'Today we only need 20 bombs': A day in the life of the ski patrol

It’s 6.45am on a cold January morning, and I’m standing at the base of the Médran gondola in Verbier, Switzerland, with British ex-pro freeskier Victoria Jamieson, long-time Verbier resident, and a ski patroller here for the last 11 years.

This morning Victoria and 14 other ski patrollers will prepare the resort ahead of its opening, making sure it’s safe for holidaymakers, and I’m lucky enough to be joining them for a behind-the-scenes tour of what this takes.

As we bustle up the back stairs to the gondola there are plenty of kissed greetings between the patrollers and restaurant workers who are also starting their day.

The journey up to the mid-mountain hub of Ruinettes at 2,200m takes place in complete darkness, and the faint patter of snow hitting the gondola windows lends a surreal air as Victoria talks through the role of a patroller - aka pisteur.

"Most of our work during the day is helping injured people," she says. "Each pisteur is responsible for one sector, and we rotate every couple of days. But the primary job in the mornings is securing the pistes so we can open the ski area on time."

On arrival at Ruinettes we go down to ski patrol HQ, where chief patroller Lionel May is giving the daily briefing. Snow depths around the resort are monitored day by day and reported back to a central weather station – and according to this, only 12cm of fresh snow has fallen. However, high winds have loaded up certain slopes with snow, creating avalanche risk, so the patrollers now have the job of bombing them to safely release the snow.

Lionel talks the team through the different areas they will survey, referencing the detailed contour maps and historic snowfall charts lining the walls. "No two days are ever the same," Victoria explains. "Once we have been designated our areas, we need to go and see them first-hand to assess exactly where the snow has built up."

Lionel is in a jovial mood. "Today is an easy day, last week we had 1m of snow overnight and needed to call in a helicopter to drop nearly 200 bombs. Today we will only need 20 bombs."  He delegates a couple of patrollers to retrieve the dynamite from the bunker where it’s stored – more on that later – while the others gather their gear and prepare to take the first Funispace cable-car to Attelas at 2,727m.

I catch sight of a half-drunk bottle of Appenzeller Alpenbitter – a kind of Swiss J?germeister – on the table. "To clean your teeth," one of the patrollers jokes, though one look from Lionel makes it clear it’s not for breakfast. The mood is one of calm, affable efficiency.

We six behind-the-scenes spectators are not allowed on bomb patrol for insurance reasons, so by way of compensation Victoria takes us to the pisteurs’ hut at Attelas and talks us through the process of setting the charges. The team in Verbier uses a mix of dynamite and Gazex, a gas-fired system consisting of a network of steel tubes stretching across the mountain to known avalanche hotspots.

The patrollers assess whether Gazex is required on location, radioing in a request to fire the cylinder if they find it’s necessary. A mix of propane and oxygen gases is then expelled to create the explosion, and pisteurs report the results back to HQ.

Gazex is typically used in locations that are inaccessible on foot, such as the top of narrow, steep couloirs. Unlike helicopters they can be used in good or bad weather, however they are a lot more expensive to install and run than dynamite, which is typically used in more accessible areas.

With dynamite everything is done on location. A dynamite parcel is fitted with two 90-second fuses (in case one fails), lit using a special-issue match that is as robust as it is low-tech, and then thrown by hand into position. In the hut, Victoria demonstrates how patrollers insert the fuses, to a soundtrack of a constant chatter from her radio.

Before they become involved in blasting, patrollers must work as medical-only pisteurs for at least year. Then they can sign up for an intensive two-week training course to gain their Brevet Federal Minage – essentially a diploma in dynamite – at the end of which they are licenced to blast.

Today the plan is to open up all Verbier’s pisted runs and most of its ungroomed itinerary runs. The Vallon d’Arbi and Col de Mines itineraries may remain closed all day as the ski patrollers don’t feel they can adequately protect the long traverse to reach them.

The bombing patrollers always work in pairs, and it strikes me that the golden ticket must be to open the Verbier itineraries after a fresh dump of snow. Not only do they get to throw a dynamite charge, they are then duty-bound to ski first tracks down some of the most incredible avalanche-controlled freeriding anywhere in the Alps.

"Opening up the itineraries is an incredible feeling," confirms Victoria. "After we’ve checked the snowpack and released the charge, then we can open up our turns and get fresh tracks all the way." But the ticket can get even more golden. "If we don't need to bomb, we can ski them alone. There is nothing like being the only person on Mont Gelé [one of Verbier’s highest points at 3,023m] at 8am in the morning as the sun comes up."

While the patrollers are engaged in bombing, we are tasked with helping Victoria check the prepared slopes. As we leave the hut to check the pistes we hear – and feel – the thud of the first bomb of the day. We ski each of the pistes in turn, lapping up the layer of fresh snow on top of freshly-groomed corduroy, but stopping wherever we see a piste marker knocked off-kilter by an overnight snowcat, or netting pulled out of shape. As we go back up the Funispace from Ruinettes, reports come in from the various bombing teams. All is good and the resort can open. It’s 8.45am.

At 9.15am less good news comes over the radio: the first accident of the day. A child has hurt her knee just below Ruinettes. It’s not in Victoria’s sector, but she advises us to go and ski a lap while she mans the hut in case she is needed to assist. Once the area is open the patrollers’ main duties are getting any injured people off the mountain, with each pisteur responsible for part of the mountain.

On our return she says the words I’ve been longing to hear: "Do you want to see the dynamite bunker?" And bunker is the apposite word. More than two tonnes of dynamite are kept in a cave hewn out of the rock face behind the Ruinettes station. Four steel doors must be unlocked to get into the dynamite cave, and there are a further four locks to negotiate before getting to the fuses.

Even after all the work and effort that the patrollers go to to make the mountains safe, avalanche accidents do happen. When they involve skiers and snowboarders, they are usually off-piste.

After the 2013/14 winter, when avalanche conditions were particularly treacherous, pioneering big mountain freeride skier and Verbier resident Dominique Perret launched the International Snow Training Academy (ISTA) to run a standardised avalanche awareness course to help skiers take personal responsibility.

ISTA now runs one- and two-day on-mountain courses in resorts across the Alps, primarily focused on prevention. Our group took part the course the day before going out with the patrol, learning how to read the mountain and avoid dangerous situations.

And after bidding a fond farewell to Victoria, we feel ideally prepared to take full advantage of today’s conditions – and hit the jackpot. The first Mont Gelé cable-car of the day is about to depart, so we head off to find our own fresh tracks.

The essentials

A two-day course with the International Snow Training Academy leading to a Level 1 ISTA certification costs CHF490 (￡370) in Verbier; a one-day discovery course costs CHF229.  For more information on Verbier visit verbier.ch.