Uncharted Territory

After a while of skiing the slopes my mind starts to wander off, and gradually my body starts to be drawn similarly off-piste.  Today was no exception: after several hours of practising parallel turns with knees and ankles touching — in preparation for monoskiing — I decided to venture into less prepared areas.

At some point I find myself down in a gully which isn’t heading the way I want to be, so upon spotting what looks to be a sensible exit through the trees I make my turn and begin to ski upwards and out. As I came closer to leaving the trap of the gully I started to realise that the “crest” on the way out had a rather steep slope on the other side.  I began to kill my speed and when I could see over the top I had to make a quick decision: the steep slope on the other side was practically vertical with a thin tree trunk dead ahead.  Were I to continue, I would leave contact with the snow and fly straight into the tree and stop rather suddenly!

I killed the “jump” by quickly bending my knees; instead I scraped over the top and fell straight down landing a few inches from the base of the tree into waist-deep powder snow, and broke out into maniacal laughter.