I almost killed the boss...

[resqgeek]

This afternoon, we skiied with a work colleague, who is also at Steamboat with his family.  He is a friend and a supervisor (though not directly my boss).  His kids were in lessons today, so we joined him and his wife for lunch and then set out to ski a few runs with them.  I thought he might enjoy a little challenge, so I led him off trail in the the Morningside Park area of the resort, away from the nice groomed trails and into the trees.  I picked a spot that wasn't very steep and where the trees were pretty widely spaced.  He seemed to be enjoying himself, right up to the moment he hit a bump he didn't see because of a shadow and took a pretty nasty spill.  As we gathered him and his equipment, I realized that the rear binding for his right ski had come off the ski.  Of course the ski brake is attached to that binding, so the ski was sliding away down the slope, and my daughter had to chase it down.  Luckily, I was able to reattach the binding to his ski, and we skied with him to the base area, so he could take the skis back to the rental shop to exchange them for a different pair.

Watching him crash was a scary moment, especially since skiing in this area was my idea.  Luckily, he wasn't hurt, and we managed to get him safely down off the mountain.  I have never seen a binding come off of a ski on the mountain before, and as bad as his crash seemed, I don't think it was bad enough to have damaged the binding.  I think these bindings were already damaged before he started using them, and the crash simply revealed the underlying flaw.  I'm just thankful that everything ended up being okay.