White Heat
The Extreme Skiing Life
Avalanche Control
On Duty With Dynamite Girl
It is shortly before 6:00 a.m., and you are sitting in the Park City Summit Patrol hut, waiting for Jackie, the Dynamite Girl.
All you've been told is, you won't forget her, which is really no help, you think, given the skiers crossing the hut are wearing bulky red and black Patrol outfits, gear festooned all over those outfits, rope, carabiners, first-aid tape, Pieps, shovels, and, on their backs, packs stuffed with yet more gear to near bursting. You settle in on the bench against the wall, angling your recently blown-out ski boots -- which, already, have begun to torment your feet again -- toward the fireplace, warming them.
Here at Summit the hut is the size of a lodge, really, and is a swarm of morning activity. There's been a heavy snowfall, over three feet, a stiff wind from the south, and, being an unseasonably warm January, the temperature over the week has risen above and fallen below freezing umpteen times, creating sheets of snow in varying layers of density and composition. It has even rained briefly.
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