Excitement at work

Today something exciting happened at work, although I wasn't directly involved. Breckenridge has a lot of steep terrain in the upper bowls. Every morning, before this terrain is open to the public, ski patrol has to do avalanche control to make sure it is safe. Generally, the terrain opens progressively. The T-Bar opens with access to Horseshoe Bowl first, then the North Bowls and then the Peak 7 bowl. Today while Peak 7 was still closed to the public, some dumbass dude on a mono ski ducked the rope and skied down Vertigo. This is incredibly stupid as he risked being caught in an avalanche or being blown up by a bomb. Ski patrollers chased him down and stopped him trying to get his pass. He refused to give it up and he took off trying to get away from them. The chase proceeded to the parking lot where the guy got in his car and tried to leave. The patrollers got his license plate and had the parking lot staff lock the gates so he couldn't leave. Ducking a rope in Colorado is an arrestable offense, so the sheriff was notified. The sheriff was on the way to the base of Peak 8 when the guy drove over a sidewalk and bunch of cones to get out of the parking lot. The guy got away for the time being, but the sheriff put out an all points bulletin for the vehicle. They caught up to the guy in Frisco (about 10 miles North of Breck) and arrested him. I think that he will be charged with a class 2 petty offense and fined $300 in addition to losing his pass for the season. Quite a price to pay for trying to get fresh tracks on a day when there was only a little bit of new snow. I was hanging out in the patrol hut while all of this was happening. It was pretty funny to hear everything going on.