Avalanche Terrain
2024-07-11 00:20:31
After 25 years at the Late Night desk, Conan realized that the only people at his holiday party are the men and women who work for him. Over the years and despite thousands of interviews, Conan has never made a real and lasting friendship with any of his celebrity guests. So, he started a podcast to do just that. Deeper, unboundedly playful, and free from FCC regulations, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend is a weekly opportunity for Conan to hang out with the people he enjoys most and perhaps find some real friendship along the way.
Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Conan? Visit teamcocoa.com. Slash call Conan. Okay, let's get started here, comes Tanner.
Hey, thanks for that introduction. you're welcome. that was terrific. Tanner, How are you?
Good, how are you, Conan? This is sweet.
I'm doing real well. Hey man, it is sweet and it's nice. It's sweet talking to you and I'm looking at you right now.
I'm trying to figure out from your background, where you? You've got that kind of stove that looks antique, that goes up and into the wall with like a bunch of pipes. Is that a bong in the background? What is that? a lava lamp? Yeah.
Was that a lava lamp? Oh, that's a lava lamp. Okay, well, you know, in my defense, they can, they can be dual purpose.
You can have a lava lamp that's also a bong.
I'm sure you can figure out something.
Oh, I did, trust me. No, that doesn't make sense. So you're in, where are you?
You look like you're in some kind of a cool, rural situation. What's happening?
Yeah, so I live in central Idaho, in the mountains, it's like kind of like five hundred people, it's two hours north of Boise.
Where is that in relation to ketchum?
Ketchum, So ketchum would be ketchum would be kind of Eastern. do you know, ketchum?
You're pointing, you're pointing on a zoom in a direction. I don't know what is ketchum? We're on a podcast and you're pointing.
He gave you boise and you decided, ketchum.
Yeah, Ketchum is the capital.
How you know Boise?
I just sort of more, I'm just sort of more interested in ketchum, you know, it's where Hemingway lived out his last days.
Yeah, and the celebrity types like to go to ketchum, wear fur coats.
I've never been there. I'm not enough of a celebrity. I think more about Hemingway spending his last days there in Ketchum. It's rather a poignant tale, but I think I got us off the trail here. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
What do you do when you're not smoking sweet J-bone out of a lava lamp?
So I work as a ski patroller, that's my primary job.
Ski patroller So not a ski instructor? You're a ski patroller, which I think no slamming of ski instructors here, because I love skiing and I love ski instructors, but Ski Patroller sounds so much cooler.
Yeah, yeah, you get to wear the fancy uniform and carry radio.
Do you get a gun when you're a ski patroller?
You should at least a taser, I think.
No, I think you should have a gun and you should be on your skis, firing at someone who's fleeing, yeah, or a rabbit. I think that'd be cool.
Or I could just take him out.
Oh, well, you know, first of all, I'm loving this whole thing. You're a ski patroller and you're in Donnelly, Idaho. Is that correct?
That's correct, OK?
And very closer to Boise, I guess, than Ketchum. But listen again, I'm getting us off the rails, tell us what. What does it entail when you're a ski patroller? Are you looking out for people's safety, their health?
What are you doing? So it's kind of a mixture of a rescue. You're also mitigating risk, so you're kind of marking hazards with bamboo, then you're also doing avalanche mitigation and medical as well.
So it's a mixture of kind of everything.
All right, so you have had probably some calls where people fall and they broke their leg or something. Is that right?
Yeah, it's mainly the good rule of thumb is. Skiers it's usually leg injuries, knees, femurs, and then snowboarders usually something upper body, collarbones, arms.
I did try in the 2002 Olympics, which were in Salt Lake, I. We shot a segment where I tried snowboarding and the physics of it. For me, because I'm very tall and I have a fat head, so I'm top heavy, I would go down and when you go down on skis, it's one thing.
But when you go down on a snowboard, you're going down like four times harder. Is that fair to say? Yeah, that's fair to say.
Yeah, especially you, you have like, so you learn in the school, like the different mechanisms of injuries. And you're more based on what you say as a pediatric patient. Because they have bigger heads.
So they fall on their heads more.
So what you're saying, Tanner, is I'm like a large baby.
Yeah, you're like a large baby. Yeah, me too, though.
Anyways, you might have to have your tonsils out while you're skiing.
Is there is there a code for man, baby down on the mountain?
We can make one, yeah, you should make one.
