Quote:
Originally Posted by WhiteTiger
I hit up Norquay with my wife today for Twoonie day. It was pretty busy (as expected) but the hills seemed to be in pretty good shape. Had several enjoyable runs before heading off.
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We have been out to all the toonie days this year and yesterday was by far the busiest one. The groomers at Norquay are in great shape (a little icy in spots but not terrible) but coverage on the steeper runs is pretty marginal. I went up for a couple laps off the Norquay chair and it was down to the dirt in quite a few places.
It was a great day with the family on the lower mountain though, except for one little incident, which leads me to my next point:
I was waiting for my daughter near the bottom of the Cascade chair when this middle aged woman on a snowboard comes careening down the hill out of control and plows right into me. I was fine, but her board slammed right into the tails of my skis. She didn't even apologize, just looked at me and went "ooops" then got up and went to the lift line. About 10 seconds later my son looks at my skis and goes "holy crap dad, look what it did!" The collision had peeled back the top sheet on one ski in a strip about 1.5" x 2". I was pretty choked so I popped the ski off and went to show it to her, telling her that I wasn't trying to be a jerk but the skis were going to have to be repaired and I didn't think it was unreasonable to ask her to pay for the damage. If it had just been a scratch then whatever...it's a ski hill, these things happen...but the tail was splintered to the point that I thought they were delaminated. Of course, to make matters worse these were brand new skis (my first day on them) so obviously I wasn't very happy. I was trying to be civil about the whole thing even though I was seriously pissed off, but then the woman was a complete bag about it, tells me straight up that she isn't going to pay for anything, refuses to give me her name, then calls me an elitist for having nice gear because "she just went to a second hand store and bought her board for $200." When I kept insisting that she should be responsible for the repair she tells me that I should just claim it on my insurance and leave her alone. She still refused to give me her name or contact info, but she got all flippant and was like "you give me your name and number, and MAYBE I'll call you if I feel like it". By this time it was clear she wasn't going to cooperate so I sent my son to go get the patrol so we could file an incident report. Unfortunately, by the time they got there she had already gotten on the chair and we lost her after that. I waited at the bottom with a couple patrollers but of course she took off somewhere and never came back down to the base.
I guess the question is, am I wrong for expecting her to pay for the damage she caused? If you're driving and you crash into someone else's car, you pay for it. If you're golfing and you damage someone's home, you pay for it. The Alpine Responsibility Code states that you must remain in control and avoid the person below you, which she failed to do. That was what we used to deal with disputes when I was a patroller (years ago), and the guys at the hill yesterday certainly seemed to agree with me, but I guess some people might see it differently? I just found it really frustrating that she was such an ass about the whole thing.