WARNING: This story contains graphic video of injuries at a sand-skiing event.
For more than three decades, thrill-seekers in Prince George, B.C., hurled themselves down the summertime slope of the Nechako River cutbanks.
First on alpine skis, and later on snowboards and mountain bikes, they dared challenge Prince George’s most visible geographic feature — a 60-degree sand and gravel bank formed thousands of years ago by the melting glacial ice sheets that filled the Nechako and Fraser rivers.
The event was called Sandblast, and it was a harrowing exercise of fastest-to-the-bottom wins.
But on Aug. 16, 2003 — in its 32nd year of follies
