The avalanche riders

Every winter you hear a few sad stories about snowmobile riders being swept away by avalanches out in BC.

And they are sad stories, no doubt about it.

Sometimes totally innocent recreational snowmobilers  get caught up in an unexpected avalanche.


But more often than not, we're dealing with hard-core avalanche baiters. These are your adventurous types who will take up a wing suit after they get bored with their avalanche baiting adventures.

These are the welders and pipefitters and electricians who make $150,000 a year in Fort St. John or Fort Saskatchewan or Fort Mac, and they've got the credit rating to get the latest high-performance sleds from Polaris or Arctic Cat or Bombardier and then spend another thirty or forty thou to wring three or four hundred horses out of a thousand cc motor.

They go into the Kooteneys to provoke avalanches, not to avoid them.

As a matter of course you can usually outrun the avalanche you triggered, or at least use that power to stay on top of it.

But sometimes not.

That's when you see those sad headlines...


But you'll also see the bereft heading to the same slopes next weekend.

Winter again...

If there's anything good to be said about Winter this year, it's that we were more or less prepared for once.

The Mustang and the Ninja are safely out of the snow.

I meant to get the Ford 4000 tractor out of the snow too, but you can't get around to everything.

There was a couple of winters here at Falling Downs when the Ford was our go-to snow clearing technology.

You'll notice that there's not an app for that. No, to clear the snow out your drive still requires old-school technology.

But all this snow has got me cruising the Kijiji ads for used sleds.

I've had a few, but nothing for many years.

When you've got the Family Responsibility Office and various other government offices lying in wait to pick the fat off your paycheque every week there's not much chance of a sled in the garage. And by the way, they don't just pick away at the fat; they get right down to the gristle.

But that's behind me now.

So I've been contemplating a new sled. You can get a nice deal on a new  MXZ TNT. The TNT moniker always gets my attention. Way back in the first wave of sleddery the TNT Ski-Doos were the go-to hotrod for the snow.

Unless you got your hands on a Rupp Nitro... which I actually did for a brief moment way back when.

The new sleds are a fool's bargain though. Ten thou for something you might, if you're lucky, get six weeks use of in a calendar year? That's retarded.

Better to comb those Kijiji ads for something a little older that's got some life left in it. Like that 800 Arctic Cat I saw tonight. Clean and tight and almost like new. The guy wants $2200.

Think I'll offer him $1500 and we'll see where things go.

Stinkers to avoid

Postmedia Networks. This dog has had a bit of a rally lately. Don't know why. Perhaps the news of a pay wall stoked the share price a bit, but there's never anything in a Postmedia title that you can't get free somewhere else, so I don't see this going anywhere.

Facebook. Been holding its own in the mid twenties. That's a temporary aberration. There's still millions of teens using Facebook as their platform of choice for cyber-bullying purposes, but beyond that, Facebook has had its moment in the sun.

Bombardier Rec Products, or "DOO" as they so cleverly designated their stock symbol. As in Ski-Doo, Sea-Doo, etc. This was an IPO designed to get the Bain Capital guys their money back for the third time over, and I have no clue what would motivate a sensible investor to park money there. Sea-Doos and Ski-Doos are the province of working class types with disposable income. Guys who used to be $30/hr welders at Caterpillar.

Now they're not.

Any Canada-based gold miner. Barrick is busy remaking itself from the world's biggest gold miner to the world's biggest bankruptcy. Centerra is busy motivating the plebes of Kyrgyzstan to overthrow their government. Hold your nose and take a little loss now instead of a bigger one later.