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"We look like a bus accident in the Alps," Jane said, laughing and spitting out a mouthful of snow. The rest of the accident victims thought it was very jolly, too.

Gavin, on the other hand, stood looking to heaven as if pleading with God to take them all now and put him out of his misery.

"Anybody hurt?" he finally asked grimly. He sounded as if he sincerely hoped so.

Giggling like children and making inane jokes about snow being soft, they managed to get back on their feet. After some delay, all the poles and skis were sorted out and put back on. Gavin, his professionally perky demeanor restored, went back to his lecture. "Maybe I should have told you first about the other way of falling down. It would have saved us this mess. If you're completely out of control or fear you're going to be, just sit down. Don't lean forward. Don't try to get your balance back. Don't reach for anything or try to use your poles. Just SIT DOWN!"

"What do you suppose Gavin is in the summer?" Jane asked under her breath.

"A Trappist monk, if he's smart," Shelley hissed back. "After working with dummies like us for three quarters of the year, he probably needs the quiet."

"This from a woman who's head of the Room Mother Committee three-quarters of the year."

"I'm thinking about applying what I'm learning here to that job. The 'when in doubt, just sit down' part might play, but I wouldn't dare give them pointed poles."

Jane laughed so hard she nearly lost her balance again and had to practice the fast-sit technique.

Gavin finally demonstrated stairstepping up the slope and then coming to a gentle stop on the way down by toeing-in ankling-in. Then he went back up, showing them how to walk in a sort of herringbone pattern with their toes pointing out.

"Can you hear that sound?" Shelley asked, watching him.

"What sound?"

"That screaming noise. It's my thighs, just thinking about trying to do that!"

"Never mind. We'll just stairstep it."

Gavin then made a spectacular show of pretending to lose his balance and sitting down in place. It all looked graceful, fun, and easy when he did it. He got up and glided effortlessly to a spot about ten feet uphill from them. "Okay, Bunnies, come up where I am and we'll take our first downhill run."

They obediently stairstepped their way up to him, and he picked Shelley to go first. He got next to her, whispered a bit of encouragement, showed her how to get her skis turned around and pointing the right way without her tripping, and she was off. She was moving so slowly it was almost imperceptible, but she picked up a little speed as she went along. She was going at a slow-walk pace by the time she got to the flat area below. Gavin, right next to her the whole way, said, "Toe-in, ankle-in now!"

Shelley did so, came to a stop, and grinned at Jane over her shoulder. "I'm a skier now!" she yelled. "Can I quit?"

"No way! We're doing this whole hill before you get to quit," Jane shouted back.

Jane was next and did a decent job, though it couldn't have looked as steady and well balanced as Shelley's performance. When she got stopped, she realized she'd been holding her breath the whole time. "Wow! It's sort of like riding down an escalator that's going too fast!" she said.

The next person to try it was a rather heavy woman in a daffodil-colored ski outfit. Having watched Shelley's and Jane's sedate descents, she decided to put a little oomph into it. She actually shoved off with her poles instead of letting gravity seduce her along. This was a nasty surprise to Gavin, and he was yelling at her to toe-in, ankle-in before she got three feet forward. She either couldn't manage or didn't want to, and shot between Jane and Shelley, across the flat area, past the equipment hut, and well out in the parking lot, her skis scraping horribly on exposed bits of asphalt, before she remembered the sitting-down technique.

The other three managed well enough and Gavin took them all back up the hill again. A little farther this time. After their second mini-runs, Gavin proclaimed Jane, Shelley, and a wiry older man sufficiently skilled to go off and practice on their own.

"Okay, here's the deal," Shelley pronounced. "We're going clear to the top of the hill. Then we're coming back down by whatever method works out best and no matter how many times we fall along the way. Then we're retiring. Just think, for the rest of our lives we can say We Have Skied. And nobody will ever be able to say, "But you must try it once." So we'll never have to do it again."

"Sounds like a good plan to me. Is there food at the end of this scenario? You didn't mention food."

"There's a huge lunch, Jane."

"Okay."

They started laboriously stairstepping their way up the hill. After about ten minutes, during which she had to look at her feet to make sure they were doing the right thing, Jane stopped. "Jeez! We should be clear to the top by now. And we're still at the bottom."

"Keep going, Jane," Shelley said. "Think about lunch."

"There's that person again," Jane said, shading her eyes and looking up at the top of the hill.

"Which person?"

"I don't know. Just a person I keep seeing. He has cameras and binoculars. A nature nut, I imagine."

"Jane, stop talking."

They stairstepped some more, and it was Shelley this time who wanted to stop. "Look at that! We're nearly halfway up the hill."

"We could just go from here."

"No, we're going to the top. Once. Look at the cute snowman."

"Hadn't you noticed him before? He appeared overnight."

"What's he got on his head?"

"I think it's supposed to be a crown."

"I know, but what is it really?"

"I dunno. Maybe one of those sort of fluted fruit bowls? Remember the gold plastic ones we used for that PTA fund-raising party with a Tropical Holiday theme? To quote a friend of mine, stop talking!"

After two more rest stops, they reached the top of the hill and sat down to get their breath. "Wow! This is neat up here," Jane gasped. "Look, the whole resort's laid out like a map. You should have brought a camera along. You could have taken a picture for Paul so when he gets home and wonders just where the various buildings and wings are, you'd have it. Are you ready to go?"

"Not yet. I'm never coming here again for the rest of my life, so I want to appreciate it for a few minutes. The snowman looks weird from the back. Just the cape and crown showing."

Jane was gazing around behind them. "The Indians who were demonstrating said there was a graveyard up here. It doesn't look like that to me."

"Jane, it's covered with snow. How would you know? You expect to see a mausoleum or a totem pole or something sticking up?"

"Hmmm. You have a point. It's certainly flat enough to make a good cemetery. Looks like somebody took a gigantic knife to it and sliced the top off. You could land a 747 along here."

Shelley was hoisting herself to her feet. "Speaking of landing, are we ready to take off?"

"I guess so. It sure looks a lot steeper from the top."

"How are we going to do this? One at a time all the way down?"

"Okay. Who goes first?"

"I do. I want to get this over with."

Shelley took a deep breath, turned her skis forward, and started gently drifting away. She picked up speed gradually until, apparently feeling it was too much of a good thing, she sat down suddenly, plowing a bit of a trench before she came to a complete stop. She yelled up to Jane, "Come this far and we'll go the rest of the way together."

Jane set out, cleverly charting a course a little farther left than Shelley had gone so that she wouldn't run over her. The first few minutes were okay. She started going a little faster, discovered that she could actually breathe at the same time she skied. And a little faster yet. She tried toeing-in to slow herself, but that just made her veer more to the left. Maybe, she thought frantically, it was toe-out. She glanced down at her feet, which was how she made her fatal mistake. When she looked back up a second later, she realized she was headed toward the woods. Specifically, straight for the snowman just on the edge of the woods.