Gotta keep your head on a swivel while shredding your way down the slopes.
One Colorado skier was thankfully paying attention to his surroundings as he enjoyed a late-season ski session at Keystone Resort in Summit County, Colorado. I’m not a skier, nor have I have hit the slopes, but one of my life goals is to ski down a mountain and then tell someone at the bottom, “That was some gnarly powder.” This location seems like the perfect place to do that.
Brian O’Neal was living my dream recently as he skied down a green beginner run called “Last Chance,” but that dream day of skiing quickly turned into a nightmare when a black bear sprinted out onto the white snow, endangering those that were traveling down the mountain. As you might imagine, gravity makes it rather difficult to throw on the breaks while skiing or snowboarding, so O’Neal had no choice but to try and steer clear of the wild animal, telling Summit Daily:
“It happened so quick. I was just trying not to run into it. All of a sudden from the right side of my eye, side-vision, it was like, oh crap, here comes something. Usually, you might see moose up there, but I’ve never seen a bear.”
Black bears are the only species of bear found in Colorado, and it’s estimated that between 17,000 and 20,000 call the state home. But as Brian O’Neal stated, you normally wouldn’t see one getting in the way at a ski resort, even with that kind of population spread across the “Centennial State.”
Fortunately, the skier (who was evidently pretty skilled at the whole skiing thing) managed to narrowly avoid colliding with the bumbling black bear, and even stayed upright and continued on down the mountain. As for the bear, it’s presumed that it continued its regularly scheduled bear activities after briefly playing “Frogger” with some skiers and then scurrying back into the woods.
You can check out the close call below:
According to reports, that was Brian O’Neal’s first run of the day. I don’t know about you, but that would be my first and last run. I’m not superstitious, but as the great Michael Scott once said, I am a little-stitious. I’d take a bear almost cutting me off as I speed down the slopes as a sign from the universe to hang it up – at least for the season.
I’m just glad that everyone ended up being okay (even the black bear), and because there was no-harm and no-foul, those on social media decided to have a little fun with the situation:
“Skier is in the wrong… bear is downhill rider. Know the rules of the mountain.”
“Bear needs to be making a more predictable carving path. Can’t just cut across the slope like that and claim the downhill defense.”
“The bear has the right of way.”
“Bear was just looking for an end of season pond skim
“I almost ended a chipmunk’s life a couple weeks ago, but we both screamed and I avoided him. That was scary enough.”
Wish we had a video of that last comment…
