Patroller Chats
Join us as we sit down with past and present patrollers, hosts, and friends of the Pacific Northwest Division of the National Ski Patrol to preserve their stories and grow our History Project together. Patroller Chats was started in 2023 for the History Project by Shirley Cummings.
Tune in for fun, informative, inspirational, and occasionally spirited conversations, where we explore traditions deeply rooted in history and full of heart.
Honoring the NSP Creed: Service and Safety since 1938, we’re preserving our legacy and building lasting connections for the future. Join us on Patroller Chats!
Patroller Chats
The snow never stopped falling on volunteers...(Part 2:2) Steve, Gary & Shirley on Tobogganing Tales and Transformative Change in NSP
Continuing with Steve Rolfe Part 2:2. Also joining in...Gary Burke and Shirley Cummings. Listen to veteran ski patrollers share stories that trace the evolution of ski patrol from the 1950s through present day, revealing how regional differences, equipment innovations, and standardization efforts shaped modern mountain rescue systems.
Welcome to Patroller Chats. What began as a way to support the history project, led by our own historian- Shirley Cummings has grown into a fun, informative, and definitely inspiring podcast. We're connecting with patroller's, hosts and more from across the Pacific Northwest. Diving into the stories, traditions, and unique histories of our amazing volunteers, all while having a great time, sharing some laughs, and getting into some spirited, heartfelt conversations. This is Patroller Chats.
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So, Shirley, you've been awfully quiet down there, Curious. What stories can you tell us about Steve?
Shirley Cummings:Oh goodness.
Jodie:We know about your boots.
Steve Rolfe:I'll tell one more story, because this is really the first day that I was at Hyak and I passed the tobogganing exam. Now, in those days I was a skinny guy, I weighed 132 pounds and somebody asked if Bill McNally and surely we'll remember Bill McNally he had a toboggan full of equipment and he said someone want to help me take this down? And I said I do. You know, I mean I do, and Sandy March looks at McNally was this huge guy, didn't ski very well, but in the handles of a toboggan, you know he could lean on the toboggan going down the hill and it was okay anyway. So he is full of equipment.
Steve Rolfe:I'm on the rope, a very long rope, and he's not doing very well. And this is I. Somehow the rope goes slack, I ski over the rope and at that point it goes tight again and I'm launched. I do a full flip and I'm sure I came out of my skis and it irritated the hell out of me because I was trying to keep up with him. First day, this is the first day that, after I mean the day I passed my exam anyway and I, I look up and I'm I'm not angry at him, I'm just frustrated and I go and I, the audacity of me. I said, bill, get out of here, I'm taking the toboggan. I took it down all by myself. The being on the tail rope was just on his tail rope. He's going all over the place and getting whipped around, I said, and I took it down all by myself. From that day forward, I was never afraid of a toboggan.
Jodie:Interesting. What kind of toboggan was that?
Steve Rolfe:Oh, I think probably a Sun Valley.
Murphy:Is that like a Cascade 100 kind of thing?
Steve Rolfe:Yeah, cascade 100, only it weighs three times as much. Oh, they're terrible. It might have been a C a cascade, but it was definitely one of those with a tail rope anyway, and uh and it you know for all of this, if you get on a steep slope with the toboggan.
Steve Rolfe:It can be intimidating and I was never. I always had the confidence that I could manage. Um, and I think it comes exactly from that silly story where I said, phil, get out of here this 17-year-old kid. The audacity of me saying that I can't how disrespectful. You know, I didn't know better.
Murphy:So when you were at Crystal, did they, when did they bring on those four-handle sleds which were affectionately known as crystal sleds for years?
Jodie:Akias right.
Murphy:No no.
Steve Rolfe:Well, so it's modeled after the Akias Okay Talbot.
Murphy:Wasn't there a boat builder that built some of those Shirley and?
Steve Rolfe:I had this conversation, but there was a fellow Talbert, and I'm not sure if it was Larry Lundstrom. There could have been In the first year, at Crystal Mountain, some of the arrogance of the founders. They said, oh, we want to be the Sun Valley of Washington State, and so they tried in some ways they tried to emulate it and one of the things is to bring the Sun Valley toboggans, which, if you skied at Sun Valley, makes sense. They still use those things. It kind of makes sense because you can go straight downhill most everywhere at Sun Valley, but Crystal Mountain you can't go, especially before grooming. You could not go straight downhill anywhere. There was many places where you had to do traverses and the sun valley toboggan was beyond dangerous, it was nearly impossible. So, uh, I believe it was the second year, but within a year or two, uh, they commissioned a building, uh, the clark boat company, the Clark Boat Company, which the company that made the Sea Lark sailboat, to build the Crystal Toboggan and I believe that Cascade Toboggan owned by Bradley. Bradley, bob, I just talked with Bob. No, Anyway, bradley, his father designed it, started manufacturing and had the rights to it.
Steve Rolfe:When was that? Well, so this would have been in 63, 64 when the crystal toboggan was invented, and if you ski in a every once in a while I'm skiing down Lucky Shot and I remember and there's little tiny moguls and I go and I have to laugh at myself. The moguls used to be the size of Volkswagen's and I'm not exaggerating, and you'd have to jam the toboggan into it on the front side and then you'd lift it up on the backside so that the person in the back of the toboggan didn't get lifted off the ground. And they were. You couldn't have the Cascade 100s in Sun Valley, but you couldn't. They were unworkable. But now, because of grooming, the two-handle toboggans are probably have many advantages.
Murphy:They do. I still love those four-handles, though I keep being a big promoter. We at Crystal this year wound up doing our refresher and we brought everybody through and had them use four handle toboggans. Get reacquainted with them, cause there's a lot of places where you're talking about, you know, steep stuff, things where you need that, uh, a solid rear handle, that four handle comes in handy.
