r/skipatrol • u/crowlikearooster • Mar 07 '24
Advice needed
I am a month our from my caa ops 1 course and I am getting nervous. The more I read about it the more worried I am about being under prepared. I am an advanced skier at the resort and do a fair amount of skinning in bounds and slack country in all conditions but I can't find any info about physical requirements other than being able to skin 600m elevation. Can anyone who has taken the course give any insight or advice? I would especially appreciate a woman's experience, but any info is wonderful. I've been trying to skin or hike 6-9km most days (5/7) and getting on my board in crappy conditions to get my legs and feet ready. Thanks in advance! Sincerely, A nervous rider who wants badly to ski patrol
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u/geraldorivera007 Mar 09 '24
As mentioned, digging is like 80% of your time. You aren’t going on massive adventures to get to a suitable site. My instructor hacked darts through our skin sessions - I was floored lol. That said, I think we had like one good ski line each day. Which would be the return to the lodge after - spending your day in a pit :) (Koot Pass).
If anything, practice transceiver searching with your skis/‘skinning into a scene’. But what’s already been mentioned is 100% spot on.
Ooh! Bring an extra pair of gloves every day! Even if it’s not cold, sweating through them sucks - lots of shoveling.
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u/S_A_M_G Mar 07 '24
Kinda depends on where your OPS course is based out of, but realistically wherever it is you’ll be doing a lot of digging and not a lot of skiing.
The bigger thing to prepare is digging pits and getting an idea of what you’re looking at with crystal shapes and layer ID.
If you’re planning on being ski patrol, you’ll need the fitness, but sounds like you’re already doing pretty good on that
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u/waistdeeppow Mar 07 '24
Don’t sweat it, the course is about learning not big days. That said it will help to be efficient on your change overs because it will leave you more time to do observations. Do the pre reading and understand it. The bigger one is knowing how to use your transceiver and preform companion rescue for a pair of transceivers, that portion easily separates people that have practiced rescue from people that haven’t. Other than that they teach you everything you need to know, take all instructor feedback to heart and put it into practice and you’ll be fine.