The call went out: A 12-year-old boy, separated from his parents on the snowy slopes of Oregon’s Mt. Hood in near-blizzard conditions.
As a volunteer with the Mt. Hood Ski Patrol, Gayle Maize was one of the red coats leading the search. The longest hour crawled by, until Maize located the boy beyond the roped-off safe area of the slope. He was trapped within a tree well — that space under a tree’s branches that can fool even experienced skiers, appearing like hard-packed snow but collapsing at the slightest footfall. In the worst of them, people have suffocated and died.
“It was harrowing, horrible conditions,” Maize remembered. “Your heart sinks.”
Fortunately, this call had a happy ending, one of many Maize has seen during her nearly 30 years with the ski patrol. She and her fellow volunteers serve as lifeguards of the mountains, completing multiple certifications and EMT-like training in order to lead search and rescue whenever it’s needed.
She’s been at her day job for just about the same amount of time, working as a security administrator and SAP basis administrator at NW Natural, but most weekends in winter and even in summer, she’s out on the slopes. The mountain, she said, can be incredibly humbling, putting life in perspective. Her job at NW Natural feeds into that work.
“Working in IT, it trains you to think, ‘What happened? Where do I start?’” she said. “You run through the list.”
Maize joined when she was just 26, and she’s stayed because of the lifelong friendships and the difference she can make. “It’s a totally different life up there. People may lose an arm, break a leg, dislocate a shoulder,” she said. “I’m helping people, and also saving lives.”