A Lifetime on the slopes

After four decades of service as a National Ski Patroller (NSP), Tony Wells from The Plains retired on January 1, 2020. Also, he has been an NSP instructor and examiner for 28 years. Tony began patrolling at Massanutten. He later helped create and lead a new patrol, Cherokee, at Linden, Virginia, where he was the Patrol Treasurer. After a few seasons, the resort imploded for financial reasons, and Tony moved to Timberline, West Virginia, during which time he helped establish a new patrol at Whitetail in Pennsylvania when it opened. After several years of long weekends traveling from Friday nights to Sunday nights with his three children to Timberline, Tony decided to move much nearer to home and has been at Bryce Mountain ever since. He has been a Visiting Patroller at several other central east coast ski resorts in Maryland and Pennsylvania and has patrolled in the West.

Tony learned to ski as a small child in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland, and later at his high school in England, he skied every Christmas and Easter holidays in Europe with his school ski club. When he became a Royal Navy officer, he skied on the Navy and Portsmouth Command ski teams, winning one year the grand slalom trophy with three Royal Marine Commandos, who were arctic warfare trained and spent winters in Norway skiing near the Russian border. By the time he immigrated to the US in 1983, Tony had skied every major resort in Switzerland and Austria, several in France and Italy, and Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria in Germany. His favorite ski resort has always been Zermatt in Switzerland. Tony reflects on ski equipment. As a small child in Kandersteg in Switzerland, he remembers vividly skiing on wooden skies, with bamboo poles, and leather boots, with a very primitive binding. He has donated his three sets of skis, poles, and boots to his Patrol.

One pair that he bought in Austria a few years ago is made of titanium and light alloys, and the bindings have a sophisticated release mechanism. Times have changed dramatically in the skiing industry, and he recalls how snowboarding most likely saved the industry in the 1980s because of the cost of ski gear for young people with limited means. As an expert skier, Tony has survived unscathed. However, he remembers his most spectacular fall of his career vividly over twenty-five years ago on a double diamond chute called Hangman's at Mammoth Mountain in California in the late spring. Hangman is at the very top of a ridgeway above the highest lift, so you have to carry your skis and poles up to the departure point. As the first off from his group of four (the others said you're the "big-time ski patroller" – you lead!) Tony made two swift turns before entering the hourglass chute. As he made the third turn, a ski came off (he was using rental equipment, not his own), which then shot down the chute. Tony had no choice, hanging on to a rock pinnacle at the top of the chute with no way back up the incredibly steep near-vertical gradient. He kicked off the other ski and sent this and his poles hurtling down the chute, and once they appeared out the bottom, he then dived headfirst, arms outstretched, and survived the swift perilous ride between the chute's rock face before emerging about five hundred feet below. The others found his skis and poles, and on joining him found his arms under his ski parka bright red from minor snow burns. Over the past decades, Tony estimates that he has rescued about a 1000 injured skiers, which involved treating them on the mountain and then bringing them down on a unique toboggan. He's seen every kind of injury, from the severe head, back, and fractures requiring Medevac (medical air evacuation) to minor cuts, abrasions, and sprains. Fortunately, Tony has never had to deal with a skiing fatality, though he recalls three that came very close, and the helicopter ride to a trauma center most likely saved them. Tony has skied his last run, and he is very proud that his oldest son John Wells is an NSP Patroller and ski and toboggan instructor-examiner at Wintergreen in Virginia. His other three children are all accomplished skiers, with his older daughter Lucy living near Denver, Colorado, and teaching her three children the joys of skiing. Tony hopes that his eight grandchildren will follow the family ski tradition and acquire the expert epithet.