GRANT REPORT - MAMMOTH MOUNTAIN SKI PATROLLERS
The Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrollers ensure the safety and well-being of skiers and snowboarders on Mammoth Mountain. The patrollers are a constant on the mountain, working in all kinds of weather with a variety of conditions; snowy blizzards, lightning and thunderstorms, icy rain and sunny, warm spring weather. They check snow conditions, mark boundaries, set off grenades, bombs and dynamite for avalanche control. If someone is injured on the mountain, they are the first responders, accessing the person's condition and transporting them in a toboggan to medical help. In short they make sure that all of us participants are safe, well cared for and protected. The Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrollers guard us against the elements and maintain a safe environment providing the magnificent Mammoth Mountain as the backdrop to our fun!
Ensuring a safe environment oftentimes requires great risk of the ski patrollers themselves. In order to develop tools to cope with the trauma and stress associated with their work, they applied for a MMCF Organizational Grant to help in assuring that the patrollers themselves would be able to participate in a Local First Responders Stress Injury Training Program.
We were able to talk with Dan Flynn, Ski Patrol Manager and this is what he had to say about the program and the importance that it served in the mental health of first responders throughout the Eastern Sierra.
What is Stress Injury?
Stress injury is a form of psychological injury associated with exposure to traumatic events. It can either be chronic, from repeated exposure, or acute, from a single particularly traumatic event. Due to the nature of their work, first responders have a higher incidence of stress injuries than the general population.
What was the purpose of bringing the Responder Alliance to Mammoth Lakes?
Responder Alliance is a nationally leading organization that trains and supports firefighters, law enforcement, EMS, SAR members and ski patrollers across the world in stress injury risk management efforts. Their curriculum is designed by first responders and validated by scientific evidence. We decided to bring in RA from outside the area because there are very few local mental health resources focused on the needs of first responders.
With very few mental health resources in the Eastern Sierra focused on the particular needs of the first responder community, were you able to include other first responder agencies as well? If so, can you tell us what other agencies participated and how many attendees there were?
142 individuals from 12 different agencies in the Mono and Inyo County First Responder community were served by this grant.
Agencies served by the grant were:
- Mammoth Lakes Fire Department
- Long Valley Fire Department
- June Lake Fire Department
- Mono Co. EMS
- Mono County SAR
- Inyo County SAR
- Mono Co. Sheriff's Office
- Mammoth Lakes Police Department
- Mammoth Hospital Emergency Department
- Northern Inyo Hospital Emergency Department
- Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol
- June Mountain Ski Patrol
What were the goals in working with Responder Alliance and were they met?
The training was a huge success and received a tremendous amount of positive feedback. It helped us accomplish three goals. (1) Train local responders on common language and user-friendly tools to recognize and manage the risk of stress injury. (2) Bolster the capabilities of agencies’ resilience teams, which are peer support groups for responders suffering from stress injury. (3) Prepare agency managers for supporting their teams during the coming busy winter season.
What did the training consist of?
Participants attended one of two trainings conducted by the Responder Alliance:
(1) a 2 hour interagency training in Stress Injury Awareness for the First Responder on 10/24, or (2) a 4 hour ski patrol specific course that covered Stress Injury Awareness for the Individual as well as Stress Injury Awareness for the Team and Psychological First Aid on 10/25.
What is the importance of individual skills?
The training introduced responders to the stress continuum and helped them develop tools to cope with the trauma and stress associated with their work. The situations that first responders encounter can be challenging, complex, and dangerous. They are tasked with responding to events involving injuries and loss of life, are faced with circumstances where their lives can be threatened, and also need to provide emotional as well as physical support to traumatized patients, family and bystanders. We don’t get to pick our calls or our patients but we can, for the most part, choose how we react to the aftermath of these events.
Therefore managing stress as a first responder starts and ends with the individual. The agency can provide all the training and resources in the world, but it falls on the individual employee to recognize where they are on the stress continuum and to seek out healthy choices and relationships to manage that stress. With that said, it is the duty of the first responder organization to provide their employees with training and resources to manage the stress associated with their line of work.
What is the importance of organizational structure?
As a ski patroller, it takes years of training and experience to get to a high level of confidence and competence in the job. Even after 22 years of patrolling, I am still learning and developing my craft. However, I work with some of the smartest, hardest-working, kindest and most talented people in the world. We are a team and a family inside and outside of work.
I’m fond of saying that ski patrolling at Mammoth is the ultimate team sport. Whether we are opening the mountain after a big snowstorm, caring for a critically injured patient, or making sure no one is left on the mountain on final sweep at the end of the day, we must work together as a team, supporting each other and communicating effectively. Patrolling, particularly at Mammoth, has so many different aspects: medical, technical rescue, avalanche rescue, avalanche mitigation, customer service, weather forecasting, training, snow science, and good old-fashioned manual labor. We all have our strengths and weaknesses in these areas but we know that we are stronger together than as individuals.
Is there anything that you would like to convey to MMCF donors?
This grant fit with MMCF's added mission of improving mental health in the Eastern Sierra because first responders are frequently exposed to traumatic events and evidence shows they experience stress injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at substantially higher rates than the general population.
As I’m sure many of the donors know, our ski patrol lost one of our own, Claire Murphy, in the line of duty this winter. The tools we gained through this training have helped, and continue to help, our team through this incredibly difficult time.
Thank you for your support of this important work.