Steve Rolfe:Yeah, when it comes to traversing, I don't, you know the the flat toboggans don't traverse as well, and so there are certainly places in the backcountry. If you can get to the backcountry into the accident by mostly going straight downhill, then the flat toboggan, has you know, is as good as anything else. But if you're in really difficult terrain, I think two-handle toboggans have some advantage.
Murphy:Yeah, most of our remote sleds are those four handles.
Shirley Cummings:Steve, talk about hand-carrying the toboggan uphill without a chair carrier.
Murphy:Oh, lap-loading.
Steve Rolfe:Until a few years, we used to put the toboggans on our lap and carry them up, and that worked fine. The Crystal and the Cascade 100s, you know, they're not that heavy. One day, Wally and I decided to take a Sun Valley up on our laps, and this was the short chair at Hyak, and we almost were unable to get off the lift by the. By the time we got to the top the blood had stopped, you know, flowing to our legs cause they were so heavy. Yeah, and we carried them up like that until somebody dropped one um at Stevens pass on a guest.
Murphy:On a guest.
Steve Rolfe:Yeah, that didn't go well.
Jodie:No, you think.
Murphy:No, yeah Well, you know I've only been patrolling for 10, 11 years I think, and you know I'm lap loaded at Central. So Kwame Central. So you know that's not completely banned. We may be banned now, but Well, I'm certain that it's a.
Steve Rolfe:That's an area policy. Yeah, maybe the NSP has an opinion on this, but I'm not sure that it that's area policy.
Murphy:Yeah, I can tell you they don't allow it at Crystal. That's a huge no-no. Especially with the wind coming over the top, you'd get a hold of that thing that would not be fun.
Steve Rolfe:Things can go wrong, yeah.
Murphy:Yeah, very quickly.
Shirley Cummings:Steve, were you at Hyak when the Hidden Valley chair? We had to tie it that and the patient to the chair and bring them up the mountain.
Steve Rolfe:Yeah, I skied there. Yeah Right, I don't remember. You know it's interesting, I remember, but I don't remember actually having to take a patient up the chair.
Shirley Cummings:Oh, I hated that. You know you had to remember how many loops to go around the chair and the patient had to be level and they couldn't be. You tested them and the patient starts talking about not wanting to go down the mountain on a chairlift.
Steve Rolfe:And oh geez, it was well, we we at crystal we had. We practiced putting loaded toboggans on chair three and carrying them up, because there's times of the year that you can't go down Kelly's Gap, and so we would practice that, and I'm pretty sure that at least one or two patients in the history of Crystal have done that. But we would avoid it, certainly try to avoid it, if we could.
Shirley Cummings:Well, that's, you were coming up over the lip at Hyak and then you'd start down the hill. That was the worst time for them and consequently for the whichever patroller was riding with them.
Steve Rolfe:Going down a chairlift is a little more intimidating than going up.
Shirley Cummings:Especially if you're lying on your back strapped in. Yeah, so what do you remember about the national system and what was going on around then as a patrol director? You remember getting help from national or paying too much or not paying enough national or paying too much or not paying enough, or how were they treating the senior exam around that time? Can you repeat that? One last sentence how were they treating the senior exam? Was that being discussed?
Steve Rolfe:whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, or let's get rid of it, or oh. I don't remember that debate. I do remember and I don't know if this is contemporaneous with me being director, but I was in leadership for auted some workshops for the first time that were transcended. That were regional workshops. The criticism, I think, was that individual patrollers coming from what eight or nine different patrols had all trained differently and didn't know exactly what was expected of them. As a senior, I was fortunate to have a very good training program at Hyak when I became a senior and I thought we had a pretty good program at Crystal. I think I led that at one point, but for a short few years, but I could understand that there was a lot of controversy.
Jodie:People would go oh yeah, I didn't do it.
Steve Rolfe:And so Lori said, okay, well, we're going to have these workshops, so you can come and we make two or three or four of these things and we'll show you what we expect of a senior, what we expect of a senior and I'm probably a minority here, as much as I love Lori and tremendous respect for her. I thought it usurped the responsibility of the individual patrols for training their patrollers, but that's the way it's done now, right, senior much, much of senior training is now done at the regional level.
Shirley Cummings:I don't think so. I mean at least not at the pass. At the pass you might get together with the other areas, but it's basically somebody on your patrol trains you and you go take the test.
Murphy:Well, yeah, you're missing, there's two. You have to take a midterm and a final right. So you've got to go to those calibration clinic as an instructor initially, and then you go back and train your guys and gals and then, when you come up to the midterm, everybody from all the areas that's enrolled in the senior program gets calibrated on what to expect. So you do your ski portion, then you do your unloaded toboggan, loaded toboggan, and everybody gets reviewed, and then you get sent back to your mountain where you do more training and then the final comes and you wind up having or sorry, there's two midterms and then a final. So, like we had one at um, uh, mount Baker no, where do we have that? There was two this year and everybody gets together and they uh, you know, showcase what they're doing.
Steve Rolfe:People who are in the program. The history of the program is interesting and I think that sometimes the goals get a little confused. The original senior exam was really the national exam and that changed in the late 50s, early 60s. What do you?
Jodie:mean the national exam.
Steve Rolfe:So in the original ski patrol as Minidoll created it and then as it emerged, the patrol was independent of the ski area. Patrol came in and signed on and national patrollers were patrollers that were skilled enough that they could patrol anywhere and there was a national exam. Now by the mid-50s I don't know the exact history, but I know a few people who, well, they probably passed by now, but they got their nationals through an exam, not by an appointment. Gary will remember all this. But then senior was created as a skill, as a national became an honor and I got lost a little bit on this. But so some of this is the idea that a senior could patrol at any ski area within their region or division.
