When you gotta go, you gotta go...

Today marks the opening day of skiing and snowboarding at Sundance! As part of my job I was forced to go out and investigate the current snow conditions. This was a great sacrifice for me. How cruel to make me snowboard when I should be sitting in front of my computer working. I’m sure you feel my pain. And I hope you can detect my sarcasm.

While out snowboarding today I was reminded of an experience I had a few years back. It was again opening day, and again I was out “doing research” on the slopes. While riding the lift I saw a mother and child skiing down the mountain toward us. Watching them, I felt an anxiety common to all skiers the first day of the season. You just want to be on the snow! The conditions were unbelievable! Fresh powder. Sunshine. No wind. In a word, perfection. The kind of day you pray for all season long. The mother’s skis were making the noise every mountain sportsman loves. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, as she carved down the mountain, Little Billy behind her in a matching Spyder outfit. If we were filming a promotional video, this is the image of Sundance we would want to capture.

However, Little Billy had another idea. They were about 30 yards from where our chair was slowly creeping up the mountain, and the little boy stops. His mother stops about 15 feet downhill from where he is now taking off his jacket. She calls up to him, “Honey? Are you hot?”

The little boy replies, “Nooooo Mommmy. I have to pooooopy.” Off comes the jacket, followed by the hat, gloves and scarf. And then he starts going for the pants.

The mother at this point is frantically trying to ski uphill, screaming, “Honey NO! NO! Wait! WAIT! Oh shit, oh shit.” I didn’t know uphill skiing was possible, but this mother was giving her all to prove me wrong. She was still about 5 feet away when the pants finally met the snow. In one fluid motion, the little boy squatted and defiled my perfect mountain. Right there under the lift line, on the perfectly white snow, Little Billy pooed.

The mother redoubled her efforts to reach Little Billy, and made it to him just as he was finishing his business on the mountain. She frantically pulled up his pants, grabbed his clothes from the surrounding snow and looked around. The only people who witnessed this event were creeping slowly by, 30 feet above where she was standing. She looked up at us, gave an embarrassed smile, and proceeded to bury Little Billy’s crap! After the land mine was completely covered, she picked up her son and skied out of sight.

I turned and looked at the friend sharing the chair with me and said, “Uhhhh, let’s maybe avoid that run today…”

“Yeah,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Maybe even for the rest of the season.”