XPost: can.politics, bc.politics, bc.general   
   XPost: van.general   
   From: ar231@FreeNet.Carleton.CA   
      
   (K): .... and then think again about ducking under tapes and jumping over   
   fences that were put there to protect you.   
   ______________________   
      
   The Province - Monday, January 14, 2008   
      
      
   'I still get nightmares about it, today'   
      
   Two brothers recall misadventure that left younger one permanently injured   
      
      
   WHISTLER -- Geoff Heather shook his head in horror when he read the story   
   of two young men who recently skied into a permanently closed area of   
   Whistler Mountain, triggered an avalanche, then fell 75 metres over a   
   cliff, one of them to his death.   
      
   The 29-year-old Burnaby man had been through a similar ordeal two years   
   earlier.   
      
   "It was bone-chilling to read [about the latest skiers]," Geoff said,   
   "because I remembered how it was for us."   
      
   On Boxing Day 2005, Geoff and his little brother, Chris, a snowboarder,   
   decided to head into the same treacherous area -- Hanging Roll, to the   
   west of the Peak Chair.   
      
   "It was just straight thrill-seeking, that's what it was," Geoff said.   
      
   "It was a really awful day. It had rained on the mountain, so the snow was   
   like cement. I thought we would go in there in the hopes of finding good snow.   
      
   "There was a fence there that said Do Not Enter -- and we took off our   
   skis and snowboard and threw them both over the fence, then climbed over   
   the fence. We trudged upwards 200 feet [60 metres], passing signs all the   
   way that said not to go in here. Then we ducked the aircraft cable.   
      
   "I remember my brother saying, 'I wouldn't go over there, man. Let's turn   
   back.' "   
      
   But Geoff decided to traverse the snow shelf. Before he knew it, his skis   
   began to slip and he found himself hurtling down the steep pitch to the   
   cliff below.   
      
   "I desperately stabbed my poles into the slope as I rocketed down," he   
   said. That stopped his descent -- but Chris lost sight of him.   
      
   "I didn't know if he was alright," Chris said. "I didn't know if he had   
   fallen off a cliff or what, and I pulled my walkie-talkie out of my pocket   
   and started screaming into it, but there was nothing."   
      
   Geoff could hear his brother's frantic screams over the walkie-talkie in   
   his pocket but to reach for it would have sent him over the cliff.   
      
   Then, in a nightmarish scene, he looked back to see Chris, who had come to   
   find him, lose control of his snowboard and begin to fly toward the edge   
   of the precipice.   
      
   "I could hear this low wail and then I saw my brother sliding down and his   
   board flopping back and forth, and he just got hucked off and I watched   
   him rag doll all the way down," said Geoff, who remembers his brother's   
   screams -- and then the sinister silence.   
      
   "I still get nightmares about it, today," he said.   
      
   Shaking, Geoff got his skis off and began the long haul away from the   
   cliff face on foot.   
      
   For Chris, the fall and the hours before his brother found him at the   
   Whistler Health Care Centre, and the hours later at Vancouver General   
   Hospital, are a blur.   
      
   But for Geoff, it's a scene he can't forget.   
      
   "It was a very horrific experience," he said, adding that it's likely   
   Chris survived because he was wearing a helmet and because a ski patrol   
   responded heroically.   
      
   "I was so glad he was alive when I saw him," said Geoff.   
      
   "His head was the size of a basketball. His forehead was protruding so far   
   out and his jaw looked like it had been replaced by a softball and he was   
   just bleeding and bleeding. There was, like, 10 people all around him,   
   working on the wounds and he was drowning in his own blood from a   
   collapsed lung and a puncture to the other one.   
      
   "It was very traumatic. He was not just a friend. He was my brother, and I   
   am his big brother, and I basically took him in there and he got hurt,"   
   said Geoff, a finance and insurance broker.   
      
   Besides injuring his lungs, Chris compressed his pelvis and broke it in   
   two places, broke a collarbone, separated both shoulders, broke four ribs   
   and had puncture wounds all over his body.   
      
   He has not fully recovered.   
      
   "My hips are really not square any more with the rest of my body," said   
   Chris, 27, recently married and now a machinist.   
      
   "My one shoulder, I have to get surgery on, because it will pop out pretty   
   much any time. I wake up every morning feeling like I am 70, and when I go   
   up the stairs, half the time I veer off to the left.   
      
   "I am not allowed to snowboard any more. I am not allowed to mountain   
   bike, ride my BMX or pretty much do anything. My doctors basically told me   
   that I have the body of an old man."   
      
   Both brothers hope that, by sharing their story, others will be spared the   
   same fate.   
      
   "Don't duck the ropes," said Chris.   
      
   "They are there for a reason. If it is permanently closed, there is a   
   reason for it . . . People die."   
      
   In this year's New Year's Day accident, Curtis Green, 29, lost his life.   
   His friend, Ben Moses, 21, suffered serious injuries but has been released   
   from hospital.   
      
   """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""   
          Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.   
   					      -	Honore De Balzac   
   """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)