“I did not have moose chasing us down the mountain on my bingo card,” said skier Kenny Rynearson with remarkable understatement about his close encounter on a Jackson Hole, Wyoming ski slope this week.
Incredibly, it’s an encounter that was also caught on video not once, but twice, allowing us to watch the chase from the front and behind. Thankfully, it doesn’t end badly, which it easily could have done
As local skier Rynearson raced downhill, he turned his camera around to film a (possibly juvenile) moose following him at high speed down the slope at Jackson Hole. And unlike many of these animal-encounter vids on social media, this is no blink-and-you’ll-miss-it affair – it goes on for a good minute or so.
You can almost see the disbelief in the other skiers’ faces and postures as Rynearson shouts warnings at them.
Incredibly, though, another skier also caught the whole chase from another vantage point. Bill Fohey followed the chase and posted this video to Facebook, saying, “Nothing like taking a corner and almost hitting a moose 10ft from you then watching it chase your buddy down the hill.”
Thankfully everybody – including the moose – came out unscathed, but it must have been a very scary experience, despite the lighthearted tone of the posts. Moose can really shift – running up to 35mph for short distances, while most recreational skiers average speeds between 10mph and 20mph (downhill racers clock out at 40mph-60mph and Olympians tend to ski between 75 and 95 mph). Check out our moose safety guide.
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