In the early days, Bear Trap bindings locked the boot to the ski and many broken legs were called "spiral breaks" because the body revolved while the foot didn't.

As equipment improved and safety bindings began to decrease the number of broken legs, high plastic boots came on the scene and the injuries became boot-top fractures. Then as the boots got even better the injuries moved up the leg to torn, knee ligaments.

Today's equipment has improved so skiers and snowboarders are moving down the hill faster and faster, and instead of broken legs, people are now dying.

The Aspen Times reported that there was a new record in Colorado during a recent winter: seventeen snowboarders or skiers died. They did it running into each other or hitting permanent objects such as trees or rocks. There was no single age category; the dead, winter sports enthusiasts ranged in age from 67 to 11. Some of them wore crash helmets; others did not. Two other skiers died while being filmed by different camera crews; another died while skiing in an extreme skiing championship contest in Alaska.

In all of the years I produced ski movies, none of my cameramen or me ever had a fatality, but we did break several legs in three different countries.

I blame most of the deaths these days on the new equipment. Skiing ability that used to take two or three years to acquire can now be achieved in two or three weeks. Experience, however, only comes from years of standing on your skis and turning them right and left. Occasionally, during the winter, I know I'm skiing faster than I did when I raced in The National Championships and the Harriman Cup in Sun Valley way back in 1948.

Will the death toll rises again this winter? Sure it will.

The numbers tell it all. With 26,000 people on the hill on a given Saturday at a Colorado ski resort, there are bound to be more collisions and more trees in the way of skiers and snowboarders. Any sport that can get your adrenaline pumping the way skiing does, has to be a high-risk sport.

When I started filming skiers in 1949, anyone who could make ten turns without falling down was an extreme skier! And there were no winters with 17 skiers dying.

To help solve this problem, I am marketing a new product for use on crowded slopes. It consists of football, shoulder pads with a rear view mirror attached to each shoulder so you can see when someone is going to hit you from behind.

If you don't buy a set of my rear view mirrors, I suggest you write a letter to your congressman or woman and get him or her to expand the acreage of your ski area into some of the tens of millions of acres of government land that you can't ski on now because of tree huggers and pseudo environmentalists who oppose everything, out of habit.


Editor's Note: This is one in a Tahoetopia series written by Warren Miller, legendary ski cinematographer. For other columns by Warren, click on Warren Miller.