We've got a cone, just call it a cone. a cone is down on the mountain. OK, so a lot of those kinds of injuries. Do you ever have people that, um, I don't know? They say they need help and you get there, and it's kind of clear.
They're not really in any jeopardy, they're just sort of tired and making a fuss about something that's not that important.
A hundred percent, I would say about 80.
You're just making something up, No, I'm telling you.
Yeah, 80 of our calls are probably people who just can't make it on the hill, so we call it a taxi, where we just give them a ride in a toboggan down.
That would be me, no, but I can. I can tell. There's sometimes there are people that fall down, they go, Oh, I went bump Coast ski patrol.
It's so hard to get up after you fall.
You're just you have these giant things on your feet, skis, skis, yeah.
And you're just kind of like, Come on, I have to get up.
If this is the way you feel, what got you there in the first place?
Yeah, and you shouldn't be skiing, you shouldn't be skiing. What do you mean I should?
Everyone can ski, should ski. I don't know, it's not your culture, I just I think you might be right. Actually. Honestly, I don't know a lot of Armenians.
I took you to Armenia and I didn't see a lot of ski bums around there. But if I was on the mountain and I fell, do I just yell, Help me, Tanner?
And you just show up, or how do you? How do you know? It depends? So we do, like one of our jobs, so one day a week we're a dispatcher.
So we sit in the office, the radio and the phone to answer phone calls. Oh, we get a lot of people who call just like this person needs help, and we're like, all right, we'll go check it out. But that's one way.
Or you just can scream help.
Can you ever send one of those giant St Bernard's with a barrel of brandy around its neck? Yeah, do they still exist?
I was wondering when the St Bernard would come and play with you two. Yeah, or maybe you have, or maybe Tanner. You could just carry a lot of brandy with you on a barrel around it.
Yeah, yeah, or that's a good job for you because you have a big head.
OK, Tanner, let's let that go. I think you put it on dinner, yeah. Big head means there's a bigger space underneath the head shades.
The room nicely doesn't get overheated in the sun. Listen, Tanner, my question is, is the is the the St Bernard? Is that something that just exists in cartoons now, or did it ever really?
Would you guys ever use one?
So we do have avalanche dogs in service on the mountain, we have three, four dogs on the mountain. We have a German shepherd, a lot to lab labs, and then we have one kind of mixed breed and they're trained for, but they're mainly trained for avalanche rescue.
OK, they can sniff out people buried.
Let's talk about avalanches, because I, as you can probably tell from my build, I'm an athlete and I do a lot of skiing.
Maybe you just got to clean off the lens a little bit on your computer.
There is a I think from your build, you can tell you're a podcaster.
OK, that was such a good burn. I say that as a podcaster myself. Listen, I'm just saying you have to lean into the microphone because it's a directional mic. Thanks to Eduardo here. And that means you have to build up the Scolatus multidennis.
But listen, Tanner, let's talk about avalanches. I know it's a serious subject. They're more common than people think, right?
Yeah, they are, mostly they're. Most avalanches are human triggered avalanches, and at the resort I work at, we do avalanche mitigation with explosives and also just kicking the cornice build up. So it's. It's fairly unlikely, just due to mitigation inside our skier area boundaries, to experience an avalanche.
But they are really common, especially in the backcountry.
You get to set off explosives every day, which I think would be a dream job. I would love to do that.
It's sweet, it's a little bit puckering, but it's fun, that's cool.
What's that? tell me? Yeah, it's a little bit like a butthole.
Yeah, yeah.
But when you're dealing with high explosives, sometimes the asshole seals itself. Oh, I want to blow stuff, and as an asshole, I can say that tanner, do you? So you set off these explosions and you have to make sure.
If you set off the explosion and it triggers an avalanche, you got to get the hell out of there, right?
Well, we're well, we try to be and we are in a safe area, so we're usually above it. Most of our terrain is basically a ridgeline and then we get cornice buildup, so we are on top of the cornice behind it.
And we throw an explosive tied to a rope over Cool.
And I think that sounds cool.
What kind of explosives?
It's just dynamite with a little fuse, yeah, confused igniter or booster, and then a little cardboard igniter, that's basically a match.
You put on it and pull a string.
And you're, you're like Wile E. Coyote. I mean, you're, you're not that far away from it.
You know, it doesn't sound as sophisticated as I thought it would be. You're still lighting a fuse and chucking something that's tied to a rope.
