STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
Sun Valley Resort has long received high grades for its snow safety program, even winning the National Ski Areas Association Best Overall Safety Program award at the end of last spring.
But there is, apparently, one group of Bald Mountain users that hasn’t quite gotten the safety message.
A small deer failed to look up and yield to downhill skiers as the NSAA skier safety code advises on Saturday. Instead, it began bounding across the lower part of Lower College. Unable to avoid the fast moving deer, a skier collided with it.
The collision killed the deer and left a bloody imprint on the snow.
Miraculously, the skier seemed unharmed. He hoisted the deer on his shoulders, skied it across the Hershey Highway and down 42nd Street and Lower River Run.
There the Sun Valley Ski Patrol loaded it into a ski cart, putting a blanket over it.
There have been previous tales of a skier running over a squirrel's tail as it scampered across a cat track, and even one encountering a recently woke bear on Olympic.
But this certainly concluded one of the strangest skier collisions in the history of Bald Mountain.