With 51 years under their belt packs, Steamboat Resort patrollers Scott Halliday and Steve Hayslip have earned the right to refer to younger patrollers as “kids.”

The two veteran patrollers say one of the best parts of their longtime jobs as professional ski patrollers is mentoring new team members in their 20s. In turn, those “kids” may help the veterans with cell phone technology for incident reporting. When Halliday, 65, and Hayslip, 70, started in their jobs as teenagers, reporting was done on paper.

The two men say they love their outdoor work of helping people, despite the start time of 6:30 a.m. when the coldest mornings may drop to 30 degrees below zero.

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“You just put more on, take a lap or two, go in and don’t get frostbite,” Hayslip said.

The winter job has not always been easy on their bodies, and recently they switched to part time. Hayslip has a half-artificial knee and has been fighting cancer for six years.

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Halliday’s list of injuries through the decades reads like a rodeo cowboy: broken front and back ribs, both shoulders dislocated, both clavicles broken, 10 knee surgeries and eight procedures on his right shoulder after tearing his bicep and labrum lifting a patient.

“I’ve had almost every injury that’s out there, so I know how to deal with the individual because I know what they are going through,” Halliday said. “I can say, ‘Hey look, I’ve done this to myself, and I’m still here taking care of you. I have two artificial knees, and I’m taking you down. So you can come back from this.'”

Halliday started as a junior patroller through the National Ski Patrol in 1973 when he was 15. He and his wife, Lyn, met while working as patrollers at a ski area in northwest New Jersey now called Mountain Creek. Halliday was the youngest EMT in New Jersey at the time and had to get an exemption letter from the governor to take the course. He was named Outstanding Junior Ski Patroller of the Year by the National Ski Patrol three consecutive years. He became director of the 160-member ski patrol at the New Jersey resort.

Scott was the patrol leader in the daytime, and Lyn was the patrol leader at night at the ski area that stayed open until 11 p.m.

“One day he stayed late, and we rode up the chairlift together, and the rest is history — married 38 years,” Lyn said. The couple moved to Steamboat Springs in 1993.

During Halliday’s tenure at Steamboat, he was awarded Colorado Ski Patroller of the Year and named by his peers as Steamboat Ski Patroller of the year in 2000. He was awarded a Yellow Merit Star for a lifesaving incident in 1998.

Stagecoach resident Hayslip started his career patrolling at Gunstock Mountain Resort in New Hampshire for five years and has now worked on Steamboat patrol for 46 years. He works out on a Total Gym and stationary bike in his living room each morning.

Hayslip said the most common question patrollers are asked is, “How do you get the job?” because “all they think we do is ski all day long.”

Steamboat has approximately 40 patrollers on duty each day, and their work includes taking care of sick and injured, performing avalanche mitigation, preparing the resort before opening and maintaining medical equipment and snowmobiles.

Both veteran patrollers are EMTs who have earned every patroller accreditation, such as being permitted avalanche blasters and members of the gondola evacuation and accident investigation teams.

When they started at Steamboat, the ski patrol included two or three women patrollers. Now, women make up about one-third of a team that consists of 66 full-timers, 12 part-timers and additional volunteers.

“It was not easy back then,” Halliday said. “Certainly, the cultures have changed. The pioneers in the 70s and 80s, those women, they put up with a lot of hazing and stuff like that. Now we embrace women because they are so awesome. They are the rock stars of this patrol.”

Even though they have responded to thousands of “10-50” calls, they try to make the guest experience as positive as possible. Helping at an injury scene is routine for patrollers, but guests may remember a bad injury or toboggan ride for many years. Occasionally, the patrollers visit an injured guest in the hospital.

After more than a half-century on the job, as well as summers of physical outdoor work in landscaping for Halliday and in construction for Hayslip, the two are still enthusiastic about skiing. They want skiers and riders to enjoy the mountain every day — but to stay in control.

“Ski within your ability and you will have a good time,” Halliday said. “If you ski over your head, you may not have a good time.”

After a conversation outside a top-of-the-mountain patrol shack, the two proceeded to zip down the snow in signature smooth and strong patrol style.