Highlands crew wins state ski patrol contest
Courtesy photo |
The Aspen Highlands Ski Patrol is the winner. The Highlands crew won the 45th annual Colorado Pro Ski Patrol competition at Arapahoe Basin last week.
Ski patrol teams from across the state rallied to compete for fun and to raise money for the Summit County Flight for Life.
The first competition was a giant slalom race.
Next was a relay race, combining multiple team members through a course mixed with steep downhill and uphill sections of the famed East Wall at A-Basin, finishing at the famed Beaver Bloody Mary Bar.
The always crazy toboggan race pitted three-member teams slicing a rescue toboggan carefully, yet swiftly, through narrow rocky chutes and then straightlining through the finish at the Beaver Bar.
Also entertaining the crowd was an obstacle course, which had racers run through tires, climb rope walls and work their way through tough mudder-type obstacles, on snow in ski boots.
The final event, counting points toward the overall win, was the bamboo toss.
Patrollers attempted to precisely throw bamboo from the steep Palivacheni chairlift into a multitude of targets on the snow.
The team from the Aspen Highlands Ski Patrol won the giant slalom (alpine and telemark), won the relay race and tied for first in the bamboo toss.
The total gave the Highlands patrol the Colorado Pro Ski Patrol trophy after finishing second to Winter Park last year.
The trophy, which travels from patrol to patrol, traveled home in 2016 to Aspen Highlands.
Aspen Highlands’ patrollers have won the trophy five times, starting in 1984.
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