can be continued and built upon with the next generation of patrollers.”
Don Elting holds the institutional knowledge of many of these trusted processes. He mentors younger patrollers, introducing them to the trails and teaching them how to use the two-way radios and the generator, and how to do cabin maintenance. On Elting’s shifts, he restocks the woodpile and turns on the cabin’s generator and throws open the shutters. Then, he shoulders his backpack—filled with first-aid supplies and the Ten Essentials—and heads out on skis. He checks supplies of firewood and matches at the shelters, and radios back to patrollers at the cabin with trail condition reports such as fallen trees and water hazards. He hands out maps to those who need them, offers route advice, and takes care of the occasional injury.
“It’s just such a privilege to be able to get out in the woods in the winter,” Elting says, explaining that he wants to use that privilege to serve others who find their way, or lose it, in the backcountry.
As the sun begins to sink behind the trees, Willamette Pass Resort patrollers conduct their final sweep and gather in the aid room to debrief with chips and salsa and donated beer. Down in the backcountry cabin, patrollers close the shutters and sweep the floor. They restock the restrooms and store the coffee and cocoa packets away from the mice, then gather around the wood-burning stove and swap stories.
“A lot of fundamental ‘tribal’ knowledge has gone undocumented for quite some time,” he explains. “Working with several members of our patrol, these trusted processes can be continued and built upon with the next generation of patrollers.”
On any given afternoon, Elting might describe his love of history and how he and his wife travel throughout Oregon and Washington, visiting the 50-plus brewpubs and historic hotels owned by the McMenamins chain.
A little before 5 p.m., backcountry patrollers migrate into the cabin’s tiny office and gather around the radio, waiting for their downhill counterparts to call the all-clear. Should a visitor get lost at either Willamette Pass Resort or in the backcountry, volunteers on duty with both patrols band together to search until the missing person has been found.
It’s this care and concern for strangers that unites the two patrols. Eighty-six years after Minnie Doyle founded NSP to promote safety and hospitality on the slopes, volunteers ranging from 20-somethings to retirees dedicate hundreds of hours annually to fulfilling his vision. For all this, they earn a complimentary Resort pass or a Northwest Forest Pass. But intangible rewards abound—there’s the pleasure of helping others, the empowerment that comes with knowing how to save a life.
“No one feels forced to be up here,” Doremus explains. “Everyone feels lucky to be out in the snow.”
Photo collages created by Good Beer Hunting designer Colette Holston.
Words and Photos by Melissa HartCollages by Colette Holston
