Thursday, December 22, 2016 | B5
Times-News
OUTDOORS Another crack at Craters upgrade LUKE RAMSETH
Post Register
VIRGINIA HUTCHINS, TIMES-NEWS
Trent Searle pulls a toboggan carrying a journalist down a black-diamond ski run at Pomerelle Mountain Resort as volunteer ski patrollers get a required annual refresher of their toboggan-handling skills Dec. 17.
Pomerelle patrollers train for the worst Trauma on the ski slopes? These volunteers have your back VIRGINIA HUTCHINS
vhutchins@magicvalley.com
ALBION — In the room where some of them resuscitated a cardiac arrest victim a week earlier, Pomerelle Mountain Resort’s volunteer ski patrollers pulled on snow pants and helmets Dec. 17 for another shift of dealing with whatever the mountain would throw at them. As always, they’d be the first skiers of the day to ride the lifts, checking that the wheels controlling the cables weren’t frozen. They’d raise protective pads above the level of the latest snowfall. They’d direct the morning’s skiers and boarders away from the runs where groomers were still at work. And, as the white crosses on their red vests testified, they’d be ready to give emergency medical care to anyone with fall injuries, frostbite or a ski pole impalement. “Anything that could be thrown our way, they’re trained for,” said Zack Alexander, mountain manager at Pomerelle. When skiers or boarders get in over their heads — on runs too difficult for their abilities — the volunteer patrollers help them down. When winds kick up a whiteout, they shepherd everyone off the mountain. But on this early-season Saturday, many of the volunteers had another task, too: demonstrating once again their skills for trans-
porting patients down the mountain in toboggans. “We try to get everybody refreshed before the season starts,” patroller Jesse Hess said. National Ski Patrol — the Colorado-based nonprofit that trains and credentials patrollers at Pomerelle and at ski areas around the country — requires annual S&T training for every member. That’s skiing and tobogganing, Hess explained, as he added the last layers to his snow gear. “You gotta get Studer the S part right,” said Jared Studer, scheduled to be the patrol’s hill chief for the day. “It’s called snowboard and toboggan.” Either way, the patrollers’ toboggans — stocked with splints, backboards and neck braces — are key to getting patients from the Heilesen s n ow- cove re d slopes to an ambulance or helicopter. And I’d have an unusual perspective on their toboggan test that day. With a reporter’s notebook instead of an injury, I’d be the “patient” for a descent down a black-diamond ski run.
‘Just short of a miracle’
In this first-aid room — a small, windowless space on the Pomerelle ski lodge’s lower level — 53-year-old Marvin Heilesen collapsed on the floor Dec. 10. Full cardiac arrest.
VIRGINIA HUTCHINS, TIMES-NEWS
Volunteer ski patrollers raise a ski lift’s protective pads above the new snow level as Pomerelle Mountain Resort opens for the day Dec. 17. But Heilesen, himself a Pomerelle ski patroller, was in the right company. Senior patroller Kent Johnson cut off Heilesen’s shirt and placed the automated external defibrillator. Another patroller started the flow of oxygen. Another began chest compressions. Another monitored vital signs. Heilesen flatlined several times. The weather was too ugly for an
emergency helicopter to reach Pomerelle that day, but six volunteer patrollers worked in turns to keep Heilesen alive for the 45 Please see POMERELLE, Page B6
More online: In a
Magicvalley.com gallery, see more of Virginia Hutchins’ photos of the Pomerelle Ski Patrol in action.
Son watched as avalanche killed dad BRETT FRENCH
Billings Gazette
M 1
ILLINGS, Mont. — The B story of an Idaho skier’s death in a Cooke City-area avalanche on Dec. 11 became clearer with the release of the accident report. Chris Peterson, 55, of Ketchum, was killed while skiing with his son, Axel Peterson, a 27-yearold Bozeman, Mont., resident and budding filmmaker known in part for his extreme skiing footage. Together with his friends they are known as The Bridger Brigade. When the avalanche broke, Axel was standing at the top edge of the slide watching as the snow enveloped his father. “It’s incredibly sad,” said Doug Chabot, of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center, one of the authors of the report. “He and his dad were tight, and both were pretty experienced.”
