First trail ski and assorted disasters.

A small (too small...) contingent of us went up to Salmon Hills to ski yesterday. I hate leaving, or even waking up early, but it had to be done...by 8:30am we were on the road en route to the juxtaposition of desirable and disgusting that is the Tug Hill plateau.

The way up was pretty uneventful, save the last 100m of the Salmon Hills driveway. Due to a long off-season, the death trap driveway was eager to claim another Cornell/Clarkson vehicle. And it did...

On the final left hand turn, my wheels lost traction and my car began its inevitable, mostly uncontrollable skid off the road, over the side, and almost into a small creek. Awesome. I tried to steer out of it prior, but the car was having none of this "driver input". Never having lost control before, I didn't think it was possible in my Subaru. We ended up 3 feet from a tree, with the car precariously poised at an extreme angle of repose. Think of the stunt cars that can drive on the two left wheels while the right ones are in the air. I feel that if the car were any higher (e.g. SUV, van) it would have flipped over and gone entirely in the creek.

With the car safely off the side of the road in its temporary parking spot, I was waiting for hordes of rally racing fans to come and push my car back on the road. That never happened. Instead, I climbed out of my window (couldn't open the door since it was trapped shut by the snow), we grabbed our skis, and headed up the lodge.

Someone had already alerted the lodge to my "distress", so a maintenance guy was ready to go with his chains and pickup truck when we got up there. Unfortunately, the truck couldn't get enough traction to make any headway on pulling me out. We had to call in the heavy machinery...

The call was placed, and I went for a short ski while waiting for "the guy" to get to Salmon Hills. I imagined "The Wolf" from Pulp Fiction was on his way to evaluate the situation:


During that time, I managed to put a chip in my Star poles as I threw them aside to practice some no-pole. Great day!

After about half an hour, some guy decidedly less awesome than Winston Wolfe but equally entertaining shows up with a backhoe. We drive down to the accident site and it makes quick work of my car. Hooked up the chains, swung the boom, and we're back on the road without a scratch or any damage on the car. $100 later, I was back skiing. Expensive little mistake. I wish I had photo documentation of it all, since it must have looked amazing.

Oh yeah, I also skated for 90 minutes and classical'd for an hour. So that was good. And it was also good that I didn't kill anyone in the car. But it made a pretty good story.