Posted on 04/05/2025 10:36:37 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
When 21-year-old Dallas LeBeau vowed to jump over a highway to win a contest and social media clout, his parents felt helpless to stop him. Now they’re left with regret.
The night before he would try to ski jump over a busy three-lane highway in the Colorado high country, Dallas LeBeau sat down with his parents for dinner in their log cabin home. Valerie and Jason served grilled cheese and soup to their 21-year-old son, and as in the months before, the conversation quickly turned to the jump. Dallas announced that he was going to go for it the next day. His parents stopped eating and stared at him.
“Have you done the math?” Valerie asked him, even though she believed he probably didn’t know how to compute the required speed and lift needed to clear a 40-foot stretch of pavement. He planned to do it on pure instinct.
“Mom, if anything, I’m going to overshoot the landing,” Dallas said.
“Maybe you should wait,” his father said.
Dallas was a thrill-seeker who loved to put himself in danger, but he usually took measured risks. This didn’t feel like a measured risk, especially in April with the snowpack melting, although most people who knew Dallas didn’t doubt he could pull it off. When Valerie and Jason looked into his eyes that night, they saw a free spirit but also the reflection of what the ski industry had become for many young athletes like their son: an expensive, relentless chase to prove themselves in a social-media-driven world, where skiers often were emboldened to push their limits for the sake of views and clout.
Dallas had worked for years to make it to a top professional tour in skiing, only to stall in the standings last winter. He wasn’t getting younger. He had no....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Paysite
This cannot be a WaPo article. It did not blame Trump.
I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I’d say Dallas jumped the shark in terms of his flying ability.
I did some really stupid crap in my youth, but dang.
Our son had the same risky behavioral patterns at 18-20 years old. Before that he played a lot of risky sports including JV football QB in high school. He broke his back, broke a leg, dislocated shoulder, and broke a risk...and FINALLY stopped all that foolishness.
Dallas LeBeau has been identified as the 21-year-old skier who died on April 9 on Colorado’s Highway 40 just west of the Berthoud Pass summit after attempting to clear the width of the highway on skis. According to the preliminary incident report from the Grand County Sheriff’s office, LeBeau lacked the necessary speed and distance to complete the jump and landed on the highway pavement.
Cue Forrest Gump.
Thanks. I figured a semi in the scenario. He just went splat by himself then.
You don’t hear about it much. but those guys that wear the “webbed” suits to “fly” through mountains and passes every now and then become a red splotch on the side of a big rock.
“...with the snowpack melting...”
Keep rolling the dice and eventually you are going to hit the jackpot.
That's why I gave up motorcycles, much as I loved riding.
Thanks for the link. Five pop ups later and 3 more within the story and I still don’t know if he made it across and died on the other side or if he landed in the middle of the road killing himself or if a car hit him.
Bring back real reporters who include the who, what, where, when, why and how along with editors who check over the stories so they make sense. Journalists are 12 year old girls writing fantasies in their diaries like his parents looked into his eyes, blah, blah, blah, getting side tracked on some other unknown person and more blah, blah, blah.
Ah, the important tid bit of the story. He landed in the road and that’s what killed him.
I have to think back about Forrest Gump being right, “stupid is as stupid does.”
thousands of words that can be summed as:
Stupid kid kills himself doing something stupid that people told him not to do because it would kill him ...
Another narcissist finding out karma always wins
That’s why I gave up motorcycles, much as I loved riding.
And smart phones are what caused me to stop bicycle commuting, if you get my drift.
He landed on the road and died instantly. He claimed he would overshoot it but he had built the ramp earlier that year, and there was some snow melt in between. I’ve skied plenty of times and know that anything off the ski trail is dangerous. I guess some just live for the danger.
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