The very very top of the mountain.

Day three and I'm slowly picking this snow boarding thing up, so when the guys formulate a plan to go up to the very very top of the mountain and board/ski down the remote back runs.....Well I hate being left out of anything and lack of ability has never stopped me before, so ignoring common sense, personel responsability to oneself, liability to the group etc... I decided to join the lads on their quest for adventure. The open chairs on the baby runs go from start to finnish in around a minuite, the one we were about to embark upon just kept on going & going & going, up, up, up for ages & ages untill it dropped us of into what can only be described as what Scott must ave been confronted with on his fatefull journey to the Antartic that was ultimatly thwarted by atrosious blizzards never experienced by man before. So we made our way to the slope all together mind, which was no mean feat considering that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face (oh, ok then maybe you could see 25' but certainly no more !)Then it was crunch time ( you know when your looking at a group of puppies, the runt allways hangs back behind the others coz it feels uncomfortable with it's surroundings, nee; immediate life threatening experience, well that was me). Being the nice lot that they are everyone waits for me to slide my way on my arse to the edge of the cravass where their all waiting (lined up like lemmings) to go off the edge in one (much talked about) similtaneous 8 man Gnarly group drop in. So we all dropped in and then suprise suprise one dropped out. After I was on my 4th or 5th crash of the 3 minuite time span since the drop and even tho you've got experienced skiers flying past my disjointed, lifeless, winded form on the edge of the run, so as to keep out of the way of 8o kg of expert down hill skier, tucked in at terminal velocity getting air off moguls all around me, but if I had come off the side and busted myself up in the scrub, you know what I would have been well & truly on my own. I actually had a sit down (ok, continue to lay there hurt) chat to myself when i took a big fall, seriously I unexpectedly lost/inadvertantly changed my edge on the board and slammed onto my back an absolute gutsa. Fair dinkum I havent winded myself like that since I fell out of a tree when I was a child. So it was at that point I had what alchaholics call a moment of clarity and said to oneself "right o you, stop crying & enough of the messing around,this is serious, if you come off the side of this run into the vast snow drifts you'll become a statistic, no one will ever find you untill the thaw in 4 months time" and anyways you haven't got any sick leave left.