Founded in 1967, North Absaroka Ski Patrol recently celebrated its 55th year of providing services to Sleeping Giant Ski Area and the surrounding terrain. While during the past 55 years, the ski area was not open every winter season, you could always find some patrollers making their way up on the mountain to maintain their skiing skills or just to enjoy the great snow and terrain that Sleeping Giant Ski Area offers.

While Sleeping Giant Ski Area and North Absaroka Ski Patrol have worked together for many decades, they are actually two distinct entities. This allows the ski patrol to maintain a non-profit status and fundraise for training and medical equipment, without placing that cost burden upon the ski area.

North Absaroka Ski Patrol has enjoyed success throughout the years, with awards such as Outstanding Small Patrol for 2014-15 and Outstanding Patrol for the 2018-19 ski season. Community support has been amazing, with a successful fundraiser last winter that helped the patrol to upgrade to vacuum splints. The patrol has been supported graciously over its 55-year history and many thanks go to the community members who have supported this organization.

The ski patrol has a budding Junior Patrol program, which it revitalized last year. One of the Junior Patrollers, Orrin Couture (age 13), volunteered over 14 days last year and took part in many training opportunities, including rappelling, transporting empty toboggans to a rescue situation, and hill sweeps to ensure everyone is OK. The ski patrol is always looking for students age 13 and above to come up and volunteer and learn about our ski patrol.

Even with all this success, North Absaroka Ski Patrol has recently seen a decline in its membership, because of members moving to other communities, the effects of Covid on training and keeping certifications current, and some of our members deciding to retire from the patrol after many years of service.

North Absaroka is looking for candidates who have some basic ski or snowboard skills, who love to help others, who enjoy getting first tracks of the day, and who work well with a team. Some of the training candidates can be expected to receive include but are not limited to basic medical training, toboggan transport, self-evacuation from chairlift (rappelling from chair lift), and evacuation of others from the chairlift.

If joining the North Absaroka Ski Patrol interests you, the ski patrol will have an informational night at Millstone Pizza in Cody on Sept. 27 at 6:30 p.m. Information will be provided about training requirements and benefits and current patrollers will be available to answer questions.

If you are interested in joining the patrol and are going to attend the informational night, please RSVP at northabsarokasp@gmail.com.