Steve Rolfe:That was somewhat of a definition of what a senior was in the old days and I always thought that that was really not. You know, you patrol for your ski area. There ought to be a common set of skills that you have. But being able to when I was a new patroller I could walk down any ski area in the region. I could walk up and they'd say, sure, go out and patrol. Now that doesn't happen anymore.
Steve Rolfe:That was somewhat that was part of the mission of being a senior? I don't. It certainly, it certainly shouldn't be today. I think being a senior is it's just the opportunity to become a much more excellent patroller and to fully understand your area, your area's protocols, which are going to be different. Crystal's protocols are different than Snoqualmie, and for any number of reasons. But to be a senior you ought to know all the protocols for your area, and including some that are completely different than another area, and that I'm somewhat of a minority in this, I think, and so to me all the needs at Snoqualmie and not be able to ski chair six at Crystal Mountain, but you have the qualities of a senior to me. So, anyway, that's my politics on the issue.
Murphy:Well, jack Ramsey, who has been the senior OET for the division. He was there for the region for quite a while. One of his criteria is that as a senior you should be able to ski any run within the region or division. So let's just use this as a region and I have to say I back that theory and that when you're skiing you should be able to hit that run. Now, whether you're at Suquamish, where I was, and go to Crystal, when you're testing you're testing at Mount Baker, you're testing at Crystal Mountain or Alpintal those usually three places where senior tests happen. Those are all fairly, you know, technically challenging mountains and you've got to be able to manage that Does everybody pass.
Steve Rolfe:That's an old trope to me. I think it's insulting to the people that that that that areas like Snoqualmie summit, the idea that that if you ski at Snoqualmie summit and you can be you can be an exceptional patroller but not be able to take a toboggan down powder bowl. I don't think that that should be the requirement, but that's my opinion. I think that there are a set of common skills, but I just don't think that it should be required to be able to ski every run at every ski area in your region, because you don't ski at a patrollers, only ski at their own area. There's no, you don't get to ski at another area anymore. That's long gone.
Murphy:Right, yeah, that's true, that's my opinion, and you got to look pretty doing it. That's the big thing. Yeah, when you're hauling a toboggan, or you got to do your school figures or anything else. You have to look pretty while you're doing it Not physically pretty, but you have to. You have to execute, whatever the skill is, and you've got to look good doing it Right, and you've got to ski well. So that is what you have to be able to do. So we've got Gary. We've got Gary here.
Gary Burke:How are you? Sorry, I'm so late.
Murphy:You're fine. I've got a huge list in front of me. The list from Gary. It's three pages. It is absolutely amazing. So I, uh, I have to say that I looked here and it said join, join, stevens, pass Ski Patrol or Junior Classification in 1953. Is that true?
Jodie:Yeah.
Murphy:Wow, so how long were you actually on the patrol?
Gary Burke:Well, I started off at Stevens with Harry Prezan Lloyd Burkeye at that time. I'm sure Steve remembers those names. Steve, how are you doing, buddy?
Steve Rolfe:I am doing great, and he walked 10 feet tall when I was a 17-year-old kid. You probably were only in your 30s, but I thought you were. I mean, you were old. Yeah, you were old. You know a guy who's 30, sorry, you're 17,. But Lloyd Burkeye and Harry Prusam, those are big names in the ski patrol history.
Jodie:Yeah.
Gary Burke:Those are the days when those guys actually walked on water. The reason I actually got into the ski patrol, which is kind of interesting my folks built the ski lodge at Stevens Pass back in 1951. And my uncle was the supervisor for Washington State Highways and lived up at Stevens Pass and we used to come up there and visit him back in those days. And the Forest Service decided that they wanted to build another ski lodge, only they wanted it over on the opposite side of the highway for those of you that remember which was the side where the big long highway garage was, that they kept all of the highway equipment in. Well, at the opposite end of that there was an area that was opened up by the Forest Service and they wanted to make it commercial. So they decided well, let me build a ski lodge and we'll open it up and see who might be interested. And we'll open it up and see who might be interested.
Gary Burke:Well, at that time we had Sportcaster going on and of course my father wanted to get into something else and decided, in conjunction with my uncle, that hey, why don't we put a bid in for that thing and see if we can't get that? Well, he did, and he got the bid. So we built this doggone three-story lodge up there and it was actually. It was beautiful, it had an A-frame to it and I don't know if you even remember it, steve.
Steve Rolfe:I do. I do. When I was, I would stay at the Mountaineers and then we'd sneak out of Mountaineers and we'd go down to the Summit Inn I think it was called the Summit Inn and we'd go and we'd play poker and drink beer there, and hell, I was what? 17, 16? I don't know yeah.
Gary Burke:Yeah, well, it was three stories, I think we slept. The stories two and three was strictly for lodging. I think we slept 90 people in that place. And then the first floor was the restaurant, a cafeteria type style. And so when we started going up there, lloyd Burkhi and Harry Prezan started coming over to the restaurant and we got to know each other and I got fascinated by what these guys were doing up on the slopes with these things called toboggans. So they said well, why don't you come up and join us and we'll go skiing? Well, hey, 1953, I was only a youngster, my God, I don't even think I was 17 years old at the time. So we went up and started skiing with them and all of a sudden they said well, why don't you join the ski patrol? You can come on as a junior member. I said, okay, and look what happened.
Gary Burke:So it was a very interesting time and I got started at Stevens with Lloyd and Harry, and then I graduated from high school in 57, and off I went to Washington State University and my skiing then was over there at the college ski area in eastern Washington, and then I would come back once in a while and ski at Stevens. Well then my dad got the bug with some other fellas, decided Hyak was up for sale at Snoqualmie Pass and they were having some financial problems up there and he decided maybe we should go over to Hyak now and get rid of Stevens Pass. So they sold Stevens Pass and off they went to Hyak and they ended up buying Hyak five guys and of course I had to go to Hyak. So when I got over to Hyak the ski patrol was basically a small unit at that time and our good friend Bob Hostack was there and the story got written behind. Bob Hostack was there and the story got written behind Bob Hostack. From there and off we went up the line.
