Was she saying you were wreckless? Drunk?
LOL. Neither really, in the end.
Big open slope narrowing to a cat track. I was cruising at moderate speed. Not remotely above what the conditions called for. The instructor and her (very beginner) student were in the middle of the cat track right near the top. There was probably 15 ft. of room on either side of them. I was headed far left of them when a kid came out of the trees and skidded down the embankment with an extreme heelside stop. I had to adjust a little and ended up going by them with 7-8 ft. clearance.
The instructor yelled, "hey, how about a little 'on your left' next time!!" I responded with a shrug and said, "oh, come on." Tone was fine, she was pissier than I was.
So she left her student and chased me down. First thing she said was "what kind of pass do you have?" Basically, she wanted to see if I had a season pass which would have given her leverage to completely *fudge* with me. When I showed her my day pass she was visibly disappointed.
Pointer/counterpoint had her saying I was too close. I told her no chance. If her student would have turned hard left or fallen down to the left I would still have been easily two yards away with no chance of clipping her. The two of them were going about as slow as you can. It was like passing a couple of trees. She said I was going too fast. I told her I absolutely disagreed. My speed was completely appropriate. She said, "tell that to the kid to your left who fell down when you went past." I told her that kid flew out of the trees out of control and avoiding him was why I was even within 12 ft. of her and her student. She said I should have said, "on your left." I told her it wasn't necessary (*). She said, "we've had a lot of trouble with boarders buzzing people and we're trying to crack down on it." I told her that hassling boarders who definitely aren't buzzing people is only going to alienate those who normally would take their side.
She was a ski elitist. You find them everywhere. Admittedly, no small percentage of young boarders are reckless and rude on the mountain. But to characterize all boarders that way is feeble. Ironically, later that day an instructor clipped my cousin's daughter and made her fall and my son and I saw a ski patrol guy wipe out a 8-9 year old boarder. I didn't see the first incident, perhaps Jess turned into him, but in the latter it was completely the ski patroller's fault. Kinda made me shake my head.
* This whole "on your left, on your right" thing is something I don't like anyway. If a skier/boarder is in control and is confident they can handle whatever the downhill person might do then there's no need for it. Only when circumstances dictate a very close pass should something be said and, in my opinion, that shouldn't ever be necessary. That actually IS reckless. Rather than pass that close one should slow down and wait for room. If everyone announced every time they passed someone else within, let's say, 10 ft. the mountain would be awash with nothing but those words.
