Losing a ski (almost)…

On Tuesday, I veered into a steep aspen glade that appeared well covered with new snow, cut a few great turns, came across an aspen shoot and thought I could pass over it, but instead my downhill ski went under the one-inch, thick little tree, my binding released and I barely finished my turn on on ski and fell 40 feet (12 meters) below.

By the time I managed to extricate myself and getting up, taking off the other ski and climbing back to the point of impact, I was warmed-up fast in that otherwise freezing day. Then, I proceeded to look for my right ski and could not feel it anywhere, as I was both probing and digging with my ski poles. 

I was already reminiscing a similar incident that happened to me at Snowbird in early May of 1995 when I lost a ski, also while skiing deep powder, could never find it and had to ski from the top of Little Cloud back to the parking lot, 2,800 feet (850 meters) in the valley below! 

Where I was now wasn’t fun either and I wasn’t looking forward to ski on one ski down a forest of aspen trees. Since I am extremely stubborn, I insisted some more until I hit the shovel of that ski buried under some 15 inches of bottomless powder. 

I was relieved, it took me a dozen of minutes to solve the problem, but I had recovered a full pair of ski to pursue my epic descent...