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18-year-old killed in nighttime sledding accident on Wildcat Mountain

bdfreetuna

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Wow, that's terrible.

Sort of a crazy thing to try, but that's what passes for an "epic adventure" around that age. Can't say I blame the kids for doing it, or that I never would have tried it myself.
 

deadheadskier

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Very sad indeed. As a kid when my parents rented slopeside on the Sachem Trail at Okemo, we'd go sledding on the trail after the slopes closed all the time. We'd sled down to the bottom and my father would pick us up in the car and bring us back up to the top. This was right after the slopes closed though. We wouldn't do it in the middle of the night because we didn't want to run into the snow groomers. So much fun and probably a lot more dangerous than we realized.

Come to think about it, I guess I did end up finding out how dangerous sledding can be. Not on the trail at Okemo, but I did have a crash into the trees while sledding in High School and slightly tore my MCL requiring me to be on crutches for two weeks and rehab for a month after that.
 

skiNEwhere

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Unfortunately, I think kids that age do stupid stuff because they feel like they are invincible. When I was a kid I built a go-cart out of wood and took up down the steepest hill in my town and lost control and crashed into thankfully only a bush. I was lucky.

A co-worker I used to work had a friend who lost his 21 year old son who was trying to snowboard by holding to the side of of a semi, his board allegedly hit a pot hole, he went down, and I think it's obvious what happened after that.
 

twinplanx

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Very sad indeed. As a kid when my parents rented slopeside on the Sachem Trail at Okemo, we'd go sledding on the trail after the slopes closed all the time. We'd sled down to the bottom and my father would pick us up in the car and bring us back up to the top. This was right after the slopes closed though. We wouldn't do it in the middle of the night because we didn't want to run into the snow groomers. So much fun and probably a lot more dangerous than we realized.

Come to think about it, I guess I did end up finding out how dangerous sledding can be. Not on the trail at Okemo, but I did have a crash into the trees while sledding in High School and slightly tore my MCL requiring me to be on crutches for two weeks and rehab for a month after that.

sometime in the late '90s, along with a group of friends we rented one of those condos one weekend. During our evening festivities we got the bright idea to "sled" down the Sachem trail. Since we didn't have sleds we had to improvise...garbage bags, garbage can lids, a lunch tray from the cafeteria, I recall a snowboard was used as a toboggan. Luckily for us the only thing "lost" was the snowboard after all the riders had ditched. To my amazement that snowboard was recovered in the AM at the base lodge. It was a sobering reminder of just how foolish our actions were when, on our journey home, we heard a radio report that someone had died sledding on a ski trail...
 

Cheese

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A sad story but as others have said, it could have been me at that age. Although not worth it, I hope he at least achieved the adrenaline rush he was after before the unfortunate end.

RIP
 

C-Rex

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That's awful. I just hope it was quick and he didn't die suffering from exposure after the crash. Not a smart move, but as others have said, I've done some pretty stupid stuff for rush too.
 
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