So the Whistler thing ended… okay.

First, the funny bit: it’s the last day, around noon. I’m zipping along this quasi-trail through a gladed run, come around a tree, suddenly find myself being dumped unceremoniously into this bank covered in powder. There was this little kicker, first, and then nowhere to go but into it.

Harmless enough. I dig out a bit, try to get myself down the ravine from the trail a bit—‘cos that’s what it was—bottom of a creek thing, but no water visible underneath…

It’s difficult digging out of that much powder. And while I’m there, working on unsnarling myself from bindings and piles of powder, I hear someone saying ‘what the…’, look up, and some guy on a pair of massive powder skis has just landed exactly where I had, exactly the same way.

We chuckle, he climbs up the side to a groomer, heads off…

I get one foot out. I hear someone yelling ‘Oh shit…’

And look up to see a young woman on a board, who’s just made it three in a row.

This time, I actually laugh. Have to explain this to her. She laughs too. Whoever first went that way, set up that track had no idea how much trouble they’d caused.

Anyway, onto the annoying bit: I dig out, decide to follow the ravine downward, ‘cos there is this narrow trail there…

And it’s hairy. Ski patrol has marked off these sinkholes some three metres deep, going down to the water at the bottom. Scary. Don’t want to fall in those. It’s a warm day, and the water doesn’t look deep, but I’m betting you’d still be a mite uncomfortable by the time anyone could dig you out.

Anyway. Falls ensue, tho’ none into sinkholes, mercifully. Combination of nerves and close quarters. And at the bottom, I discover I’ve torn a cable on one of my Flows.

This is inconvenient. A Flow with a torn cable doesn’t close. And I’m at the bottom of the Symphony bowl, which means I’ve got at least two groomers and two traverses to go before I can just download on the gondola.

I make do. Fish some carabiners out of pockets, manage to wrap ‘em around the binding well enough to keep it sorta half closed, so at least it’s not dragging on the trail. I’ve got control, sorta… But have to take it easy with that foot, obviously…

But there’s this thing I’ve noticed about the skiiers at Whistler. Personal space issues. As in: they don’t give you as much of it as I’m used to. Way too often, they’re uncomfortably close to me, on the descent. Like that huffy older woman who zipped over my tail some days back, they do seem a bit cavalier to me about the possibilities for collisions…

I figure maybe it’s the environment. As in: on the East coast, there’s ice, it’s dangerous, everyone’s a bit more paranoid, a bit more cautious. Here, everyone’s a little less worried…

To my point: on the first traverse, I’m wobbling along, going easy on that none-too-tight binding, and this skiier just smacks the tail end of my board as its coming around on a carve, him going past, awfully fast, awfully close.

He wipes out. Not badly, picks himself up, apologizes, moves on, me with eyebrows raised, dark thoughts lingering about suicidal westerners with, in my ever so humble opinion, an insufficient appreciation of (a) how big a board a big guy might be riding, and (b) just what that many Newtons can do to your joints if you land wrong.

And back at the condo, I discover this nasty nick in the tail of the board where he’d hit it, a piece of the top surface torn off…

Cosmetic, mostly, I’d bet, and repairs lined up, and the cable’s already fixed…

But geez. It’s annoying, all the same.

So c’mon, people. Can we have a little less of that kind of silly, please?

Anyway. Otherwise, all was fun.