Backcountry-day,-ski-patrol,-1st-aid-and-tokyo---busy-week! Blog 2010

Week 3 has just flown by. Having completed their avalanche awareness day, it was off to practise their first aid skills with the local fire department. All the basics were covered, including CPR and how to use and AED

Learning CPR in Japanese - everyone can count to 30 now!

In between all the extras included, Rob continued with the group's training. But hey, so much snow, can only mean one thing. Trees, powder, powder and powder! But the park's still been perfectly shaped, so it would have been rude not to have a little run through the park.

We were very fortunate to spend a morning with the local ski patrol at Akakura Kanko. Despite the busy nature of their jobs, Henmi and his fantastic team spared the time, to allow us to shadow them in their daily routine. And really get a flavour of what it's like. We met them at 8am to get the first lift up to check all the pistes before opening to the general public. 2 of the team live on the mountain, so they were able to ski down to check the lower slopes. Our guys had to check all the fencing to make sure it was all in the correct spot, erect new fencing around the lift stations and restaurants to make sure snow falling off the roofs would not bury passers by. Yep, there really IS that much snow here!

Henmi supervising  whilst Marti and team put up one of many fences...

Sara getting stuck in...or just having a chat with one of the Ski Patrol?!

After a cup of coffee in the patrol building, plus a few stories of rescues by the team, we were off out for a rescue simulation by the patrol. All of the pistes are lined by trees, meaning there are some epic tree runs after a fresh dump of powder. This however means that there can be pretty tricky rescue situations for the patrol. Our willing volunteer Marti, had to pretend to hit a tree. His fake injuries were a suspected neck injury and a broken leg. Having practiced this during first aid inside a warm scenario - it makes you realise just what a slick operation the patrol perform - in snow up to their armpits and on a steep slope.

Marti being 'rescued'

Marti being carefully maneouvred into the sled - the patrol said that he was one of the biggest lads they've had to rescue. Ha!

And his relaxing trip down the mountain.

Marti taking it easy in the sled.

As I sit here writing this blog, it's dumping with snow outside. It's been snowing for the last 24 hours. We've got approx 1.5 metres so far and it's forecasted to just keep on coming. Happy days. Here's the view just now from my bedroom window. If you look at the roofs of the houses, you can see the snow is banking up!