MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall / Winter 2017

120 MLCM FALL/WINTER 2017 the first athlete to pull off a backflip in a sit-ski; Samson Danniels, mono- ski cross gold medallist in the 2012 Winter X-Games; and Amanda Timm, big mountain competitor and the first woman to sit-ski Sunshine Village’s expert-only Delirium Dive terrain. Mustang Powder Lodge is hosting the test run and the team lounges in their luxurious lodge trading speculation on how the next morning will unfold, and meeting with media and the collection of support characters that will make this maiden voyage possible. It’s the first time most of them have laid eyes on the customized trailer. “It looks like a party bus,” jokes Danniels. “I’m nervous,” Scott confesses. “It would have been nice to try locking down four sit-skis before dragging 14 people up here.” No one else seems as concerned, maybe because these athletes are accustomed to the problem-solving that goes with testing prototypes. According to Danniels, who has figured out how to surf, paraglide and snowmobile after breaking his back, being a pioneer in adaptive sports is born out of necessity. “If you want to get out there, you have to build what you want and customize it. You’ll never be able to go to the sit-ski store and pick out which one you like, because that option simply doesn’t exist.” “Even if it doesn’t work tomorrow, we’ll get up there somehow,” says Timm confidently. She credits Live It Love It ’s signature big mountain camps for getting her back on snow after an accident in a freeski competition left her with a T-6 spinal cord injury that stole the use of her legs and most of her core. Like the rest, she’s in this for the long game of making the backcountry more accessible for adaptive skiers. Recent warm weather and rain has threatened the entire test run, but Scott pushed Mustang Powder to make a last-minute call to go for it, his attitude unchanged from those roller-gap years of old: if we don’t do this now, we’ll be a year behind. The morning of the Lunchbox’s inaugural run dawns warm, but the freezing level sits lower than predicted and dispels worries of bad omens. After some eleventh-hour rigging on the Lunchbox involving plywood, wrenches and the mechanics of fitting all four sit-skiers comfortably inside the trailer for the first time, the tailgate closes with finality, and there’s no more time for speculation. The trailer suddenly looks diminutive behind the monster cat, whose steel tracks churn at ominous eye level with the sit-skiers. We collectively hold our breaths for the length of the first climb with its roller dips in the track, but we gain the ridge with trailer and sit-skiers intact. We line up at the drop of the first run to execute the whole point of this mission. Dueck, Danniels and Timm are all self-sufficient in moving themselves through the snow with their outriggers, but Scott is unable to hold them due to the nature of his injury. This is where James Eger comes in. Eger is the head of Revelstoke Adaptive Sports, a branch of Live It Love It , and he and Scott have skied “I believe in friends on a powder day.” Loading up the Party Bus.