Hope everyone has had a great summer. I wrote this sitting on the porch of a cabin at the Cape Cod National Seashore, enjoying the evening. The Province Lands bike path rides like a roller coaster, reminding me of the terrain that I like to XC ski in the winter. Besides mountain biking, paddling, and rock climbing, I attended the certified boot camp at Magic Mountain this past August. It was so great to work with a bunch of patrollers striving to be the best that they can be. On the Nordic Master side, Keith Schultz, from the Pacific NW Division, just passed his oral board of review to become NM#024. Congratulations Keith! We’re looking for some more Nordic Master candidates from the Eastern Division. Reach out to me!
This year’s AMN Instructor Refresher took place at Ski Big Bear at Masthope Mountain, Lackawaxen, PA, the weekend of September 11-13. We focused on the world of XOEC with creative methods for treating upper and lower extremity injuries. All instructors participated in a SAR linear and area search, along with a patient carryout. We used Caltopo mapping software to create SAR maps using the new NSP Caltopo Teams account. The Avalanche program ran a transceiver station for L2 and Pro 1 prep, along with providing the XOEC instruction.
In addition, planning for our winter schedule took place at the AMN so that instructor teams can be lined up to teach at the different courses.
We are going to continue our training of Nordic/Backcountry patrollers by having all regions certify their basic patrollers. The senior and master candidate evaluations will be done at the division level to maintain good quality control and develop our future instructor teams.
We will be changing our refresher format for our OTH refreshers this fall, similar to what the OEC program is doing – a one-year instead of a three-year refresher cycle. The National Nordic Committee is finalizing this and it will be released soon. The Eastern Division will be beta testing this new refresher cycle. I recommend Nordic instructors go to the ED Nordic webpage and download a copy for the new refresher document.
Enjoy the fall weather, or plan a ski trip to South America. Chile and Argentina are getting hammered with snow at the moment!