How much time do you have before it goes off?
What, it's 90 seconds, so a minute and a half.
So tell us. And maybe this is one of those things that's going to save a life out there, so we should be serious about it. What if you're in a situation where you suspect? Do people know when an avalanche is coming and they try to escape it? Or is it one of those things that overtakes you so quickly, you just have no idea?
It depends, so they can go from all different degrees and sizes. I would say if you're thinking about traveling in avalanche terrain, and I think a lot of people don't have to worry about it. At resorts, it does happen in resorts, but if you're traveling in backcountry, avalanche terrain is the best thing you do is just take a class on avalanche awareness and understand what to look out for.
Other than that, like seeing at a resort, it's relatively pretty safe.
Is there have they built a mechanism or anything that you can like, gear that you can carry? So that if you do get trapped under the snow, you can like, pull a ripcord and something goes shooting up to indicate to people where you are, I'm serious.
This isn't a James Bond movie.
What do you mean?
You know, the world is not enough. He has a parka that turns into a giant ball that he can live inside of during an avalanche. Is that true? Yeah, it's true in the movie.
Oh well, OK, thanks for interrupting the guy who does this for a living and mentioning, Well, actually, R2-D2 handled this on Planet Glyph.
Is there such a thing? Is there a tech that would save my life if I was? Because you talk about people that go to resorts, but I'm not some resort guy, I'm a backcountry guy. What would catch up or big country? I like that band in the 80s.
Would you? What is there? is there anything that someone can purchase?
So, yeah, if you're traveling in backcountry situations, you'd always carry an Avalanche beacon, which basically a giant aluminum basically pull that you put together. And it's made for finding victims, you can poke and prod the snow and hit a body, and that's where, you know, you found the buried victim.
Oh, I see, that's, that's for the rescuer. I'm talking about anything that I could have on my person, so that if I get buried, it's, you know, like a long straw. I can assemble under the snow, that I stick out of the snow and then I can breathe through it.
Yeah, well, there's a few things.
Sorry, it's called backcountry. sorry, go ahead. Maybe they're, they don't, they're laughing and stuff, but you know what, they?
They laughed at Edison, they laughed at Tesla, they laughed at Musk, and they should laugh at Musk. Oh, what's what? What do you think about my idea of the long straw?
So there is a AV lung that's attached to your backpack you wear, and it's basically a little cube you can breathe in. The hard part about that is it's really hard to find when you're getting thrown around in an avalanche. Yeah, there's also airbags that have a little CO2 cartilage on it that you pull. See, that's what I'm talking about.
Yeah, it will inflate in the back and it'll kind of keep you above the surface. That's good to know. Thing is just, yeah. And it's pretty easy to avoid avalanche terrain.
A lot of places have forecasters that go out and tell you what the avalanche terrain will be, that it's danger.
I'm going to avoid them. I just that's, that's my strategy, just to not go to avalanche terrain if there. And you have a nail clipper that you're holding tanner.
Yeah, I was showing my nails.
OK, listen, Jesus Tanner, I am an iconic figure in American cultural history. And I'm chatting with you, and all of a sudden I see you, you're doing something and I see you've got a nail clipper.
You're like, Yeah, I'll kill two birds with one stone.
In your double tasking here, did you think I'll cut my nails while talking to Conan? or going? I'll talk to Conan while I'm cutting my nails?
Well, I was trimming them during the weight room thing and then I decided to just fidget with it, yeah.
Oh, listen, I didn't take it. I don't take it personally, I'm sure. Interrupting his nail time, Yeah.
Let's see.
Let's see how they're looking.
You ever think I'm a busy person, Conan?
Oh yeah, ok, you know what?
Good point. And by the way, Conan, you called him, he didn't even ask to do this.
OK, well, I was just curious. I had some questions in the case. I'd like to check in on how things are going in Donnelly, Idaho. I would keep my nails long so I could claw out of the snow and ice.
Oh boy, I think you're making, you're taking a big risk cutting them short.
You know, oh yeah, but you got to think about hypothermia.
Oh well, I never really do. I run so hot, brain brain cooking so many ideas. You mean, you think so much that it warms your body that during an avalanche you won't freeze to death.
Oh yeah, I'm, I think my resting body temperature is like one hundred and nine.
So the snow will just melt around you.
Yeah, OK, there's a steam cloud that follows me wherever I go when I'm skiing.
