On winter mornings at BigRock Mountain in Mars Hill, Maine, the first light reveals the slopes. But before skiers shuffle into lift lines or families spill out of SUVs, a different ritual plays out at the base of the mountain: three men in red jackets, longtime fixtures of the hill, begin their quiet sweep.
For more than five decades, Conrad Brown, Tom Griffin and Stephen Higgins have ridden the first chair, skied the first laps and checked every corner of the terrain. But most importantly, they made sure the little mountain, the one tucked against the Canadian border, is safe to ski.
Each has given 50-plus years to the BigRock Ski Patrol. Together, they represent more than 152 years of volunteer service, a milestone rare in the ski world.
“We never planned to do it for 50 years,” Brown said.
“Because if somebody’s hurt on the slope, they’re really dependent on volunteer ski patrol,” Higgins said. “it’s not like an ambulance is going to come get them. There isn’t a number they can call.”
Backyard beginnings
Brown and Higgins started skiing young not off chairlifts, but on backyard hills and improvised trails long before grooming machines, snowmaking systems or formal instruction came into the picture.
Griffin didn’t ski when he was young.
“My father was in the snowmobile business, so that’s what we did: we rode snow sleds,” he said. “By the early ’70s, it seemed as though being involved with skiing might expose me to a new group of people.”
He would see three or four ski patrollers together come out and do something worthwhile, bring somebody down. To him, it seemed like a worthwhile way to do some good and also ski.
Brown remembers the early days.
“I started when I was about 12, skiing the back hills around Westfield,” he said. “We used to sidestep up the hill and ski down the track we made. None of us really knew how to ski. We learned a lot of bad habits.”
His first skis didn’t have steel edges and his boots were ankle-high lace-ups, Brown said, but it was good equipment at that time.
At BigRock as a young adult, the patrollers on the hill also caught his eye. It looked like fun and made him want to join them.
Brown joined the patrol in 1973 in a moment of serendipity.
“My girlfriend was working with the patrol director, David Corvo, and she learned they were looking for new members,” he said. “Dave asked if I could ski. I said, ‘Well, kind of,’ and we took it from there.”
Griffin and Higgins followed a couple of years later, drawn in by family ties and the same sense of purpose. The mountain needed them.
Skills that built a patrol
Over the decades, each man contributed unique strengths that helped shape BigRock’s modern patrol.
Higgins, a natural athlete and gifted skier, became an outdoor emergency transportation instructor and mentored generations of younger patrollers.
Brown, who still describes patrolling as a “passion,” wore nearly every leadership hat, including as one of the first outdoor emergency care instructors. His wife took care of home while he was off teaching and patrolling, he said.
A former patrol director, Griffin brought master craftsmanship to the patrol’s physical space. The sunlight from the large windows, the foldable benches, the front deck and even the wood stove that warms winter mornings are all products of his hands.
Early training was demanding. They had to pass the Red Cross Advanced First Aid course for about 40 hours and had to ski any trail in control. They learned toboggan handling and lifting and loading patients, Brown said.
Griffin’s first toboggan run is forever etched in his memory. It’s hardly a flattering story.
“We’d practiced a little with an empty toboggan, but I’d only been here a day or two when a guy got hurt on the Family Trail. Everyone rushed up, and I followed. He was a big guy about 215 pounds and I was just observing as they bundled him up.”
Phil Harmon, the oldest patroller at the time, asked if Griffin ever ran a loaded toboggan. Griffin said no, thinking that would get him out of it.
But Harmon said, “Good, this is a great chance for you to get experience.”
The injured man heard the whole exchange. They’d strapped him in, but Griffin had only practiced with the toboggan empty, so the handles weren’t hooked. Harmon told him to throw the chain down if it started going too fast.
Mike Edmonds, who joined at the same time Griffin did, was on the tail rope. They stopped once after going over a knoll and they were not prepared. They skied right around the toboggan.
“Mike knocked my hat off, and I thought, we’re not showing ourselves off very well,” Griffin said. “We couldn’t push the guy uphill to hook the handles. It was a good education.”