Murphy:So who's Bob Hostack?
Gary Burke:Bob Hostack was a Boeing engineer and he was also the patrol director at Hyak at that time and the patrol was real small. Steve, I don't remember when you started at Hyak.
Steve Rolfe:I think it was 67 or 68.
Jodie:We have you down as 67. As in joining NSP, that doesn't mean your candidate time.
Steve Rolfe:I don't remember exactly, but there were 30 people taking on in my class. That was a lot of people.
Gary Burke:Yeah, I think in 62, when I got over there, bob and I got together and started saying, well, let's recruit some people and let's put a patrol together. That's going to be something that's going to be around for a long time. So we started building a patrol, starting in 1962, and uh, the rest is history so when did you guys build your building down there?
Murphy:you know, the one that's at the base for the patrol yeah, well, that's another story.
Gary Burke:oh geez, that building, uh and uh I don't know what's there today because I haven't been up there for quite a while, but the building that we went into, that Steve and I was in, was another building somewhere on the property that they moved over there and they jacked it up, put a foundation on it and put two buildings together to create that current ski patrol, or the ski patrol that we were in at that time I think that's what's still there now no, what is it now? It's the same one steve.
Steve Rolfe:Really, the last time I was there it hasn't changed much.
Shirley Cummings:Oh really, speak up we have a refrigerator now, though we don't have to open that door and put all the food in the snow well, I remember is that shirley?
Gary Burke:yep, we're sure.
Jodie:Yeah, I don't see shirley's video's not on right at the moment oh, I see, okay, hi shirley, hi gary, how are you speaking of that?
Steve Rolfe:what I remember is people would buy Piazzano. Again, I was a very naive kid. People would bring these gallon jugs of Piazzano wine. It's undrinkable, anyway, they'd drink it. And then I figured I better fit in, so I would have some too. You know, I tried not to be obnoxious about it. And then they would put it out the window in the back and let it sit there and uh, and then it would get snowed over, and so then a few weeks later, if it melted, then there was being a half of a jug of paesano red wine.
Gary Burke:Uh, that was the refrigerator it just sounds revolting well, when we, when we first got to that building— so that building was, you said, 62? Yeah, the sewer system wasn't even hooked up yet, and that's—Shirley probably can remember that too. I mean, it was—we were really in the ancient times when we took that building over.
Murphy:Holy cow, so you smashed—because yeah, I've walked into that building over Holy cow, so you'd smash, because, yeah, I've walked into that building. And now that you say that it was two buildings that were sandwiched together, it makes a lot of sense because that first aid room right, correct me if I'm wrong, shirley If I'm standing looking at there, the first aid room is on the right side and then it looks like another building where you've got, you know, the boot up room and there's a wood stove in there and a kitchen. That doesn't look like it belonged, but it was put in there. Okay, so that's all. And you said 62 that went in.
Gary Burke:Well, it was about that time I'd have to go back and actually look. When Skip Voorhees, who was the prior owner to Hyak, who sold out to my father and four or five other guys, bill Romans, became the new manager. Executive manager of the organization. Shirley, do you remember what year that was?
Shirley Cummings:I'm thinking it must have been 65 or 6. You know, gary was managing the ski shop for REI then. But we slept in the building and when you came into one of the doors where the tunnel is now, there was a wood stove.
Gary Burke:Yeah.
Shirley Cummings:And then they've changed the dorms so that instead of being parallel one way they're now parallel the other way. But and we all slept in the first aid room, Remember I don't remember anybody in the other rooms, but ski patrol was real nice to us and we had in the area gave us Saturday night dinner as a part of our meal tips?
Steve Rolfe:Oh my God, we would get it. I would get like $2 and 50 cents for patrolling for a whole weekend credit or something like that, and that was enough to get dinner to dinner and lunch and breakfast or something at the. Oh my gosh.
Gary Burke:Those are the primitive days, Steve.
Steve Rolfe:I would somehow hitch my way up to Crystal and I'm just looking around all these older guys, and then they get me these meal chits. I just felt like I was in hog heaven, Meal chit, and I didn't have to sleep in the snow. You slept in the snow? No, I didn't have to. I mean, I slept in the dorm. I didn't sleep in the first aid room. That was for the adults.
Jodie:Okay.
Murphy:All right. So I'm looking at your resume here. It says you wound up getting your national appointment in 1966, and your number is what?
Gary Burke:2997. Oh man that's good.
Murphy:You got a good memory there. You passed your memory recall. So how did that feel back in 1966 to get that national appointment? How old were you? How old were you.
Gary Burke:How old, was I? Jeez, I got to think about that man.
Murphy:Need a calculator.
Gary Burke:That was 66. We did that, so this is 2025, 1966. No, that can't be right it's 60.
Gary Burke:I don't know however old I am. It's okay. But yeah, I really got into this ski patrol thing and in in 65 the company too my company also was becoming the official supplier to the National Ski Patrol the red jackets that everybody has worn. White Stag originally started the program called Rainier Red, which is the official National Ski Patrol color, and so after I graduated from Wazoo and came to work into the company, white Stag and Sportcaster kind of got together to try to see who was going to supply the jackets to the National Ski Patrol.
Gary Burke:And at that time I think White Stag was trying to do some of it and of course I was part of the Ski Patrol and I said, well, we got to get into it.