I love this, I love learning so much. And do you have a question for me? Tanner? I feel like I can't help you much. You seem like a very cool, calm, collected guy who's well groomed.
What, what would you like to ask me?
So have you? I know you've skied before, but have you ever had to be rescued by a ski patrol? Never, and if not, what do you think your injury would be?
OK, well, that's fun, I think. Well, first of all, I've never had to, you know, what I have done. I was skiing once and I saw a guy who was kind of out of control. Slam into somebody and that person who got, who got slammed, hit a tree pretty hard.
So I was one of those people that, like, stopped and took my skis off and tried to make a barrier, you know, to keep other skiers away. And we waited for the ski patrol.
That was the right thing to do, right? Make a little barrier with the skis. Someone told me, maybe it's not a good idea because several people got impaled coming down the hill and pointed them out. Yeah, I think I killed six people trying to protect the person who was lightly bruised by the tree. Are you a good skier?
I'm a pretty good skier, I've been skiing, I skied as a kid. I started out skiing in Massachusetts, which, by the way, I love you, Massachusetts, but not ski country. The highest rise was, like, 45 feet above elevation.
But then we started going up to New Hampshire, take a bus up there. And this was back in the day when you just skied in your jeans like we, and it was, I loved it, and then I thought that was skiing.
And then, finally, I would say, sometime in the mid 90s, well into doing my late night show. I had a chance to host some events at an Aspen comedy festival and I went to Aspen for the first time. And I saw skiing out in the west and it opened my eyes, it was so fantastic.
I just fell in love with it, so I love it there. Do you do pizza slice? French fries? Pizza slice French fries? No, no, I got out of that a long time ago.
But that's my way. Yeah, well, I mean, you just you ski with pizza and French fries. She's a great skier, but she has a full complement of high carb food.
So no, I've never called Ski Patrol for help myself. What would my injury be? I mean, man, I I don't, I'm just going to have to say, I'm probably it's going to be, I'm mostly leg.
I'm 95 percent leg and I think it's going to be something with my legs.
Unless it's like, somehow you could get an ego bruise on the slopes, you know?
Like, if you would be like the guy that would go like, I can see this double black and get halfway down the back, no, I can't do it.
You know what, I would never, ever. I have too much shame. I would never call Ski Patrol to help me get down a mountain. I'm fairly confident.
Unless it's a straight drop cliff, I can get down something, it's not going to look great, but I can get down it. I do not think I would call to say, Help me get down this, this, this mountain I would be to.
I would just rather die.
What? Yeah, instead of asking for help, you would just be like, OK, this is it for me? Yeah, I would, because I mean, first of all, think of the clicks.
If I'm found frozen on a mountain, a lot of clicks. But I don't want to be the I don't want to be calling you Tanner and saying, help me, help me. I don't want to ski down the mountain, I can't do it.
Yeah, I'm good at that. I'd rather just hang out and ski and not do that. Yeah, yeah.
So you're fine with me letting myself die, yeah, and then you get to be the guy that found me.
Yeah, right, and I could, like, sell the you're like petrified body to like.
Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, what?
That's true. How did you bypass?
How did you bypass the coroner? did you? how did you talk to my wife? My wife would be like, Yeah, yeah, whatever you want. Yeah, I'm not using it.
Yeah, I'm not, I am. We're good. This saves us a lot of money. TAnner And then you'd be, I'd be there, frozen, completely solid in your back.
You could hang Christmas lights on me as long as you trimmed my nails occasionally would be good. Oh, he would.
We need a new coat rack in my house.
You'd eventually install a digital clock in my forehead. All right, well, Tanner, I very cool talking to you and I I hope I get out there. I never skied in Idaho in my life and I'd like to check it out sometime.
I think if you come, you need to come twice, you need to come in summer and winter.
You know what, I love mountain biking, is there good mountain biking there?
Yeah, I'm, actually. I work as a mountain bike patroller. What in the summer?
Hey, I could join you and be your deputy for a day.
Yeah, that'd be cool, yeah.
Well, we'll give you a little back, a little more enthusiastic.
That's me being enthusiastic.
I don't know what else. OK, Wow, all right. Well, you need a heart scan.
All right, well, Tanner, very nice to meet you and stay safe and I'm glad to know you're out there taking care of people.
Yeah, sweet, thank you Conan. All right, take care.
Yeah, cool.
Bye, bye, Tanner.
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