and the Darwin award goes to...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7916360.stm

Oh dear oh dear oh dear

"Richard Ryan, 27, and Christopher Lockwood, 28, both from the Leeds area,
went missing in the ski resort of Deux Alpes in the early hours of Thursday"

 

And you've never taken a short cut that was somewhat dangerous?

I know I have and there's a very fine line between getting away with
it and ending up on a slab in the local mortuary.

 

Hog. YHM

 

Nearly happened to me, once, losing my way on a piste, seeing the piste
---> over there, traversing off piste to get to it, and the whole
snowpack, with me on it, on that flank of the mountain, broke away and
slid down maybe a foot or two before stopping. I remember seeing the
fault crack, where it broke away, above me, appear like a jagged
lightning flash.

Can't remember when I was ever that frightened. I froze, and then, very
carefully, very slowly, resumed my traverse to the safety of the piste.
Livigno, 1986.

 

<cough>
Erm not quite like that one

 

Of course I have found myself in dangerous situations, with some prior
calculation. I've watched the slab of the Glencoe flypaper move but we
figured it's short and we could ski off it ok.

I've never stumbled around treacherous terrain in the dark in such a manner!

 

"It appears they had tried to take a short cut going back to their
chalet from a bar and they fell off a cliff".

Was the cliff cleverly disguised as a path or summat?

 

I suspect the chaps may have had a couple of shandies.

 

snip>

I've finished the Aonach Eagach traverse in Glencoe by climbing down
the Clachaig gully rather than sitting it out and waiting for daylight
and a helicopter rescue but that was a case of knowing where I was
going and knowing it was downright stupid.

It's just too tempting to ignore when it's dark and it's snowing and
you can see the pub way below you. It's about 500m so falling isn't a
good idea but when I did it we alternated between abseiling off trees
and simply climbing down the easier bits.

 

It was dark and they were probably pissed so a reasonable guess would
be that one slipped and the other tried to help then went the same
way.

The only thing that makes it slightly less tragic is that they were
from Leeds so were highly unlikely to ever discover that elusive cure
for cancer.

 

I'm amused that one of them had done something similarly stupid before...

 

Eh, quite!
I wonder what the last words were!

 

Yes but you are a special case and Ged has clearly already decided you are
not getting off the hook quickly or easily.

 

Wonder if they broke any bones...

 

Don't stand on the yellow coloured ice. I would class Andys frozen piss
slide as treacherous terrain.

 

They sound like your typical ukrmer. Pissed as farts on an night out and
"wallop", over the edge they go.

--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

The only reason I fell was changing from walking boots into bike boots. I
don't know why I did that.

 

Actually, by that stage yuo were probably perfectly safe. Once the
snowpack's settled it will normally be stable.

And slow isn't necessarily good, either.

 

Was it daylight? You probably thought it was safe.

 

I could very easily have walked off a cliff a couple of years back in
Cornwall. We were going "home" from the pub and I spotted a gap in the
hedgerow that I thought was the path. It wasn't. It was a good job P
was on the ball!