Gary Burke:So it became very interesting, because now I'm part of the Ski Patrol and then I had to go to Denver sometimes and take various models of the jacket, which we eventually had, a women's and a men's, and we had a heavier one and a lighter one, then we created a down one, so we had about four or five models, and so then when we became the official supplier, that was an interesting time. So I really got into the ski patrol and Shirley has been with me ever since I became a patrol director up through the ranks and it's been a long, wonderful journey with her being the secretary and my backup and my advisor and help. And when we needed additional help she had Gary number two, or maybe he was number one and I was number two, or it depends on if you're talking about the family, if you're talking about the ski patrol, but she could never forget our names because when she called Gary, two of us answered. Whenever we did anything for the ski patrol, both Shirley and Gary were always on deck and it's been a wonderful, wonderful trip.
Shirley Cummings:Talk about managed change.
Gary Burke:Talk about what?
Shirley Cummings:Managed change.
Jodie:I can't quite hear you. Managed change.
Gary Burke:Managed change.
Jodie:Yeah, george Whitman I can't quite hear Manage change, manage change, manage change, yeah.
Shirley Cummings:George Whitman and Marlon.
Jodie:Marlon and Whitman.
Gary Burke:George Whitman and.
Steve Rolfe:Marlon Gill. Yeah, yeah, there was a time when you spent a lot of time with different patrols keeping them from getting fired Yep. A lot of time with different patrols keeping them from getting fired, yep. You used to say you were part of the reconciliation or remediation service or something.
Gary Burke:Well, we had another guy in there who really aggravated the situation by the name of Kurt Beam. Oh yes, and this clan that they had, and those guys were out of Stevens Pass at that time who kind of was the majority of our division and they used to do things that upset National and it became a real go-around ring, you might say.
Gary Burke:And yeah, we had a lot of backdoor, backroom talking about keeping everybody happy so we didn't get kicked out of the National Ski Patrol. But it was just one of those things the growing pains and the board at that time was not as strong as what it became moving forward and we had a lot of rebels and a lot of rebel thinking and the rebel thinking sometimes wasn't in concert with what the national thinking was. But, as Shirley knows, there were times we smoked on the peace pipe with a lot of people for a lot of reasons. Knows there were times we smoke on the peace pipe with a lot of people for a lot of reasons, trying to keep things going in the right direction and not get kicked out of the national ski patrol.
Murphy:But okay, so you got to give us an example. So what are some of the things that used to happen that, uh, frayed the relationship between the northwest and national?
Gary Burke:Well, Kurt Beam was a unique individual in his own right. Did you folks ever remember him?
Jodie:I've heard the name only.
Steve Rolfe:I went to his funeral and found out all sorts of stuff that I didn't know about him, but Kurt Beam was quite a character.
Gary Burke:Kurt Beam was a German fellow and he had a real heavy accent and he had a lot of opinions at times that were not in concert with the national policy, sometimes come down through the ranks into the regions and some of the regions did not want to accept some of the policies and the philosophy that Kurt Beam had, and sometimes it got really exciting and it really was a potpourri of stuff mixed up and it wasn't until, you know, we kind of got Kurt to get retired and after Kurt we had Marlon, wasn't it Marlon after Kurt?
Shirley Cummings:Yeah, I think so yeah.
Gary Burke:Marlon came in and Marlon settled everything down and got everything back on track and Marlon eventually became a national director. But along the way you followed Marlon what's?
Shirley Cummings:that you followed Marlon, so we had a clean sweep for a while.
Gary Burke:Yeah, then I followed Marlon. But in an organization this size that had about 22,000 members at that time I understand we're up to about 30 now there's always going to be various philosophies and in the board of director meetings sometimes things got pretty hot and they would have to call recess of the national board meeting to have people to cool down. You're kidding, go out into the hallway and talk to your allies and you know. And then let's come back in and go at this again, because back as the National Ski Patrol was growing, we had these philosophical differences. And then we had these legal situations that came up that we had to abide by. And then we had the ski industries of America that we had to abide by. And then we had the Ski Industries of America that was starting to have influence on National Ski Patrol. And then we had the Professional Ski Patrollers Association who got involved and I mean this thing was a hot pot purree as we developed and grew along. And then we had Ed Erickson who came along and was a national and grew along. And then we had Ed Erickson who came along and was a national executive. He was the executive in charge of the office there and he had his own philosophies and sometimes it wasn't in concert with the board or the national director, chuck Schobinger, and these guys.
Gary Burke:I'm telling you it was like, I'm sure, the way some of these countries get together and argue, fight things out, it was just something else. Oh my goodness, it was a lot of stuff went on that the local patrollers didn't hear or see, but they saw the end results of the philosophy or what they wanted to try to do. And even today, going into this EMT thing, it was a hot paris at that time whether we wanted to go beyond the American Red Cross of having to take the standard and the advanced course and the CPR courses. And then they introduced the EMT Emergency Medical Technician rank thing came in, and that was of course a state program, not an American Red Cross program, and then we were having cross-references going on between those two things and that was a hot potato for a while. So it was fun at times and at times it wasn't fun. It was very, very discerning.
Murphy:So you were the region director here for a while. And then I'm looking at your resume. You wound up being the assistant division director from 76 to 77, national finance committee member 77 to 82, division director here from 77 to 82, and then national board rep. So you sat on the national board for a while.
Gary Burke:Yeah, I was on the board as the division director and as a national board rep. Oh wow, and we have national board reps now too, in each division.
Murphy:So, what were the biggest challenges that you had when you were sitting on the board? I mean, you have to balance what patrollers want and what the area wants, and you know, as you said, the EMTs were trying to come in there. How did you balance that, or what was your mindset to make?
Steve Rolfe:all that work.
Gary Burke:Well, as Shirley knows, we had to have good communications within the division. There was a lot of telephoning and a lot of getting together and we had guys like Bill Savory who was the Crystal Mountain Patrol Director, who was probably one of the most outspoken not in a bad way, but an outspoken patrol director who was building Crystal Mountain from day one at the time. And the regional meetings for Pacific Northwest region had the major influence, I believe, on the rest of the division. So after I moved from region to division I was able to take some of the philosophy from the Northwest region and apply it to the rest of the division and try to get everybody on an even keel, talking the same language, going along with the same philosophy, and then carrying that forward to the national level.
