I can deal with the car later.
I’m going skiing!
I made three glorious laps of Spanky’s and Teetering with my friend Brian.
Feeling good on the new skies, I was getting stoked for the following day of filming.
Stuff is just stuff, I reminded myself.
We were headed up a valley in between Whistler and Squamish to check out some hopefully still-untouched lines.
They would ride ahead and scout the route for us.
That can’t be good.
So I skied the warm-up chute and Rory easily tandem-ed me back up to the top for the air.
After some fiddling around and more inspecting, I was ready to drop.
But I got a little bit off-balanced in the air, and I hit harder than I expected.
So I started to tomahawk, just like I’ve done so many times before.
Except for this time, it hurt — immediately, and bad.
And besides, maybe I had just injured my calf muscle.
I hoped for that as Rory skied a few more lines and we started the process of snowmobiling out.
I gunned it but it didn’t go.
I fiddled with the key a bit and revved it again — nothing.
I looked over and saw Rory pantomiming to remove the parking break.
I switched it off and started after them.
Reduced to ash, the whole thing (plus skis and boots).
Half a kilometer later, I noticed some smoke rising from the engine.
Steam from melting snow?
I wondered for a brief blissful second before I saw the flames.
Screaming, I limped as fast as I could away from the sled in the direction I came from.
In under a minute, the whole thing was fully engulfed in flames.
We rode over to Scott, who said, “Sorry.
Scott drove behind us and picked up the remnants we dropped all the way to the trailhead.
Learning from Bushfield that in some tough situations, all you’re free to do is just laugh?
