MOUNTAIN OF MEMORIES – Accidents happen
Published: 12-24-2024 1:02 PM |
Fifth of a series of excerpts from Gerry Miller’s book “Crotched Mountain Ski Area in Francestown, New Hampshire,” a history/biography about the original Crotched Mountain Ski Area in Francestown, developed by William C. (Bill) MacAdam and syndicate. Miller grew up in Francestown. Much of the material for the book was from the Monadnock Ledger or Peterborough Transcript.
This Week at Francestown
On Tuesday, Libby Wiederhold got off into deep snow and broke her leg. Tisha was skiing with her (a good practice) and quickly summoned their father’s help. Libby is at home, stiff-legged and hurting.
An important aspect of any ski area lies in the ability to be able to attend to injuries. An accident can happen to anybody, no matter what his or her skill level. It happened to my brother, John, who was in my opinion the best skier on the mountain, a certified PSIA instructor. He took a bad fall one spring day while skiing down Trail #3, along the edge in some untracked deep “cement powder.” Long story short, he needed to be taken to the hospital to repair both bones in his lower leg that broke at the top of his boot.
The repair involved surgery, to put a metal rod up through his tibia. The rod was screwed in to what hadn’t fractured into pieces from his ankle, up to the top of the boot level, then screwed in place just above his shin. The point of this story is that not only could an accident happen to anybody, but it was due to the actions of the ski patrol that John was able to ski again as good as he ever had done before.
Crotched Mountain’s Ski Patrol was mostly professional personnel who came with experience in First Aid and rescue and were good solid skiers as well. They didn’t just sit around waiting to be called to an accident. They spent a good deal of time skiing in pairs, regularly skiing down all the trails so that if someone did have an accident, there was a good chance it didn’t take long before a patroller would be there to begin administering help.
If needed, patients were transported to the Peterborough Hospital or to Dr. Louis Wiederhold, who lived in Francestown, and partnered with another doctor in an office in Antrim, 15 minutes away. Dr. Wiederhold could also be found skiing Crotched Mountain in his spare time as part of the Ski Patrol.
Ski patrolling, emergency and rescue type of things has changed a lot from when we started at Crotched. What we did seems like caveman-type times compared to today. I remember there was this rookie patrolman. It was his last run down the mountain, and he came upon a gal with an injured leg, and instead of doing normal procedure, he taped a couple of ski poles to her leg and carried her down. Today, he would have called on his radio, something we didn’t have back then, and other patrolers would have responded on snowmobiles with a sled, stabilized her with an air splint and brought her down to an ambulance staffed with EMTs.
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If Doc Wiederhold happened to be on the mountain when someone got hurt, he’d check them out there. Otherwise, we’d load them into a car and take them either to Doc’s clinic in Antrim or to the Peterborough Hospital.
Once a gal broke both of her legs. We splinted both her legs in cardboard boxes, and Gene Fontaine rode with her to Doc’s clinic in Antrim. He had to assist Doc in casting her legs. He came back … covered in plaster of Paris, which was pretty funny considering he was very meticulous about the way he looked.
We had to get a guy down from a tree one time. The hang glider was part of a big WBZ (Boston radio) weekend. He was supposed to fly from the top of Blitz to the bottom, but after takeoff, he almost immediately crashed into the top of a tree. He was stuck up in the tree with a broken leg.”
In the patrol room was a jar into which penalties for falling were collected.
1960-70s Patrol Crew Kitty:
■Fall: a dime.
■Fall on lift line: a quarter.
■Fall getting off lift: a quarter.
■Bad fall/yard sale: a buck.
The money helped pay for the end-of-season Patrolman Roast Beef Dinner.
Chuck celebrated his 50th year on Ski Patrol last year at Mount Sunapee, but his patrol career started at Crotched Mountain when he was 15, in 1972.
“I basically made Crotched Mountain Ski Patrol my home,” Chuck said. He started skiing with his father at age 5, the first year Crotched opened. Night skiing was a favorite thing to do with his father, who joined the ski patrol in its first year. Crotched Mountain remained Chuck’s home until he joined the Mount Sunapee Ski Patrol in the mid-1980s.
“But I still did some nights at Crotched because I was poor back then. I lived in Francestown by then, so I could easily do some Crotched night skiing and there was just something nice about being there. That's when they had both sides going.”
“All the trails were fun, but Dipsy Doodle was my favorite. There was something exciting about skiing it really fast. It’s where they would have the giant slalom races set up.”
At just 19, Chuck succeeded Pat Dunn as the only full-time patroller.
“Pat still came up one day a week with me. We’d open up the chairlift and we’d have an all-out race down Dipsy Doodle to see who could get to the bottom first. Usually, one of us ended up in a heap, but it was fun.”
Chuck recalls helping with injuries in unorthodox ways.
“Back when I was 16 and 17 years old, we rarely called for any ambulances. My father had this big station wagon, and if somebody broke a leg, we’d throw them in the back and haul them over to Doc Wiederhold’s office in Antrim. If he couldn’t get a nurse to come in, I was the nurse. I had to hold the leg in position and help him cast it.”
Chuck also fondly remembers Easter events, beer races and quirky mountain traditions, including a hidden keg in “Zeke’s Cave” and staff racing while dressed in costumes.
The patrol crew even handled training groups like the 10th Mountain Special Forces cadets, who often left with broken legs from their wild descents down the slopes.