Originally published Saturday, January 24, 1998

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

As they say about Alaskan bush pilots, there are old skiers and bold skiers, but there are no old, bold skiers. And when John Hight does something even mildly risky on the slopes, it's a calculated risk based on more than 60 years with the Ski Patrol.

To an increasingly younger ski crowd, especially the generation that moved from sidewalk skateboards to space-age snowboards, John Hight must seem older than some glaciers.

There aren't many Ski Patrolers left anywhere in the country with a three-digit Ski Patrol membership number. But Hight's motorhome bears the Washington state license plate NSPS 545.

"There were five of us in the first (Ski Patrol) unit here, in 1938, at Cayuse (Pass)," recalled the silver-haired Hight. "Our (James Madison Junior High) teacher -- who taught us how to ski after he taught us how to make our own skis -- had a cabin where we'd stay Saturday nights.

"When the war (World War II) came, they shut that one down and we went to work for Webb (Moffett) at the (Snoqualmie) summit." Those were the days of homemade maple skis and inner-tube bindings, when skiers herring-boned up the slopes with canvas stockings around their skis before turning back down onto the rudimentary runs.

That's not so long ago or far from John and Norma Hight's Skyway home. They met at the summit. They were married in St. Bernard's Chapel at the summit. And they spend most of their ski season weekends there. "And our vacations are usually ski vacations," said Norma Hight, who like her husband now serves in a Ski Patrol auxiliary position.

"At 81 years, I don't want to lose a toboggan," he said of the grueling Ski Patrol rescue work that involves bringing injured skiers downslope in specially designed rescue toboggans.

"Funniest thing I ever saw on the slopes -- and it wasn't really funny at the time -- was a patrolman who was on the front end of a toboggan when it got loose," said Norma. "He refused to let go of the rope and probably saved it from crashing and really hurting the skier inside. But he got run over by the toboggan and held on, beneath the whole thing, all the way down!"

Another Ski Patroler remembers taking a terrible roll-over spill when he and Hight were speeding downhill with a rescue toboggan in a skills race against time. "I thought we were dead," he recalled. "The toboggan handles were all twisted, and Johnny was down at a twisted angle and I thought he was dead.

"I got up slowly, really surprised that I wasn't dead, especially considering how bad the toboggan looked. Then Johnny got up and the first thing he said was: 'You know what we gotta do, don't you?' And I said 'Yeah . . . we gotta finish the race!' And that's just what we had to do, because that's the kind of guy he is."

Hight, a short, wiry guy with a long career as a machinist behind him, is slow to see the humor on the slopes. Every trip up to Snoqualmie is a work trip, even now. "I'm on the slopes 60 percent of the time, mostly on first aid," he said.

There's no one willing to guess how many broken arms, legs and wrists he's splinted over the years. And worse. "I still remember the first injured skier I came across. Those were when ski poles were pointy things with leather straps holding a ring at the bottom. This fella went down and his pole handle planted in front of him and he fell on it. Went right through his . . . you-know-what!"

Talk about mandatory helmets for skiers and snowboarders makes John shake his head. "No way!" he said. "It would cut down their side vision and hearing, and you need all that on the slopes."

Plus a lot of common sense and courtesy, said the guy who has been run over more than a couple times by snowboarders. "Because of the board, and the way they come down, they don't see the skiers below them," he said. "It's a basic rule that the skier uphill must take responsibility (for avoiding collision with any nearby skier or snowboarder below)," he said.

"They're not all bad. You've got the snowboarders who started as skiers and know the rules and follow them. And then there's the snowboarders who came onto the slopes right from skateboards on the sidewalks . . ."

"They make it hell on skiers," interjected Norma.

"Only thing worse are the inner-tubers," he added quickly. "Absolutely no control, no protection, and no sense. Makes for lots of back injuries."

Well, that makes Ski Patrol every bit as important now as it was back when John wore one-piece union suits beneath old corduroy pants taped around his ankles and carried corrugated cardboard splints to ski accidents. "Only these days it's more snowboarders breaking or twisting their arms, shoulders and wrists as they set an arm down to make a turn," he observed.

Recent well-publicized skiing accidents might've been avoided, he said, "if people used more common sense and stayed out of closed areas." Still indelibly etched in John Hight's memory was a deadly 1974 Snoqualmie Pass avalanche that killed two girls on a group outing at nearby Source Lake.

"There were chunks of snow and ice as large as houses. The rescue dogs would go down into a hole and come up 50 yards away. I remember it was a Sunday afternoon, and a large party had gone in right past a big 4-by-8 plywood sign that said 'Warning Avalanche Danger'," he said.

"It was a Sunday evening, and we worked for a long time without finding anyone. They finally found the two of them the next summer."

Ski Patrol duty on the summit isn't all life-and-death intensity. There have been times, some funny, that have resulted in the patrol's annual Toilet Seat Award. John recalls sharing just one, for inadvertently allowing a snowmobile loaded with a generator, electric oven and gourmet food on a mountaineering survival course outing.

And Norma still vividly remembers their wedding in St. Bernard's Chapel at the summit. "Everyone was in ski clothing, of course, and no one really showed up on time," she said. "Instead of ribbons or floral ropes, they had bright red avalanche cord lining the aisle. And we left the chapel under an arch of crossed ski poles."

"Yeah, and we had to walk in a pouring rain to the Seattle Ski Club for the reception!" he added.

Jon Hahn is a staff columnist who writes three times a week in the P-I.