The pull of powder
The attraction that fresh snow exerts on skiers, snowboarders and snowmobilers is strong. And avalanche conditions can be so unpredictable that even those well-trained and knowledgeable about avalanche conditions have been killed. The small, steep slope on the southeast face of Henderson Mountain was loaded with enticing, fresh snow when the Petersons showed up. What’s more, the skiers the Petersons joined had tried to trigger an avalanche on the slope by jumping on the snowpack and skiing across it, to no avail. After such attempts, “it’s easy to think it’s OK,” Chabot said. But an unstable layer of depth hoar atop an icy base was essentially a mine field waiting for the right trigger, he added. “In this case, Chris found a weak zone in the snow and it was able to collapse and propagate,”
COURTESY OF GALLATIN NATIONAL FOREST AVALANCHE CENTER
The avalanche that killed Idaho skier Chris Peterson broke 3 feet deep and was 80 feet wide at the crown and 150 feet wide halfway downhill. Chris Peterson into some trees Chabot said. The snow broke 3 feet deep and ran 250 feet downhill, pushing Please see AVALANCHE, Page B6
ARCO — In an advisory ballot measure last month, 57 percent of Butte County voters said they supported giving national park status to Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. Now, a local group that has pushed for the Craters name change for two years hopes the evidence of local support will help finally secure the Merrill Idaho Legislature’s blessing of its proposal. “This county wants this to happen,” said Helen Merrill, one of the organizers of the national park push. Advocates say changing Craters from monument to national park would bring a higher tourism profile to the region, drawing more visitors through the struggling rural towns of Arco, Carey and Mackay. Yet there is powerful opposition to the idea, in the form of the Idaho Farm Bureau. The organization is worried about added federal restrictions under the national park name, including limitations on hauling hay via U.S. 20/26 that passes through the monument. Merrill, an Arco chiropractor, and another name-change organizer, County Commissioner Rose Bernal, said they are hopeful the Legislature passes a resolution supporting the name change in the coming sesBernal sion. Idaho’s congressional delegation has said it wants state support before taking up the proposal. Data show “national park” in the name makes a difference. Three national monuments that changed to national parks since 2003 boosted visitation by an average of 28 percent, according to the National Park Service. Craters has averaged about 200,000 annual visitors in recent decades, and last year reached nearly 250,000. Craters staff members aren’t allowed to take a public position on the name change. But they previously noted that Craters is rarely on the radar of tourists headed to Yellowstone or Grand Teton national parks. National monuments aren’t always listed in atlases and guidebooks, where national parks are featured prominently. “People know what a national park is,” Merrill said. “They do not know what a national monument is.” Despite high hopes, there was no legislative action on a namechange resolution in the last session. In 2015, a resolution passed the Senate but was held up in the House just before the session ended. Merrill and Bernal say Sen. Jeff Siddoway of Terreton has committed to pushing a resolution in the Senate this year. Siddoway could not be reached for comment. In the House, Leodore’s Merrill Beyeler was a leading proponent of the name change and sponsored it in 2015. But he was defeated by challenger Dorothy Moon in the May primary. Moon said she was just starting to study the issue and planned to meet with advocates in the coming days. Merrill and Bernal say they expect to find ample support for the idea in both houses, similar to 2015, and will make regular trips to Boise to discuss the proposal with legislators in the coming weeks. But Farm Bureau spokesman John Thompson Thompson said the organization and its lobbyists plan to fight the proposal. In the bureau’s annual meeting at the end of last year, and again late last month, delegates from around the state voted to oppose the national park proposal, he said. A primary Please see CRATERS, Page B6