WND Cluster Story 2   It's Not As Easy As It Looks

Witch Next Door Word Bank

awesome  balderdash  cackle  cliche  commotion   conform   consent  crest   dawdle devotion ditto droll  exhausted   flabbergasted  gloom   Hansel and Gretel

Haogy Carmichael  jiffy  lull  macabre  reignite   summon   pathetic  predicition      revision  Weird Sisters

After a six-hour climb which had commenced in darkness, the ten of us reached Garibaldi peak. Although the wind was as cold as all get out, the view was awesome.  Awesome was on everyone's lips.  It was as if the word had become an instant cliché.   To the east, we could see ships steaming down Howe Sound.  To the north, planes were landing at Pemberton airport.  About two thousand metres beneath our feet a trickle of cars, no bigger than beetles, were crawling towards Whistler.  

Kicking our skiis on, we got ready to descend.  All of a sudden there was a commotion.  John and Jeff were about to lead.  However, but when they took their first steps a large slab of snow slid down slope and broke up when it reached the tree line more than six hundred metres below us. It was over in a jiffy.   Both John and Jeff fell, but only slid a short way, damaging nothing more than their dignity.  The entire climbing party was flabbergasted none more so than John and Jeff. 

George, our devoted guide,  said, "I'll go first.  Wait for my wave.  Descend in groups of three.  This snow is probably safe now but we do not want to take any changes.  Wait for my consent.   Who would wish to reignite the avalanche that we witnessed a few minutes ago?"

We shivered on the crest, but it wasn't just from the cold wind.  Our nerves were on edge.  George skied down about a hundred metres and turned to face us.  We waited for his wave and we waited.  Finally, he gave us his consent. 

The doom and gloom we had been feeling began to lessen.  The first group of three began to schuss but after skiing straight down for a few metres, they began to make a series of turns as they soon had picked up speed.  The second and third groups were not quite as experienced so none of them made an attempt to schuss.  Instead they made a series of short turns and stopped frequently.

With George in the lead, we skiied as a group right down to the tree line. We were in the lee of the wind now and the powder which had fallen the previous afternoon lay still.  It was incredibly inviting until George made a prediction. 

"It will take only one skiier to set off an avalanche."

After the experience at the crest, we were not about to argue with him.

"What is the solution?" I asked.    

"I'll be that skiier," he said.  "I've got my locator beacon on.  I'm going to ski about two or three hundred metres down and then wait for two or three minutes.  If nothing happens, you can all come down in single file about twenty or thirty seconds apart."

George was a magnicent skiier in deep powder.  We were soon to learn that skiing waist deep powder was not nearly as easy as George had made it look.   George gave us a wave and I set off first.  At one point I had snow up to my chest and my speed began to fall off.  Once I summoned up my courage, I began to really enjoy it.  Before I realized it, my run was over.  I didn't even have to make a turn to stop, I just seemed to run out of gas and it was good thing too because my goggles had begun to fog up and I was having trouble seeing where I was going.