“Everybody off and get on the bus alongside me!”

The bus driver was serious. Our bus between Vancouver and Whistler had stopped just outside of Squamish.  The mountains loomed off to my left, just the other side of a port where piles of logs laid near the water and a huge sign read “log homes for sale – anywhere in the world.” But we were not going anywhere.

Getting off the bus was a relief. The driver had the heat going so high that I was sweating. Not the kind of sweat that actually cools you; this was the sticky, itching kind of sweating that happens when you’ve dressed for a much cooler environment, but you’re in a vehicle that is inching its way up a mountain and the driver has the heat cranked as high as it will go.

But I was determined and -- thank God – the second bus had more room and the heat was not intended to bake bread or smelt iron.

The thing about a bus full of reporters – either at an Olympics, a world track and field, or a world basketball championship – is that you actually need two buses: one for the people and one for their equipment. Most of the buses we use are the tour-bus type Vanhools or other behemoths, but when you put about 100 reporters, photographers, and broadcasters in them with all their gear, they can feel like one of those mini travel trailers people used to pull behind their cars.

The trailers might have felt bigger.

And reporters are a particular lot.  They are much like the advice Ben Stiller was given on the list in A Night at the Museum: “feed the lions first or they will eat you.” Nevertheless, the transition to the new bus was peaceful - and quick - and soon we were on our way again. 

I looked at the mountains as we wound our way up the Sea to Sky highway toward Whistler and I thought ‘surely we are not going up there.’ The peaks were higher than any I had seen.  I had been to Salt Lake City for the 2002 Games and thought those were the biggest mountains I had ever stood next to.

But these mountains looked Biblical – like instead of Moses descending from Mount Sinai he should have come down from them.  Except the peaks were frozen and covered with snow and whispered “don’t event imagine it. Don’t think of strapping boards - or even one board - to your feet and trying to slide down my face.  I will swallow you and not even notice.”

The mountain’s whisper gives me a deep respect for people – like the Olympians here this month – who take the mountain’s dare by choice. 

Traveling to Whistler I was reminded of how the mountains had claimed their first casualty – Georgian luge slider Nodar Kumaritashvili – before the Games even began.  I saw him die on video.  He came off his sled at 144 kph, and slammed into an uncovered, unpadded steel support beam. His face mask and his empty sled went sliding down the track while the rest of him lay motionless. It was all over in just a few seconds. Efforts to save him were futile and he was declared dead shortly after the crash.

The Whistler sliding track is regarded by the Olympians as one of the most difficult in the world.  People who regularly slide on the World Cup circuit speak of it with a special kind of reverence – like a matador speaks about a bull or a river guide talks about the Colorado. It’s not for amateurs. And a slight mistake can kill you.

Noelle Pikus-Pace of the USA Skeleton team told me there are curves on that track where you can be on your back if you miss by just a few centimeters.  I believe her. And the track has speeds higher than any the sliders have competed on primarily because of the mountain it sits on.  There’s even one curve they call “50-50” Translation? You have a 50% chance of making it through.

There have been questions – and criticism – that Canadian Organizers kept the track too secret, that they didn’t allow non-Canadians enough practice time in order to have a little home advantage.  I can’t speak to that.

But USA Bobsledder Steve Holcomb and members of his four-man team all had the same reaction, along with USA slider Tony Benshoff – the Whistler track is a mountain lion.  Slip too far one way and you’re on your head.  Let’s hope that injured pride is all people have from now on.