first fatality of the year....

so i was cruising alpine this holiday week with the fam, and was taking a run with some of my little cousins and the parents and what have you on the weasel chair. i was riding the lift back up with my little brother, when i saw a huge commotion in this stand of trees right in the middle of the run. the patrol was showing up, and i thought that it was just a run-of-the-mill broken arm kind of wreck... we took a run, and on the next chair up, we saw the patrol bringing down a sled, and as they passed underneath the chair, my bro and i could see that there was a patrolman in the sled with the injured person administering cpr. obviously that is never a good thing. we skiied down to where the wreck had occured, and my parents were standing there, and as it tured out, my dad, who had gone to the car to get somthing, had gotten back on the chair, and then had skiied down and was waiting for us by the aforementioned trees. he saw this little girl, who was 13 appearantly going out of control at mach speed right into the trees. he and some other guy ran over, and when he got there she had no heart beat, and was not breathing. he started cpr while the other guy went to get the patrol. he said he was able to establish a heart beat, but she still was not breathing on her own. the patrol finally showed up, and she got life flighted to reno, where she died a yesterday or the night before...

its just crazy to think about how many timed i have gotten out of control on runs far more trecherous that the weasel run, and have never suffered any sort of serious injury. perhaps its just dumb luck for some of us. i dont know how many of you have lost someone in this type of accident... i lost one of my best friends in a snowboarding suffocation back in 1997 at sugar bowl, and it makes you think, how quickly something that is supposed to be fun can turn around and be tragic in mere seconds. it keeps you humble on the mountian i guess... hopefully there wont be anymore of this kind of thing this year, but there probably will be... hopefully it wont be any of you, or anyone that you know...










-you think you can take us on... you and your cronies-