Other losses while skiing

Beside a lot of my precious time, my balance on occasions, and the pole I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, I haven’t lost much while skiing. When I think hard about it, I can only see two other items in my lifetime and 70 ski seasons: 

One knit hat and one 210 cm GS “PRE” branded ski, both irretrievably lost unlike the pole I salvaged yesterday. I lost the ski on Sunday, May 7, 1995 while skiing at Snowbird, following a 14 inch snowfall the night before. 

Snow conditions were still excellent and for some reason, I must have hooked a tip on the top of a pine tree, hidden by the new snow, near the top of the old Little Cloud double-chair. In spite of searching hard, I couldn’t find the ski that day. Perhaps it “submarined” far away, down below, but I had no other choice but rejoin the bottom of the hill standing the best I could on only one ski. 

I subsequently called the Snowbird’s lost and found department a few times to no avail, and then, the following July when the snow was almost all gone, I hiked in the company of Yannick Chauplannaz, a young Frenchman we had invited to stay with us in Park City for the month, but neither one of us could spot the ski. I felt bad, because I loved that pair, and would likes to lose a ski forever? 

The knit hat is an altogether different story that happened in the winter of 2006/2007 at the bottom of Jupiter Peak. It was before my wearing a helmet. 

I was riding the already antique chair, when a wind-burst caught into the hat and must have dropped it in large pine tree near the chairlift line. I couldn’t see it, the wind was blowing hard, it was cold, so I gave up. 

I should have know better; as you can see on the picture, the hat was woefully too small for my over-sized head. That was the second loss of my career as a skier!