The why in these tales is often missing. May of these stories of witlessness are witnessless; in any event, the guy who so considerately removed himself from the gene pool isn't in a position to explain himself. So most of the time, reading these things, I simply shake my head in disgust and move on.
Every once in a while, though, you get a story like this, where "only" two people die and several of the survivors, the lucky buggers, actually defend the activity that killed their friends. And I'm left absolutely agog.
Turns out in this case I'd made some erroneous assumptions. I had assumed, for instance, that anyone engaged in a non-sanctioned contest to drive his sled up a hill as far as possible, while the risk of avalanche on that hill was "high"--I'd assumed such a person would not have heard the warning. Not true. They were on that hill in large part because they knew the risk of avalanche was high. In other words, they wanted to die.
The snowmobilers wouldn't put it that way, of course--they justify their deathwish in terms of addiction to an adrenalin rush. You might say they were "Revel-stoked". And their tempting Death in such a spectacular, stupid manner is a-okay with me. Hey, anything to chlorinate that gene pool.
I do, however, have a few questions.
It's reported that there were up to two hundred of these would-be suicides enthusiasts right in the path of this avalanche--participants and observers, including children. Now I can perhaps understand someone crazy enough to deliberately attempt to trigger an avalanche. I can easily understand a group of like-minded people going out of their way to do so, knowing what I do of group mentality. And I'm willing to provisionally make further allowances once the word addiction enters the conversation, because people who are addicted generally don't have their own best interests in mind.
I can neither understand nor condone nor forgive anyone who would bring an innocent child to such an event. Criminal negligence is the first thing that comes to mind. Leave me to stew a while and I'll get it up to attempted murder. The prospect of their own death only excites these folks. What of the deaths of their kids? Do they find that exciting, too?
And if they don't give shit one about their kids, surely they care about the machines they've spent tens of thousands of dollars souping up. Some of the mangled and buried sleds ran their feckless owners $75,000. See, the more powerful you make these things, the higher you'll go and the greater the chance you'll bring the mountain down on yourself (and whoever you left at the bottom). Let's say you manage to throw yourself clear but your snowmobile is totally wrecked. What then? Start over?
Next question. This event took place "out of bounds". Many of them do; doubtless that's part of that all-important adrenalin rush. But then when the avalanche happened, a heroic effort was made to dig these people out, leading me to question the whole idea of "out of bounds". See, I read the words "out of bounds" as shorthand for "if you go past this point, buddy, and then you find yourself in trouble, that's just too damned bad...don't expect help." But that's obviously not the way it really works.
Maybe it should be.
No, I guess not. After all, as this incident shows, you just can't tell when someone out to off themselves might be willing to take others along with him.
(It's always him, ever notice that?)
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