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Maxed Out

On a cold, clear day in February, a couple of season ago, I did something very unusual. I went skiing. That’s not the unusual part; cold, clear days in February generally find me skiing, working or loafing, more or less in that order.

On a cold, clear day in February, a couple of season ago, I did something very unusual. I went skiing. That’s not the unusual part; cold, clear days in February generally find me skiing, working or loafing, more or less in that order.

It was one of those February days I’d generally choose to term one of those February days except I can never be certain italics will translate from my computer to the Pique’s written page, which, if they didn’t this time will render this particular sentence even more ridiculous than usual.

But it was one of those February days. The kind of day we enjoy around here when we aren’t enjoying a deep powder day. It hadn’t snowed in several weeks, there were no fresh tracks to be had anywhere short of the backcountry and the snow had that chalky, styrofoamy quality that makes skiing steeps so attractive. It was one of many April-in-February years when picnic lunches on a nearby glacier were the order of the day.

Skiing the chalk off the backside of Whistler peak, I caught up with Paul Street at the high entrance to Bagel Bowl. Notwithstanding he teles, skiing with Paul is often a matter of catching up with him. If you’re not familiar with it, the high entrance to Bagel Bowl lies across an uninteresting field of snow notable only for offering a lower access to West Bowl. Many people avoid going into Bagel Bowl that way because it is marked with a red sign that says "Cliff". It’s not so much a cliff as it is a steep, rock-strewn thrill ride but the sign keeps people away and that’s a good thing. I’ve often thought randomly posting cliff signs at the top of good runs without cliffs wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Then again, I’ve thought stringing yellow police Crime Scene tape across the entrance to Whistler Bowl would be a fun, April 1 st kind of thing to do too.

Slipping through the rocks at the entrance to the noncliff cliff, I cut right, then left, then right again to get to open – more or less – snow. Having skied that line dozens of times, I know it like the back of my hand, which is to say I take it for granted, which is to say I wasn’t thinking about the glazed rock covered with a millimetre of snow I inadvertently tried to turn on. As my skis slid across it, I performed a pratfall worthy of a fat man on an icy sidewalk. In very rapid order I found myself on my back, head downhill, feet and skis in the air, sliding quickly down the chalk and accelerating at a rapid rate.

Two thoughts flashed through my head almost before I knew what was happening. The first was, "I seem to remember big rocks not too far down the slope; better STOP!" The second was, "Shoulda bought the helmet."

I’d more or less decided to buy a helmet a few weeks earlier. It wasn’t because Paul had this low-key habit of tsk-tsking me for not taking the obvious step and joining the fraternity. I understood why he wore a helmet. Kneeling like a penitent to make a turn on teleskis, one has the repeated opportunity to fall forward and auger head first in what can only be described as spectacular crashes, a trick I’d seen him perform any number of times and at least once on the slope I was now careening down.

I’d decided to helmet-up because the same conditions that changed powder snow to chalk on off-piste runs turned groomed snow into glare ice on the rest of the mountain and I’d been bumped twice during the past week by out-of-control – and it should be noted young, male – skiers packing far more bravado than skill.

But never having made a decision I couldn’t procrastinate over, I was quickly approaching a moment of truth… and a band of rocks.

I didn’t hit the rocks. Got stopped, brushed myself off, skied the rest of the slope and stopped into McCoo’s at the end of the day and bought the helmet I’d been procrastinating about.

I like wearing my helmet. It’s unnoticeably light. It’s warm in winter, cool and ventilated in spring. It gives me a – probably – unwarranted sense of security, although I’m pretty certain it’d be useless in a high-speed collision with anything harder than someone’s belly. I wear it all the time.

In fact, the only thing that’d probably make me stop wearing a helmet is a law that said I have to wear a helmet. I’d consider it my duty to protest against such asinine, intrusive, busybody rules that address infinitesimal chances of harm and render adult choice a matter of state policy.

With all due respect to the good emerg physician featured in last week’s Pique story and the ever-energized standards-bearer Mr. Kinar, if you really need a cause to champion, a battle worthy of your time and effort, there are several dozen more effective windmills you could spend your time tilting at, including, but not limited to, unsafe driving, smoking, diet, alcohol consumption, the generally woeful ability of most casual skiers and riders, terrain parks, aggressive behaviour and people who don’t have a clue how to carry their skis, just to name a few that have a Let’s Go Skiing theme.

Making everybody wear helmets because a very, very, very, very tiny percentage of people who go skiing injure their heads makes about as much sense as making everybody wear knee braces because some people injure their knees, wrist guards because some people injure their wrists, body armour because some people injure their backs or face shields because some people bust their nose.

Sound absurd? Not at all. The likelihood – probability – of suffering a head injury when you go skiing is tiny, something statistically approaching the likelihood you’re going to die in a crash when you step on a commercial airplane.

And the effectiveness of helmets at preventing serious head injuries is questionable. With current technology and materials, a helmet that would provide real protection in the kind of fatal crash that always makes helmet-crusaders rush to headlines would have to be about the size and weight of a watermelon.

If the crusaders really want to provide a measurable dose of injury prevention, they’d be better off forcing everybody to take the money they want them to spend on helmets and spend it on ski lessons instead. The fact is, we’d all be less likely to get hurt if there were a lot less unguided missiles on the slopes.