SOON ENOUGH, we discover the Curse of Slash. During our inaugural run, Roo is slaying it, but around his 11th turn he abruptly demonstrates that the speed needed to avoid breaking through the brush is also the exact speed at which you can't stop in time to avoid chest-crushing obstacles. Roo turns hard to dodge an exploded root ball and, having lost his momentum, is swallowed up.

I drop to my knees so as not to trigger a slashalanche.

"Agggh!" Roo yells, pinned to his elbows, unable to reach the handsaw at his waist. I go for the chainsaw, but the damn thing won't start. Then I remember we forgot to gas it up.

"Hold on!" I cry, as if he had another option, and inch closer.

After much writhing and snapping of boughs, Roo slithers free. His legs are scraped raw and his unmentionables are unmentionable, the Kevlar loincloth having behaved more like a removable codpiece. But Roo is unfazed. He thrusts my chainsaw high overhead and hollers, "I cannot be caged! I cannot be contained!"

The slash does not appear cowed.

We retreat back down to the fishing town of Craig (pop. 1,209) and head to the Hill Bar to plan our next sortie, one to an older cut where the slash has decomposed. Perusing our list of suggestions from bemused locals, timber consultants, and environmentalists, we settle on a tract called Fusion, a three-year-old, 1,400-acre cut at a powdery 1,500 feet. The next day, Roo and I borrow a Chevy pickup from a fishing guide, prepared to battle the snowy roads. In the bed we have 400 pounds of split wet cedar for extra traction and a set of heavy-duty chains—useful, we discover, only before you bury the truck up to the axle. Pulling out our skis, we opt for a fast-'n'-light approach through a bracing drizzle.

Roo, noting "low coffee pressure," downs his sixth cup of the morning. I have to ask if he really needs it. "Trust me," he replies. "I have special training."

At a fork in the road, we turn right. No, left. We're lost. Reeking from our snack of canned salmon, we figure it's best not to bumble around waking black bears, so we stop at a muffin-top hill with no trapdoor slash and a rambunctious amount of western hemlock saplings. I scramble uphill so Roo can photograph my pioneering run.

"All right," I holler. "Dropping!"

Everything goes green and slappy.

As Roo will describe it, the trees begin to shake as if possessed. A glove pops up. Goggles flash into view. A ski pole swings overhead. He hears what sounds like a bulldozer piling through a chopstick factory before I burst into an opening, a sapling thwacking me between the legs as I straightline it right for him.

I don't know if there's time for evasive maneuvers, but no matter. A tenacious little sprig hooks the tip of my right ski and tosses me—in a graceful pirouette, Roo assures me—into a deep tree well.

Water from the fragrant needles drips onto my face. Somewhere, I think, there is a cartoon whah-whah horn that could be put to better use.