Tim Briody: Patroller Extraordinaire

 Tim Briody has earned the Unofficial Rose Lifetime Achievement Award as a Slide Mountain Patroller (Ret: '63-'67) for amount of days and vertical skied. His stats speak for themselves as he has amassed in his 60 years of skiing 2400 days on Mt. Rose amounting to 27,000 plus runs skied for over 40 million vertical feet. 

With all that being said there is no way to measure the smiles shared after the hundreds of miles of powder skied. He shared a story recently of three days of deep pow when only a couple guys on patrol and Smitty (the crusty Mountain Manager in the 60's) stayed up at the old Slide Lodge during a huge storm cycle for three plus days and skied bottomless pow while throwing charges on Slide and down Nightmare while yards of snow fell. Mindblowingly deep they would throw a few charges down The Chutes and then ski-cut the rest day after day. They would camp out on the medical cots in Ski Patrol and fortunately also had keys to the bar and restaurant for their hefty doses of food and Medical Use Only alcohol.

In another story Smitty asked Tim to pack a half case of really unstable sweaty dynamite sticks in his backpack and set them off all together to get rid of the them near Hollywood Chute. While Smitty hid behind a tree Tim went out in knee deep wet pow and lit the tethered fuses of the whole bundle and then, when going to kick turn to find cover, fell downhill and could hear the fuses burning as he struggled to uncross his skis in the deep snow and get up... he could also hear Smitty cackling with laughter behind the tree. Finally getting it together, Tim made it about halfway back when the huge charge went off sending Tim sprawling... the only thing Tim could still hear after the blast was Smitty still laughing. 

There are dozens of stories where that came from. Briody is a skiing legend at Mt. Rose for his longtime love of the sport, good nature and three horrific accidents when he would ski faster than the wind suffering a ritualistic scalping by a sharpened limb, a 94' speed trial over boulders and finally practicing the art of Kunilingus with a Western White Pine on Bonanza. Another record probably to remain unbroken would be his 24 days in the ICU, multiple surgeries and then returning to skiing undaunted the very next season.

Although Tim isn't skiing much these days he still watches the webcams and gazes out his window at the bottom of the hill wistfully as the cats groom the Slide Side. Sharing his memories will also leave a smile on his face and laugher at all the patrol follies in the air.

As a Nevada Air Guard veteran, retired ski patroller, skier and friend, we do hereby salute all you have accomplished and managed to somehow live through. 

-Sven



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