Tragedy to Triumph

By Russ Vilhauer

Saturday April 7^th dawned cool, overcast, windy and full of snow flurries. It was three days past my 49^th birthday. It was also the day that I had signed up to take the “Off Piste” Symposium Class. For a guy my age “Off Piste” translates to “Off Rocker” in any language you choose.

The class met at 9:15 at the bottom of the Pine Marten lift at Mt Bachelor. Dave McBarron was the clinician/mortician. My classmates consisted of Ken, a fellow about my age, Kari & Jerod, a brother and sister act from the UofW and three teenagers from my ski school, Kyle, Joe and Mike. When I found out the 3 amigos were in my class I immediately knew I was overdressed for the occasion. They have excess testosterone oozing out of their pores and ski on high octane. I immediately returned to the lodge to strip off a layer of clothing despite the –33 degrees posted wind chill at the top of the summit.

I would describe my skiing style as conservative. Dave is a big burly guy. When he told us we would be skiing through the trees I imagined that he was capable of skiing through any tree of his choice. Conservative is probably a foreign term to Dave. Compassion is not because he kept checking to see if my pulse was still registering. Dave used the Cheech & Chong teaching method. He’d stop, give us a few tips and then he was gone. “Dave? Dave’s not here.” The rest of us did our best to hang on and catch up in between numerous falls and crashes. Under normal conditions I fall once every 5^th or 6^th day of skiing. These were not normal conditions and I lost count in 4 hours. One memorable train wreck found me landing face first on top of a walkie talkie in my breast pocket. When the pain subsided I was certain that either the radio was toast or I had a cracked rib. In either case I didn’t have time to check because Dave and company were waiting for me somewhere in another time zone.

I truly don’t believe that it was Dave’s agenda to destroy his charges. While we were sucking oxygen he did give each of us individual pointers to improve our skiing. He certainly helped me. On the last ride up the Outback Express my thoughts weren’t so much on what I had learned, but on how I had survived. The gaunt faces of my classmates confirmed my experience.

I also determined that if I wanted to ski with the big boys and the young kids I had to get younger and or lighter. So far I’ve only been successful in one of those categories, but I’m looking forward to taking the new me with my new knowledge to the mountain.

Thanks Dave for pointing me in the right direction, even if it is downhill.