A mountain that grew with them
BigRock has always been a community hill: affordable, beloved and shaped by volunteers as much as by terrain. Decades ago, the mountain mainly had the Comet, Family Trail and Waterfall. Grooming was sidestepping with your skis. You’d even get a free if you helped pack it after a storm.
The installation of Uncle Bud’s pomalift, the Plunge, the Elbow, the Hooch and eventually the chairlift in 1993 marked milestones in the mountain’s growth. Snowmaking and grooming transformed the experience.
The patrol grew, too.
There was a group of 30-plus people, but they had to bring the toboggans in each night because there were not stations. Every morning, patrollers would ski them back out to their spots.
The three men became fixtures — steady, reliable, and deeply woven into the culture of the mountain.
The calls that stay with you
Ask any patroller about memorable calls and you’ll hear a blend of chaos, learning and memorable moments.
Brown recalled a serious incident from the mid-1980s.
“Someone went down the Hooch in marginal conditions, hit a stump and blew out his hip. It was a bad one, hard to get him out. We knew it was life-threatening. He survived but never fully recovered,” Brown said.
Higgins nodded; he, too, was on patrol that day.
But the memory that affects them most is the night they found a missing 12-year-old boy.
“It was 10 to 20 below. His mother showed up in street clothes, determined to search,” Higgins said.
“We almost had to restrain her, it was so dangerous. When I heard, ‘We found him,’ I went up on a snowmobile and brought him down. She didn’t know whether to hug him or shake him.” Higgins paused. “That’s one I still get emotional thinking about.”
There were lighter moments, the kind that become folklore. Powder days were rare and precious,
“One time, after a big storm, Gary was going to pack the snow, so we all hopped on the back of the packer,” Brown said. “We threatened his life if he packed it before we got to ski it. People at the bottom said our first run looked like a Pepsi commercial.”
Why they stayed
Remaining on patrol for 50 years is a commitment. It means freezing mornings, long afternoons, constant training and stepping into stressful situations at any moment. Why do it?
For the trio, the reasons are simple.
“The community makes BigRock special,” Brown said. “It’s truly a family mountain. The Pierce family treated the patrol like their own, and that’s continued through every ownership change. Seeing kids with big grins on their faces — that’s what makes it special.”
What kept him personally going is even simpler, “I love skiing, I love patrolling, and I love working with the younger generation. You don’t start thinking you’ll do it for 50 years. It just happens because it’s all so good.”
Friendships are a major part of it, too. They’ve met many people, all bonded by skiing and service.
“One memory that really sticks with me was a spring day when it was about 40 degrees and snowing hard — one of those rare, warm powder days,” Higgins said. “Most of the patrol was here. It was dumping snow, 40 degrees, and we were having an incredible time.”
Griffin also remembers that day.
“Every run was fresh tracks. Light snow, warm temps — it was crazy. Just a perfect day,” he said.
Shifting toward legacy
Brown, Griffin and Higgins don’t advertise their longevity, but their impact is felt. They are the living memory of the mountain, a link between the past and whatever comes next.
“We’ve had a good run,” Brown said. “But the next 50 years belong to whoever’s coming up behind us.”
The men hope the new generation carries forward what mattered most in their era: dedication to skiers, pride in representing BigRock and the National Ski Patrol, and treating people with respect.
The advice for young patrollers is straightforward: Be the best you can be. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Your best defense against mistakes is training and competence. And enjoy it; this work should be meaningful and fun.
Numbers tell only part of the story. The meaning of their combined 152 years lies in the countless small moments accumulated over decades: early-morning coffees in the patrol room, trail checks under cold February skies, radios crackling to life, the shared weight of a toboggan, the laughter in between.
It’s found in the mountain they’ve watched grow, the team they’ve helped build and the people who trust them without ever knowing their names.
When the lifts spin each winter morning, Brown, Griffin and Higgins are still out there sliding onto the first chair, scanning the snow, quietly doing the work that keeps the hill running.
Some mountains are defined by their terrain.
BigRock is defined as much by the people who have watched over it for half a century.
