This could be you. Instead, it is a picture of our friend, Dr. Robert DeKay, from Anchorage. What a name for a dentist who became an orthodontist. He managed to go flying off a cornice and stick his Ski-Doo vertically near Trapper Creek in Alaska. Fortunately, he bailed out and was able to avoid becoming subnivean. For those of you who don't own a snow shovel, subnivean means "situated under the snow." You can see from his picture that Dr. DeKay is having a good time. He would not be smiling if he had realized that he was standing below an avalanche field with a slope angle of greater than 30 degrees. His wife, Bethany, says that he was hosting a “learn to snowmachine weekend,” at his cabin for members of his Elder’s Quorum. She thinks he should call it a “learn how NOT to snowmachine weekend.”
MK knows just how she feels. Her brother found a cornice and rode off a cliff on the southeast side of Island Park Reservoir. He was part of a group of novices, riding with me in flat light. He got separated from us by about 20 yards and couldn't see my frantic waving to stay away from the cliff. It was at that point I learned that no matter how loud you yell, a rider will not hear you over the noise of a snowmachine. As he went over the edge, in my mind I saw flashing headlines adorning the front page of the Deseret News, “Salt Lake City's most prominent plastic surgeon dies in Idaho going over a cliff on a snowmachine.” Fortunately, he was not injured and landed in soft snow. His path had a smooth runoff and he actually came away with a great adventure story to tell in the operating room, all about his brother-in-law leading him astray — again.
Lately, there has been some trouble in Island Park with snowmachines on the icy road going over the dam on the Island Park Reservoir. My theory is that when a snowmachine becomes perpendicular to the path of forward inertia, the track will dig in and flip the machine. I have seen otherwise intelligent medical professionals do this on their snowmachines when they whoop it up at the Elk Creek Station and flip over. You may have had your own experience with this phenomenon while doing sharp turns or trying to do cookies on hardpack surfaces. This is probably what happened to one of my nephew's business associates from Japan. He flipped off his snowmachine last week as they were crossing the Island Park Reservoir dam. He must be one tough cookie. He got back on the snowmachine and finished the 45-mile ride to Mesa Falls and back. When it was over, he asked my nephew to look at his shoulder. There is a saying that when an injured shoulder is readily apparent to a group of venture capitalists, it must be real. They took him to Madison Memorial Hospital where a displaced-separated clavicular fracture was diagnosed. It could not be repaired surgically until three days later, so he returned to Island Park to go ice fishing the next morning.
This week, the editor of a major newspaper crashed on the same road, probably near the same spot, and probably the same way as our friend from Japan. She had a concussive head injury and says she only remembers waking up without her helmet, lying on the frozen roadway. None of this prevented her from going back to work Monday and publishing last week's edition of the Island Park News. I am sure there is more to this story, but she’s not tellin’.
Several years ago my son, James, and I had been lost for an afternoon riding snowmachines around Fogg Butte in a whiteout. We became lost trying to find our way out of a goggle-clogging, freezing, wet fog. We were fortunate to meet up with some riders who wanted to know where we had been riding. We told them that we didn't know, but asked them to help us get out. They took us back on the route they had just used. From there we were able to go around Harriman Park and return to the cabin. I looked at the map and decided that we had been dancing with the cliffs of Blue Canyon all afternoon. In a dense fog, we had been trying to go over Hightop, where trails do not exist. Safely back at the cabin, I called my brother to crow about our adventure. He listened patiently and concluded, “Roger, we all like to think we are real men, but when the crap hits the fan, we all just want to be back at the cabin, hugging our teddy bears by the fireplace.” Amen.
Ever vigilant,
RT
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