This is why I say no when my friends ask me to hit the slopes. Snowboarding is cool, there’s no denying it. Watching someone who really knows what they’re doing carve down the mountain in beautiful sweeping arcs, slide over a rail, then hit a jump before coming to a stop in a shower of snow is truly impressive.
But that’s when they know what they’re doing. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of people, like me, who can barely stand up, let alone direct themselves, which can cause all sorts of issues. Which is exactly what happened in this video out of Austria from earlier this year.
While taking a lift up the mountain, one rider noticed someone below was struggling while being pulled to the top. I’m not sure if grabbing a moving wire and hoping for the best is a typical way riders summit slopes in Austria, but that’s what this guy, along with a whole bunch of people below him, were doing.
Right from the start, we see this poor dude was straight up not having a good time. One foot wasn’t strapped to the board and more than a few times he almost took a tumble. He had just about made it all the way up when the hill got a bit steeper, and that’s when disaster (and hilarity) struck.
The snowboarder fell over and lost his grip. For a few seconds it looked like he was going to be able to stop himself and move off to the side, but when gravity started doing its thing, he went sliding downhill, right at a long line of people.
As you can imagine, chaos ensued.
He hit the first person, who seemed to avoid it for the most part, but took out the next group. Then, seemingly out of no where, there were bodies all over the hill, falling and slipping and taking each other out in a pure minute of chaos.
Hopefully everyone was okay and is now able to laugh it off, but there were quite a few hard falls. Safe to say, more than just egos were bruised that day. Always got to keep your head on a swivel, especially when the guy above you looks like a balancing act gone wrong…
