Lessons Learned, Part 1

As I've hinted at several times, my first few weeks as a snowboard instructor haven't been perfect. Mistakes are (of course) to be expected, I'm just not used to a job where mistakes can be so painful and stressful. For example, on my first day in the kids' school I was given a group of two kids who had never snowboarded before. We slowly made our way down to the First Time chair. As we started down the run for the first time it became obvious that there was a very large split in the two students' ability to pick up snowboarding. The girl was athletic, had great balance, and a strong desire to keep moving. By the time we were three-fourths of the way down the slope she was starting to put turns together. The boy, on the other hand, wasn't picking things up as quickly. To put it kindly, his body wasn't really designed for snowboarding. He was a little over five feet tall and easily weighed over 200 hundred pounds. Additionally, he was built like some sort of inverted pyramid; the bulk of his weight was quite high off the ground. Needless to say his high center of mass dictated a poor sense of balance, meaning he spent a lot of time on the ground. And when you've got that much weight meeting the mountain it hurts, no matter how you try to soften the blow.

So I spent a lot of time with him, struggling to pull him to his feet, trying my best to keep him in control, and cringing as his body continued its futile assault on the snowy slope. Finally I yelled down to the girl, who had been waiting for way to long and desperately wanted to keep going, telling her to make her way down to the bottom as I continued my slow journey down. It took me a minute, but I slowly realized that, despite her skills, this was her first time down the slope and she shouldn't be left alone at any point or for any reason. I looked back down to where I last saw here, but (as she was told) she had continued down and was now lost in a sea of beginners.

Slightly panicked, I was able to get the boy down in some semblance of a reasonable speed, but as we approached the lift she was no where to be found. Slightly more panicked now, I told the boy to hang tight for a second while I took a quickly look through the First Time run to find her. He seemed happy to nurse his sore body for a few more minutes and I took off back up the lift, scanning the slopes the entire time. Five minutes later I arrived back at the bottom, without the girl and now in full-on panic mode. I was faced with the unenviable task of calling Radio Central to tell them I had a "misplaced guest" (we don't want to scare people by saying "lost child"). I then had little to do but continue on with my other kid as the ski school, ski patrol, and the girl's parents were all alerted.

A long thirty minutes later the girl was found. She had taken the right path but had jumped on the chair next to First Time (which had just opened that day) and was enjoying herself on that run. She was thankfully okay and her parents were also extremely understanding (they claimed she has a knack for getting lost). Regardless, it's my job to know exactly where she was at every second and it was a huge failing on my part. Expecting a painful talk with my supervisor, I headed toward him after my lesson finally finished. He was (obviously) not happy, but in the end just wanted to make sure I had my act together before the busy season started. I told him I would.

Three days passed -- two days off and one surprisingly successful kids class -- and the pain slowly left me. I felt absolutely horrible for the mistake I made, but in the end everyone was okay and I definitely learned something from it. On the fourth day I was again tasked with taking care of two kids for the day. They both picked up snowboarding fairly slowly and as we reached the bottom of the First Time run for the first time, they were still working on traversing across the mountain. The last hundred feet of the the First Time run are a little steeper and narrower than the rest of the hill and as one of my girl traversed across it, her board slowly pointed down the fall line and started picking up speed. "Keep your weight on your toes!" I yelled after her but as she picked up a little speed she started panicking. She shifted her weight towards her heels (sending the board straight down the hill), screamed, and fell backwards awkwardly where she lay still. I speed down to catch up with her. I sat in the snow with her, helping her breath and relax, but she was obviously in pain. "My wrist hurts real bad," she whispered, fighting back tears, "I think it's broken."

I gently took her board off and helped her get comfortable. She was still in a lot of pain, but was surprisingly calm. Together we walked down to the first aid HQ (which, for some reason, is right next to the First Time run), and started to get her comfortable again. Unfortunately, since she was a minor, the paramedics could to little until her parents arrived. Even more unfortunately, no one could get a hold of her parents. They were out on a snowboarding lesson too and for some reason it took us nearly two hours to track them down. I had to continue on with the rest of my class so I was unable to sit with her as she waited. After each run down I poked my head in, hoping I wouldn't find her still sitting alone in the waiting room, but there she was for two hours. Finally her father arrived, x-rays could be taken, and her suspicions could be confirmed: she had a fracture in her forearm.

I knew there was nothing I could to help and there was really nothing I could have done to help prevent it from happening, but I still felt awful. She was in from Florida and was going to be staying in Park City for seven days. Those seven days would now be spent laying at home, trying not to move her arm. I sat at home that night, thinking about my first four days as a snowboard instructor. My track record: one lost kid and one broken arm.

Teaching snowboard is not -- as I originally envisioned -- playing around with kids on the mountain all day. Every time they stand up I see a fall back down waiting to happen, every fall a possible broken bone or dislocated joint. Every time I turn my back on a student, even for a two seconds, there is a possibility that they will disappear. I've always considered programming to be a stressful job, but I've decided that stressful is an extremely relative term. A careless moment at the office never left a coworker lost (well maybe mentally, but never physically) and the closest thing to a workplace injury I've experienced was a sore wrist from too much foosball. But taking care of kids for a day is stressful. Taking care of kids for a day while trying to herd them around an incredible crowded mountain and teaching them a dangerous and painful sport is extremely stressful. Every day now I get home and let out a sigh of relief: no lost kids and no broken body parts means the day was a success. Everything (or anything) else that happens is a bonus.