Forecast is for increasing clouds, one to three today, four to five tonight.

 

 

 

This room is packed with experience. Even with seven years on the job, you're still a rookie.

 

 

 

"26 years is a long time to be doing anything, especially a job that's, can't be,  as demanding as this one."

 

 

 

It's 17 degree. The winds scrape across your face, and you take it all and strive.

 

 

 

"Action is what we've been interested, gets your adrenaline / going, makes you want to get out of bed in the morning and come to work."

 

 

 

Bean Katinow and his colleagues speed to keep people save. They are the Ski Patrol at the Snowbirds Ski resort. Their work space stretches 25 hundred acres.

 

"Ski to work, ski to home, there is nothing other I do."

 

It is an office that's constantly demanding, sun up, sun down, everyday.

 

You got some I can do?

 

Anything if you wanna do. You wanna hand me on for P. Gultch or Gad Valley?

 

Uh, I will go P. Gultch? 

 

Okay. Kelly, I got a back fort on five. 

 

Mr. Holly. You will now... go and look at the snow guns on Wilburn Ridge.

 

Copy that.

 

For a handful of Ski Patrolers, training goes beyond emergency medical procedures.

 

Clear. pins out.

 

It takes additional specialized instruction to handle ammunition and operate a military artillery to trigger avalanches

 

to literally blow them off the mountain. When an avalanche forecast calls reaction, ski areas are closed while the guns fire. They are trying to control the nature before it can harm on-speccing skiers. 

 

"I am heading and going in."

 

At least once a week, Snowbird Ski Patrol practices what it calls hasty rescues. This is the time when practice has to be perfect. Buried alive in snow, help has got to come within minutes.

Hey Luan, give me a radio check.

 

Hey Fay.

 

Got ya.

 

In the late 1980s, on a patrol out, I was swept away and buried by an avalanche, my head was 6 feet down and within eight minutes they had located me and I was blue and not breathing.

 

Things can quickly turn serious when you need help on a mountain, but you'll improve your chances by wearing an avalanche homing device or by having computer chips sewn in your cloth, both send out signals for help.

 

"Here I got a signal, can I get a shoveller?"

 

"A lot of times the public doesn't see exactly what we do, because what we do in close to you is behind lines."

 

What the public does see are men and women who work on the mountain for the love of ski.

 

"I wake up everyday in a beautiful place, in the natural environment, every snow flake that falls. It’s the whole world -- different and new."

 

Doing a job they wouldn't trade with incomparable view.