It will be 31 years ago this fall that four of us were accepted to be rookie groomers on Whistler. You, me, Keith (Slasher) and Pascale (did one year and then don't know where he ended up).

I dropped out first in 93 and stayed in the snowcat business, Keith dropped next and although he did some cat work for me at the tail end of the 90's, he's been busy building with things other than snow. You stayed on in our dream job and became a supe!

My memories of our first ROOKIE season were (in no particular order):

The awesome 240 and "T handle" 8 way blade- I sure don't miss the fixed wings

Snowmaking- I don't remember making much snow. It seems to me that we went out and got wet a lot. Once we were tired of that fairly quickly, we sure got a lot of mountain sledding (Cheyennes ?) done and we didn't get caught, those were the days.

Grooming- Rule 1- never get out of your cat, thrilling and scary rides down Orange Peel- Downhill to the valley, Franz', Bear Paw and Tokum after some big dumps, getting lost between Green chair ramps and the top of Ego Bowl in a storm, scaring the crap out of Mitzi on Roundhouse Roll, worried about getting yelled at by Mad Dog then realizing that he was mostly bark not bite, getting strict instructions from our lead hands on how to tag the bamboo fences if the patrol poached our runs, impressed with the number of windshields that Mad Dog, Bernie and other senior groomers smashed and realizing that our baby bumps and breakdowns were trivial in comparison, sneaking the odd on-hill dinner date with Reg at our lunch hour, rescuing cats that fell off roads (Sandy on Pony Trail, Brian into the shop), towing the garbage scow and watching Dave H rip the tracks off a cat, meeting up with others on shift at the fuel dumps, laughing at the anonymous Gimleys, switching from a compacter bar to a tiller to powder makers in half a shift, terrified of catching the 7 gang powder maker on a tree (one time !), rocking the CBC, sharing a cat with Mitzi (me the shortest and he the tallest) and the seat track was broken, totally entertained by Drew at the start of shift staff meetings (and the Phil and R Show), terrified by the end of shift sled ride/race to the valley. I do remember very well, choosing you or Keith to ride down with. The others all felt it their duty to get down through the bumps of WhiskeyJack and Olympic Run as fast as possible. Thanks for not scaring the shit out of me too often. And then we graduated.

Those were good times and cherished memories.

Thinking of you and Jeanette,

your fellow rookie,

Kathryn Milne