Gary Burke:But boy, let me tell you, the Eastern division is so wildly different than the rest of the divisions that there were times when we would have these national meetings and we'd get in these big arguments that well, okay, it may be good for you, but it's not good for us. And then maybe the Midwest division would speak up and say, no, wait a minute, it's not going to be good for us. It may be good for you guys, but it's not going to be good for us. So you always had this negotiation thing going on to make sure that it worked for everybody, because all the division directors had to go back to their respective divisions and sell the program to the regions and the regions had to sell it down to the patrols. And sometimes some of that philosophy was interesting.
Murphy:Can you give us an example from back in the day?
Gary Burke:Oh man, I don't even know if I can. I think probably some of the biggest problems was the exams that we had to give, or started to give, and trying to get everybody to study on the same stuff. So when they took the exams on the yearly basis that they were going to be able to pass this stuff, because some of the people didn't grasp it and if they didn't pass it, you know, then they couldn't be part of the patrol for that coming year. I think a lot of this was kind of how you put the information together for the refresher courses and what's going to be in and who's going to do it and how are you going to do it. How are you going to do the actual physical aspect of it?
Gary Burke:We used to argue about this stuff all the time on a national level because it was different for everybody, because it was different for everybody, and so people didn't have the same quality of instructors in their division that some of the other divisions had, and it wasn't because they couldn't find them or they couldn't do it, it was just, you know, people did things differently in different parts of the country. It's real tough an organization of this size trying to get everybody on the same page, at the same time, doing the same thing for the same reason. To come up with the same objective that the National Ski Patrol stood for.
Steve Rolfe:Standardizing is, I think is what you're getting to. He was really at the nexus of this. There was a huge cultural fight going on within the Ski Patrol. Ski Patrols had originally emerged as independent organizations associated with the NSP, so I mean the patrols didn't have much operational responsibility. They had no operational responsibilities, they were clubs. In some ways they were clubs, in some ways they were operational units. In some ways they responded to area management, in some ways they were independent and it attracted a lot of hard-headed people, as Gary kind of discussed.
Steve Rolfe:And so the cultural differences between just patrols within a region or division, and then you can imagine the cultural differences between different divisions, were staggering and many people didn't have the big picture. They looked at it from their sense of the world. They didn't stand back and see how it all fit together. It was more of a fight than it was to try to pull it together. I can see it now. When I was young and I was watching Gary do this, it was much dimmer to me but it was a staggering cultural change. He also had the, I think, when he was on the board. You had an executive director that wanted to make huge changes to the NSP and you ended up having to fire the guy right.
Gary Burke:Yeah, yeah, he got fired.
Steve Rolfe:Yeah Again. So then, not only did you have differences in patrols and, as you said, the Ski Area Industry Association had different expectations area managers, then you had even in your own organization the guy you you had was running the organization wants to take it in a different place than than the board wants. So it was a lot of, but it made it fun.
Murphy:Yeah, it's interesting and you know that still goes on today, because we wind up talking to the division directors and you know they come back and talk to us and they talk about how different the East coast is and what they do versus what we do out West, and so I don't. It sounds like that has been an ongoing issue for like 30 years here. I thought it was, you know, like oh okay, Probably from 1936, 38.
Murphy:It's like have you ever seen on the East Coast they run outside the handles. Have you ever seen that in a toboggan?
Jodie:There's always debates on that on the social media. Yeah, so you got to look, because this is like an East Coast thing and I have never done outside the handles.
Murphy:I couldn't even imagine doing that at Crystal. But you know, you see people on the East Coast where they're outside the handle. You know navigating a mogul field. I'm like God.
Jodie:And they're vice versa. They can't imagine you guys doing what you're doing.
Steve Rolfe:Well, they're wrong.
Murphy:I mean, I just don't know any big mountains back East. I mean, am I wrong?
Steve Rolfe:There's a, there's a few.
Murphy:Oh Stoas.
Steve Rolfe:Yeah, there's a, there's a few, but yeah, a lot of them are 500 vertical feet. Yeah, okay, and the Midwest the same way.
Murphy:Now, we're not talking down, I just want to make sure.
Jodie:No that's my point.
Steve Rolfe:Let's clarify here that's my point is that is, they have different needs.
Murphy:Right.
Steve Rolfe:NSP needs to recognize that it's an amalgamation of a bunch of people with similar interests, but not identical interests. That's your answer.
Murphy:Or environments, I should say.
Jodie:Yeah right, the different environments that way. Environments I should say yeah right, the different environments that way. So, gary, you, shirley, maybe you need to ask this question. You had some specific questions for Gary. One was about the groups he recruited.
Gary Burke:About what About?
Shirley Cummings:what I think that you had a unique talent for. If the ski patrol had a need, like to get along with the Forest Service, I remember that you Ken White wasn't it Ken White?
Shirley Cummings:or who was the guy up at Summit you recruited these people as friends and I remember you know, not outside of patrol, you were going to lunch or you were meeting them for lunch or something. And when we needed to do something with first aid, when our relationship with American Red Cross wasn't so great, I think you recruited Norm Bottenberg and I remember one of your comments was well, we'll teach him how to ski. The important thing is that he knows the first aid. I think there were so many areas where if we needed somebody, you went out and found them and then we made them a patroller.
Jodie:That's interesting.
Gary Burke:Well, ken White was a really interesting guy. We became really close personal friends when he showed up at Snoqualmie Pass as the new snow ranger. It just so happens that I was returning the day that he arrived at Snoqualmie Pass. The weekend I was returning from the divisional convention in Yakima and I had to go over Snoqualmie Pass, and so when I got to Snoqualmie Pass, there was a moving van there and I couldn't help but stop. I went in and here's Ken and Pat White, and these two kids introduced myself and that was the start of what turned out to be a very long personal relationship.
