So heres an odd story about how interconnected Whistler really is, and how great the people are that live here!*

Floating in the back lake yesterday, all is calm with the world…It is about day 15 of 30 degrees celcius, blue skys and warm breezes and our friends are down on the lake with the (grown-up) kids and we are listening to tunes and enjoying the day. As the kids laugh and splash around us, I ask our neighbor Linda where her husband Ross is? He’s head of Whistler Search & Rescue, (a volunteer) and often is called away on highway accidents or missing hikers. We hear with concern that up the valley from us a mountain biker has gone off a cliff, and he has gone up to meet the helicopter and will fly the injured biker to the city as the pilot is down a co-pilot at the moment.

Several minutes later the radios crackle and Linda informs us that now there is also a forest fire started in this same area. This gets our attention and we look at each other with concern. With the afternoon winds blowing hard up the valley, a fire downwind from us could mean our houses and community will go up in flames. “But there is no smoke” I note, (Quite thoughtfully I think) Our other neighbor Michael responds that only wet wood really smokes. “In this weather,” he notes, “trees go up in a nice clean flame that burns without smoke”. With another anxious look at the water bombers that are now growling across the sky headed toward the Cheakamus valley, we float away and promptly forget about the danger.

This is where the serendipity of the close Whistler community now comes into play. I arrive at work this morning to hear that the mountain biker that went off the cliff is my program manager Kari, (who I mentioned in an earlier blog is an avid pro mountain biker)… The call comes in from her friend she was riding with that she had dropped down a face, tried to bounce off a stump in the middle of the run, and flew through the air in a double summersault over her handlebars. She has landed on her head and crushed 4 vertebrae. Fortunately they have a cell and the call has gone into search and rescue, who now have to find them…

*And yes I changed the names to protect the innocent and not so innocent…
Part 2 is much stranger!…