Today I went skiing at Hickory Hill in central NY near Lake George. The place is great.. some nice steep terrain, all the lifts are Pomas (and they have one of two detatchable Pomas in the country), no snowmaking, very limited grooming. It's a real old fashion ski hill in the vein of Mad River Glen.
I'm on oxycodone so I'm going to make the story short. There was 1.5 feet of fresh powder, but precisely 0 base snow. What that means is that when you're skiing, and your skis are 12" into the snow, there is very little between you and the actual ground. There's also very little between you and the boulders in the trail.
There were lots of very big rocks hidden by very light fluffy powder, and it was impossible to miss them. I hit a couple on my first run, a couple on my second. I was trying to find the part of the mountain that maybe wasn't strewn with boulders.
At the very beginning of my third run, my ski went under a branch laying horizontally about 4" below the surface of the powder. My ski and boot stopped cold, so I flew forward and landed on a very big boulder that was also covered by 4" of fluffy powder. The powder did nothing to break the fall.
I landed on my right shoulder and head. I was wearing my helmet, and it has a nice ding on the right side. My shoulder hurt, so I sit up and rotated it. I felt it move around in the socket and almost instinctively I rotated it out and back and it reseated into the socket. Hop on the sled, ski patrol brings me down, off to the hospital I go.
I have a broken clavicle and a broken scapula. Neither looks good, but neither required reduction. I also have some ligament damage from the shoulder separation, and that's actually what hurts the most. Exquisite pain.
I could very well lose some mobility in my right shoulder when all is said and done, but I'm seeing an orthopedist next weekend and will specifically ask what I need to do to maintain maximum range of motion in my right shoulder.
Anyway, I'm on narcotics and I'm feeling very out of it. I'm upset I'm going to miss most of this short ski season (this weekend was supposed to be the first very good skiing of the year) as well as some diving, and I'm worried about my diving future because the bones did not look like they're going to set at all in the places they were before the accident.
Time for me to try to get some rest.
I'm on oxycodone so I'm going to make the story short. There was 1.5 feet of fresh powder, but precisely 0 base snow. What that means is that when you're skiing, and your skis are 12" into the snow, there is very little between you and the actual ground. There's also very little between you and the boulders in the trail.
There were lots of very big rocks hidden by very light fluffy powder, and it was impossible to miss them. I hit a couple on my first run, a couple on my second. I was trying to find the part of the mountain that maybe wasn't strewn with boulders.
At the very beginning of my third run, my ski went under a branch laying horizontally about 4" below the surface of the powder. My ski and boot stopped cold, so I flew forward and landed on a very big boulder that was also covered by 4" of fluffy powder. The powder did nothing to break the fall.
I landed on my right shoulder and head. I was wearing my helmet, and it has a nice ding on the right side. My shoulder hurt, so I sit up and rotated it. I felt it move around in the socket and almost instinctively I rotated it out and back and it reseated into the socket. Hop on the sled, ski patrol brings me down, off to the hospital I go.
I have a broken clavicle and a broken scapula. Neither looks good, but neither required reduction. I also have some ligament damage from the shoulder separation, and that's actually what hurts the most. Exquisite pain.
I could very well lose some mobility in my right shoulder when all is said and done, but I'm seeing an orthopedist next weekend and will specifically ask what I need to do to maintain maximum range of motion in my right shoulder.
Anyway, I'm on narcotics and I'm feeling very out of it. I'm upset I'm going to miss most of this short ski season (this weekend was supposed to be the first very good skiing of the year) as well as some diving, and I'm worried about my diving future because the bones did not look like they're going to set at all in the places they were before the accident.
Time for me to try to get some rest.