Gary Burke:And what was really knocking me off my shoes is when he says well, I got to tell you something that might surprise you. And I said well, what's that? He says I've never skied, I don't know how to ski, and I'm now the new snow ranger for Snoqualmie Pass. I looked at him and I remember saying I don't think that's a really funny joke, ken. Not a joke, it's true. And I said well, we got to correct that. So when the snow fell, the first thing I did was I talked to who was the patrol director at that time I can see him, but I can't remember his name and I said we've got to assign a group of three or four skiers to teach Ken White how to ski. And so he started taking lessons from the ski patrol, unbeknownst to anybody and started to ski.
Gary Burke:And it took us through that whole season before he finally started to be able to come down the hill by himself and could make it, and, as it turned out, he ended up becoming a pretty good skier. Oh wow, it was Never heard that story.
Steve Rolfe:Gary, because he was a good skier.
Gary Burke:Oh yeah, yeah, the poor guy. Just it was something else. And then his kids started skiing and then eventually Pat started skiing. It was something else, and then his kids started skiing and then eventually Pat started skiing. So we skied a lot together and he instituted some new forest service procedures for ski areas that are in effect today, and I think that the relationship between him and the ski patrol became a very, very close one.
Gary Burke:And then when he got assigned as the official, any type of rescues or highway accidents that happened on Soqualmi Pass both Kittitas County Sheriff and King County Sheriff gave the responsibility to Ken White to start and assume responsibility for all search and rescue efforts, even on the highway, while he was up there as a snow ranger. Otherwise we had to wait for highway patrol, state patrol or for the sheriff from Kittitas or King County to show up. So it really smoothed over the relationship and at that time he then wanted to have what we call the Greater Snoqualmie Pass Avalanche Rescue Plan, which I believe that was back in 71 and 72. And I ended up getting involved in that thing and the two sheriffs decided to come together and form a plan in which the Forest Service would assume the responsibility until necessary law enforcement could arrive on the scene. And it really worked well because, as Steve knows, when there was avalanches and cars got, trucks got buried, ken took over and he did a masterful job.
Gary Burke:Spart was formed by that time and down the road we went, wow, back country or whatever it was. As a matter of fact, ken was called upon on several other instances to come and help conduct search and rescue operations for Sheriff's Department because they didn't really know what to do in some of these areas. I remember the Palmer rescue was one of them and Ken would come in and basically take over and help direct some of these areas. I remember the Palmer Rescue was one of them and Ken would come in and basically take over and help direct some of these rescues, primarily from what he learned up Snoqualmie Pass with the ski patrol and the growing of the ski patrol and Ken White together.
Jodie:Wow, Now you had down an avalanche patch in 1965. What does that mean?
Gary Burke:an avalanche patch in 1965? What does that mean? When the new bridge was put in on the highway and they split the highway over on the opposite side of the valley, we were always concerned, and so was the State Patrol and the Highway Department, that somebody was going to go off the high side of that stretch that goes across the valley there. So it was decided that we were going to put together some rescue equipment. If that happened, that we would have to go over the side of this bridge and rappel down into the canyon. And so an avalanche cache was put together along with rescue equipment that would be on the scene, and it was put at the end, the south end of the bridge, underneath the bridge, in a compartment that the highway department helped put together, and it's probably still there today. Wow, I don't know. But SPARC became kind of primarily responsible for that and fortunately we never ever had a car go over off that bridge of that portion. But if it did, the equipment was there to seek the rescue.
Steve Rolfe:No, that's not true. I remember I was director at the time and I was pretty young and I'm trying to remember Wayne wrote the plan for the skeet for us, and who was the guy that? Anyway, it was five years later somebody did go over the bridge.
Gary Burke:Oh, they did.
Steve Rolfe:Okay, over the bridge. The challenge is if you were to go slowly. It's going westbound At 70 miles an hour. It's designed perfectly for 70 miles an hour but if you go slowly you realize how deeply, how sloped it is and with a little bit of snow on it and some snow on the low side, you can easily imagine a car sliding down and going right over. We wrote this plan. I was. I was director, but I wasn't, I was. Somebody else did it and and, sure enough, five years later, somebody did go over it. They didn't make it. It's a long drop.
Murphy:I was going to say it's a long way down.
Steve Rolfe:No, so it was Gary's concern he was. My recollection is is that the DOT was not they. They drug their feet on it and Gary was very instrumental in making sure we had a plan.
Jodie:Wow.
Steve Rolfe:Getting people together.
Jodie:Wow, yeah. So, gary, you mentioned about Shirley being your right hand. You got a division certificate of appreciation supporting the Skier 2 program. What can you tell us about that?
Gary Burke:Probably Shirley could tell more about that. I was in favor of that program from day one and, Shirley, you're going to have to talk about that because I can't remember.
Shirley Cummings:Well, gary was one of the patrollers that came up on Wednesdays and we had patrollers from, I think, six different patrols that came up on Wednesday and we got our students from Pacific School, which was a school for special needs kids, kids and they had a mental age of between five and about 35, but a chronological age they were. All that was their chronological age. Their mental age was about five to 10, around in there and we were able to, through mostly through donations of patrollers, collect equipment. So the students got free equipment and Earl Papik was able to get a National Guard bus donated and the Hyatt Corporation gave tickets to all these kids. And so we had one patroller and one student come up on Wednesdays and I remember one of the little girls that I had that had Down syndrome with supposedly her teacher said she had a mental age of 55. And we got her on the chairlift and that was our big goal for these kids. They wanted the goal to get on the chairlift and that was our big goal for these kids. They wanted the goal to get on the chairlift and for some of them it was pretty scary being up there but we had. I mean it was fun to work with patrollers from five other patrols. Every Wednesday we'd see each other and we got to be really good friends with these kids.
