Final Days of Extreme Sledding Spring 2009

Recently, a group of us picked an ideal day to head out and hit Mt. Seymour's ski hill, which had been closed for the year. Arriving at the top of the hill, we found one lift was actually still open - and there were a number of big unexpected vehicles up in the parking lot. They were movie trucks for a location that was apparently filming a skiing piece. The funny thing was that everyone was dressed in ski wear from the 80's - lots of one piece suits, tight pants, florescent colors and other interesting 'vintage' ski garb.

We ignored them and headed to the terrain park with a number of different sledding implements, toboggans, plastic sit down sleds, a scooter adapted with skis, an inflatable chair, etc. The park consists of several steeper stepped sections that still had LARGE jumps and landing hills that dropped away.

We found that the sleds would not cover the gap to make the leap from the 10 foot high ramps to the landing zone. This meant we were trying to control the steering challenged sleds so they would bypass the big jumps, but ramp off the drop off at the landing hill.

Walking up and down the hill so many times was probably not ideal Vancouver Marathon training, but it was very fun nevertheless. I had a few spills, the most notable of which, saw me flying 33 feet in the air only to land on my butt and left heel and tumble down into a heap on the snow. Quite a rush, but again, not the best tapering for the Marathon several days later.

Dan Studer and his son Jordan brought out most of the gear. Indigo and I brought out our friend Matthew Blair, who made the longest jump of the day on a very smooth run. He didn't actually break anything, but for the sake of a good YouTube headline, a little exaggeration was employed.

The moral of the story: Carpe Diem. Seize the day - for next week, the snow will be melted!