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In his eighteen years of life, James Corrin has lived in a lot of places. Although he was originally born in California, family moved to Pennsylvania shortly afterwards. Then, in 1999, his family moved to Germany, where his dad his worked as a contractor for the United State military at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. Just recently, in 2005 his family moved back to Pennsylvania. During his time in Europe James developed an interest in becoming a ski patroller and began a long quest to become qualified as a ski patroller, a goal he reached last year.

Ski patrolling, quite logically, involves two sides; first, the skiing, and then the additional medical and practical ski patroller training. James became introduced to the fun of skiing when, at about five or six years of age, he tagged along with the Youth Group of this church on a skiing trip. “It was kind of love at first sight,” he said, reflecting upon that trip with a grin, “Of course, I got plenty of intimately close experiences with the snow on that first trip, as I spent most of it flat on my face.”

James added a fun little story about an accidental “ski jump” he experienced during that rip as well, “I was going down the hill like a typical five year old – point your skis directly towards the bottom [of the slope] and close your eyes while flailing your arms uncontrollably. Of course, a snowboarder had to fall right under me, and fall in such a fashion that as to create an artificial ramp with his snowboard. In a matter of seconds I was airborne and flew about ten feet and landed at my dad’s feet. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I pleaded, he wouldn’t let me do the ‘jump’ again.”

Shortly afterwards, his family moved to Europe, where they went on annual trips to the massive mountains scattered throughout Austria, Switzerland, and Bavaria. During that time, James began to take regular skiing lessons. By that time he had already begun to develop his interest in applying for the Air Force Academy and becoming a flight surgeon specializing in flight medicine and anesthesiology, a vision which he still aims to fulfill. In seeking to find some type of sport or athletic activity to bolster his credentials, James eventually found his way into ski patrolling.

In retrospect James observes that his interest in ski patrolling hardly emerged from a logical thread of thought, “I would have to complete a huge course and go through a myriad of tests to become an [Outdoor Emergency Care] technician and a proficient skier! With me being afraid of hard work, why would I want to do something like that? However, I couldn’t get it out of my head how cool it would be to wear that awesome red coat with a cross on the back and be the ‘king of the mountain.’ So, when classes started, I was the first one there.”

As you would probably expect, and hope, ski patrolling requires fairly vigorous training. After all, injuries to skiers tend to occur in frigid and inaccessible environs, generally a bad recipe for any type of harm. For a semester James went through training to become an Outdoor Emergency Care technician, spending about nine hours a week in classroom training and an additional five to six hours a week in textbook training. After passing a lengthy multiple-choice test and two practical hands-on tests, James became qualified as an OEC technician.

From there James began to train every weekend in the Alps. He applauded his parents, saying, “My parents were heroes, driving me six to seven hours on Friday down to the snow, paying for me to ski for the entire weekend, and then driving me six to seven hours back to do school. Let me tell you, it was tiring.” During his time there, James devoted extensive amounts of time learning how to “ski properly in all kinds of conditions, how to properly package and manage a patient in snowy conditions, and how to transport a patient in a toboggan.” After between two hundred and two hundred fifty hours of intensive training, James passed yet another test and became qualified as a National Ski Patroller.

Yet, shortly thereafter, in 2005 James and his family moved back to the United States, and he began to look for another mountain or ski resort where he could become a ski patroller. Fortunately, his family ended up moving fifteen minutes away from a resort called Ski Roundtop. James said, “I thought it would be simple, show up, transfer in, and take a brief exam to see if I was up to snuff. Let me tell you, I was awfully wrong.” As he quickly found out, the ski patrol at Ski Roundtop occupied a spot as one of the best in the nation, and his training did not suffice to meet their standards.

So, once again, James took back to the slopes. Although he passed a difficult test to prove his medical qualifications as a ski patroller, he soon found himself spending upwards of twenty hours a week on the slopes, skiing and training in order to meet the skiing requirements to become a Ski Patroller in the United States. In the end James passed one final test and succeeded in qualifying to become a full-fledged ski patroller and the only one to pass in 2005.

Of course, at that point, James at last began to patrol in full capacity. Describing his duties and the procedures for responding to the many accidents, James said, “As a patroller your job is to constantly be aware of what is going on and to respond to difficulties that arrive. We each carry a high-powered radio, and use them to effectively communicate to each other and to base station… Normally the skiing public will find an injured person first and notify the Ski Lift operators of the problem. They contact us and within minutes… five to fifteen Ski Patrollers converge on the accident. We work quickly, trained to get a patient removed from the cold and deadly environment as soon as possible into our warm and stable base station. There we take care of the patient and handle all the paper work required; legal problems are huge so we are constantly filling out paperwork.”

James also added, jokingly, “I would like to say [that] Snow Boarders are the dark side, and that 99% of our injuries were boarders or skiers who had been wiped out by boarders.” On a more serious note he said, “Until you really work with people in a lot of pain, you never really understand how dangerous things are and how fragile life really is.”

Asked what type of role God had in ski patrolling, James explained, “I really feel like I get to connect to people so much better in stressful situations than at any other time. When people are hurt, they feel so helpless and in so much pain that they totally give up every bit of pride over to you as a ‘rescuer.’ You can literally see the trust they have in your treatment, and it really connects you together in a way I find no place else.”

He continued, “However, I also find severe limitations. I would get in trouble if I began witnessing on the Ski Slopes, and thus I can’t just give my '[spiel]' to any person who wanders in. Rather, I take the hidden approach. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I don’t swear—and people really notice it. In our free time, instead of talking about girls and drinks, I sometimes lead the talking to church and upcoming religious holidays. Already the patrollers at Roundtop see me as ‘different.’ I can tell they don’t know how to categorize me. I am not a geek, and definitely not your macho macho kind of guy, so they wonder what in the world I am trying to prove by being so different. Hopefully people will start asking soon."

 

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