Shirley Cummings:Joyce Hill was the one that had the idea and she worked with the ski area and I did all the typing to request the stuff for the program. And Kurt Beam was supposedly going to carry our request to National to give it the National blessing. But when he came home he told us well, he thought about it and he decided maybe the Ski Patrol didn't want to be associated with children who had problems. So he decided not to pursue it. But we did it for about six years. It was fun times. Yeah, not to pursue it, but we did it for about six years.
Jodie:It was fun times.
Murphy:Yeah, wow, so that program was thwarted by somebody who made the unilateral decision and then just walked away. That's too bad.
Jodie:Yeah.
Shirley Cummings:You know, in those days there were no copy machine. I do remember a copy machine because every time I did the patrol minutes or the region or the division minutes, it was on mimeograph. And Gary had this great secretary at Sportcaster who would always just happen to help us do some of that, happened to help us do some of that. You've got mimeo. If you were mimeographing something you usually got mimeograph ink. You know, all over you.
Jodie:The purple ink.
Murphy:Yeah, but you know I used to love to smell the paper after you'd get that for a test at school.
Shirley Cummings:But our application for the Skiers 2 program was in one big thing, and so you couldn't have an application that you'd give the same one the next year because it was gone. You'd have to start all over. I mean even awards if you were going to nominate your patrol, and I have the copy of the one that we submitted, but it was all one of a-a-kind things that were in stuff, no copies. So once you used it or lost it, you started over.
Jodie:Oh my goodness. So Shirley and Gary, what is this about Pete Mannion and battery acid? And Gary, what is this about Pete Mannion and battery acid?
Shirley Cummings:I thought that was a good example of Gary Burt dealing with stuff on the patrol. Do you remember that, Gary?
Gary Burke:No.
Shirley Cummings:The night that Pete Mannion and the battery acid blew up in his face.
Gary Burke:Oh yeah, I vaguely remember that.
Shirley Cummings:Tell the story, shirley. Oh well, I was hoping you would tell the story, but I remember waking up in the first aid room and you were jumping up and you had your white skivvies on and you started yelling because somebody was bringing in Pete and his face was all red and you were screaming at some people to get the water running. That was during the time that the railroad was siphoning water off the water tower, so we didn't have water. You were yelling at somebody else to start melting snow on the stove that was in that center room. You told some other people to get ready for a rescue going outside and at the same time you were using the telephone and, I think, two radios, as I remember, because we had 13 inches of cascade concrete in the parking lot. You had to get some kind of a packer in there because our packer was out of commission.
Shirley Cummings:Having, because our packer was out of commission having, you know, hurt Pete and the meantime you're all yelling about keep flushing, keep flushing, keep flushing, and the water was dribbling by now. So we had to get people to get snow, to melt snow, and you were talking to the area manager on, I think, one radio and to the state patrol on another to open the highway. And you were talking to somebody, I just remember you juggling. Anyway, they said that and it took an hour for the ambulance to get to the edge of the parking lot. To the edge of the parking lot and then they some patrollers I think took him out in a toboggan to the end of the parking lot, which is a quarter mile long, and they said had we not if we hadn't had, if we had water, it was important that we had flushed his eyes for about an hour. That that's what saved his eyesight. If we had just taken him to the ambulance right away, he wouldn't have gotten flushed so long and he might not have had.
Murphy:So how did a battery blow up in his face?
Shirley Cummings:He was trying to jumpstart it.
Gary Burke:I remember something about that too. He was doing something that he shouldn't have been doing. It backfired on him. Ouch, yeah, he was really lucky yeah, I'd say so oh my goodness.
Jodie:So um also gary you. You were a division director right for several years and but also on the board of directors, and did you find that the division directors earlier on did a lot more decision-making than they do now?
Gary Burke:Yeah, yes, I think so. Each division was kind of its own autonomy of its own autonomy and I think they were doing the things that fit the needs of the particular division, because when I went to some of these other divisions the way that they operated was not the same way we did. Their philosophy might have been different in the way they did things might have been different in the way they did things. I was in first aid rooms and you know, probably one of the biggest first aid rooms that I've ever seen was at Crystal Mountain and probably Snoqualmie Pass and some of these others. They just have really small first aid type rooms. But you know, the Ski Patrol went through such a growing period and as it grew, the first aid part of it, I think our national director, our national doctor, was Bowman, oh, if I remember. Is that right, shirley?
Shirley Cummings:I think so, and he was writing a book.
Gary Burke:Unfortunately, he was very progressive and he was trying to get standardization in the first aid rooms, in the training, in the exams and everything that was doing it, and he had a monumental job to deal with. So did Avalanche and so did communications they all did. But the first aid, which is what we were really all about, was the biggest part of this whole thing and I think it was Dr Warren Bowman, if I remember right. He was a super guy, he really was, and I think he did a wonderful job as we grew through the years, trying to get everybody on some kind of a standardized system, even though each of the divisions might have been doing things a little bit differently. Premature, primitive, whatever you want to call it Probably primitive was a good example.
Jodie:Yeah, but that standardization was huge. I had a rescue back in 2011, and we had patrollers from Michigan, we had Washington, we had Oregon, we had Utah and we had a case where we had two people and people that never trained with each other, never seen each other, totally different divisions, and you could tell the training just clicked for all of them just really well. So it was nice to see that. I really would appreciate, because we want to hear more about all this stuff that you've been involved with.
Murphy:A little more history, yeah.
Jodie:It's great.
Murphy:You can't deliver a resume like that and have 30 minutes to try and go over those things. I got to say, Gary, I was impressed. I have seen some ski patrol resumes. They pale in comparison to what you have here.
Shirley Cummings:I agree.
Jodie:Absolutely.
