Saratoga judge's ski injury case chills teenage snow boarder - Times Union

dmc_hunter wrote

I'm not convinced that it's always the "uphill" skiers fault...

I've seen skier clock people starting out onto trails(expert)
I've hit a guy(my only real accident ever) who came in on me from the side and behind on an angle..  Was coming down to the lift on Clairs at Hunter and was against the trees on the left.  He wasn't checking speed and doing big GS turns - came in from behind and ended up in front of me and i tok his ass out...

Cleaned his clock - total yard sale.

I immediately got up and asked if he was OK or if he needed Ski Patrol - Who happened to see the whole thing from the Z Lift..
Guy was yelling at me "You have to watch out for the downhill skier!!!"
I said "Dude... You weren't the downhill skier until you were in front of me"

Ski patrol agreed...

Shocker.

I was skiing the runout under Eisenhower at Hunter the other day (back to the six pack) and was passing a snowboarder who was on his toe edge and going slowwwwly to the lift. In the split second when I was passing him he decided to do one of those stupid spinny tricks with a little ollie and whatever. I had given him a wide berth, but i was pretty surprised to see this going on on my left. If he had fallen there was a slight chance that a total yardsale detonation could have resulted in an impact.

This is one of the many reasons i hate snowboarders (no offense to talented snowboarders that carve turns, etc, if i can say that).

The deranged nitwits that pick lame spots to start doing tricks or who cut all the way across the trail to hit some stupid jump without looking uphill suck. It's just not courteous behaviour, just like lining up across the trail or making one heel turn slide pushing all of the snow downhill and....

Anyway,  because had I hit this guy, I would have felt pretty guilty that my five feet of room wasn't enough, but there's just no telling what these guys are going to do. And because no skier suddenly catches an edge going straight on a traverse when they're just standing, i try to give them a lot of space but when they throw in stuff like that....

Imagine you're passing a car in the right lane who is doing 65 and you're in the left doing 75. They don't check the mirror or look around, and decide to pull the parking brake up and smash the brakes to throw the car into a power slide. Would that be ok? I don't really think so.

Anyway, it's been a long day of work but I'm going to get a can of medicine out of the fridge and tell you guys how I really feel.

Oh yeah, the judge sounds like a real POS. Glad he doesn't ski Hunter.

oh yeah, some of my best friends are snowboarders!

I'm susprised that there are not about 100 collisions every weekend day at Hunter.  If i skied there I would serious look into that body armour that skier cross and free riders wear.