Santiam Pass Ski Patrol is rated best

The National Ski Patrol awarded its Outstanding Large Alpine Patrol Award for the 2007-2008 ski season to the Santiam Pass Ski Patrol (SPSP), based at Hoodoo Mountain Resort.

At the ski patrol's Northwest Division Convention, held in Spokane last weekend, National Chairman Terry LaLiberte presented the award recognizing SPSP as the best ski patrol with 40 or more individual members in the National Ski Patrol System. There are over 400 such patrols in the system.

SPSP received the Large Alpine Patrol Award in the Pacific Northwest Division last year and represented the Pacific Northwest in national competition for 2008.

Santiam Pass Ski Patrol is a 44-member volunteer organization that has served Hoodoo and the surrounding area with winter safety and emergency medical services for over 60 years.

Among its patrollers are those who have previously been recognized as the most outstanding in various classifications of the 27,000-member National Ski Patrol System. Members of the patrol have also been recognized for their efforts in saving lives both from within the National Ski Patrol and other organizations in the Emergency Medical System.

With a returning patroller rate of over 95 percent annually, SPSP is a tight-knit group that served 627 patroller days last season. In addition to patrolling on winter weekends, SPSP serves the public year-round with a mountain weather station and video cameras located at the resort. The patrol owns and maintains the equipment while Hoodoo provides the data and video on the Internet.

Reaching the top is a theme for individuals within the patrol as well as for the group as a whole. Earlier this spring, one of its members, 60-year-old Mark Luscher of Albany, Oregon, reached the summit of Mt. Everest, and unfurled a National Ski Patrol flag at the highest point on earth.