Stowe Week 1

I did not know what to expect going into this first week of practicum, but I was excited. When we walked in they had already had all of our jackets laying out with our name tags, I thought that it was really cool. So got suited up and took the over easy to the spruce side to get our lift passes. It took a while. We then went back over to the Mansfield side. Took the quad up and took a run with Josh and then went up to the ski patrol shack. We then got tools and went over to the octagon deck and shoved off the deck until lunch time. We took a run. Had lunch and went right back up and for the rest of the day kept on shoveling until the deck was clear of snow. Everyone thanked us for it and we headed home. The second day was fun. The morning not so much, but we got up there at about 10:30, got ready and stuck around for the manager meeting at 11:00. After that we split up all to different ski patrol shacks. I went by myself to the shack at the top of the gondola. There I sat and talked to the patrollers for about 45 minuets and then we went out and fixed all the pads on snowmaking guns on the whole gondola lift line trail. Some guns were easier to fix than others but we got the whole tail done and we took the lift back up. When we got back up Josh was hanging out in the shack talking to some other patrollers. We all talked for a little and Josh and I took a run down back to the admin building, went over what we all wanted to do next week and left. I do not think that I did anything that involves sustainability but while we were shoveling the deck we really had to get it done right because all of the snow was blocking and emergency exit in the restaurant so we were helping fix a liability. The second day fixing the pads on the guns and making sure that all the ropes that were up were up to par and making sure that all the snowmaking gear and other things were marked and seen easily. We were making sure that if someone did somehow get injured on that trial everything was marked so there would be no liability for the mountain. I really enjoyed my time with the patrollers on Saturday so I picked to hang around with the ski patrollers again next week.