Carnage

[JD]

Let's hear it. Worst crash, yard sale, high speed explosion of your skiing career.
Mine. February 13th, 05. 20 inches fresh after waiting a month for snow. Light pow on top of hardpack. Lower pitch of waterfall, I think I made 1 turn just above the drop, shoot into the alley just skiers right of the waterfall itsself, bang a hard left and eye up a HUGE drift, all wind bown and cornice shaped, just waiting to absorb all my velocity at the bottom of the steep. I let 'em run right into it. Turns out it was a rock solid berm/bump under just a dusting of fresh, Hit it at prolly 30 mph, expecting it to give alot. It didn't. knees to my chin in an instant, twisting to my right. POP! I knew it was my acl before I stopped falling. Still tried to get another lap in. It was really nice snow.

 

[johnnyman]

Last year at Pico, the day after a 30 inch storm I'm practicing my turns (newbie) and I get a little too wide onto some ungroomed powder. My tips dig in and there is an absolute explosion of snow (goggles filled, helmet vent holes clogged, the works). Of course this is right under the Summit Express lift. My 8 year old then skis over and asks if I'm ok, which is embarrassing enough, then he says "wow, that did NOT look good!"
He reminded me of that fall every trip out for the rest of the season.

 

[Hawkshot99]

Last April, at bellayre there was a thick ice coating on all the trees, and branches. Taking a cut through trail I found one of the ice branches. Was swatting them out of my way like race gates, but missed one. Huge heavy ice chunk slammed into my face slicing open my lips, and whipping me back knocking me down. Blood was flowing out all over the snow and my jacket. Made a snowball and sucked on it to keep the swelling down.

Luckily that is my worst skiing injury I have had.

For a cool crash(no injury) my first real powder day. I was cruising down a nice run at speed keeping my tips out. Went off a nice roller fast enough to get airborne.(On groomers it doesn't matter how you land) On this powder landing I barried my tips and then procedded to face plant into the snow, and continue flipping down the trail. Then a long trip on the flats after I lost my speed.

 

[tirolerpeter]

Worst (not funny) wipeout!

I posted this in Sep 2005. It was my worst wipeout, so here goes again.

Bellayre about 17 years ago. Totally empty mountain and my buddy and I were were doing warp 9 down a blue. A couple of hundred feet ahead of me was a woman making slow, lazy arcs. As I started to catch up to her she pulled up on the right edge of the trail. OK, no problem. Just then I caught an edge, did a little hop to recover, and looked up to see her sort of slide from where she had stopped directly into my path. No chance to change direction, I took her out head on. She spun off to my left, and I went into a backward snowplow. The trail was basically a glacier with about an inch and a half of machine made powder over it. About the time I started to think: "I'm going to recover." My right rear binding released and dropped my forehead down onto the ice and knocked me out. When I came to I thought I had snow in my eyes. The neurologist told me later I had been blinded temporarily by shocking my optic nerve! Ouch! There were people all around me asking if I were OK? I hadn't realized that I had been unconscious, and said I was fine and I would ski down. As I started down I realized I was definitely NOT OK. I felt myself going into shock. I skied straight to the aid station, dropped to the ground in front of a couple of medics and told them I was going to pass out again. They took me to the hospital and then kept me awake for the next twelve hours worried that I might go into a coma. My buddy took me back to LI the next day. I literally did not know which way was up for a week. I couldn't even turn my head in bed without the feeling that a giant had turned my bed upside down. It took me over a year to regain about 85% of my balance. I have since recovered well, but I can not go on rollercoasters anymore without losing my lunch. My Skier's Edge Machine has played a big role in helping me to recover and even improve my balance once again. BTW, when I looked at my skiis some time later, the the inside edge brake on my right ski had bent upward about two inches during my attempted stop.

 

[snoseek]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


sounds very scary. i hope i never go down like that.

 

[BushMogulMaster]

I've luckily never been seriously injured on the hill.

But the worst happened last year at Mt. Ellen. There were two a/w snowguns on sleds right between the base of GMX and Sunny D. They were making some pretty large whales (they were Rat V's, afterall). And these weren't just any whales. Because of the gun placement, they came to very sharp peaks and were really steep. It was one of those dull-lighting days, and I was skiing toward the whales at a moderate pace. I could only see the front whale, and due to the poor lighting, thought it looked manageable to just glide over. Unbeknownst to me, there was a serious of about five of these steep, sharp whales. I flew up and got a few feet of air on the first one. While airborne, I thought, "No prob... I'll just land it and keep going." Except there were a few more. And I smacked down onto another and flew right off of it, ultimately crashing down between the last two with the handle of my left pole going straight up into my jaw. Ouch. Blacked out for what must have only been a minute or two. Stayed put for about 5 minutes regaining my composure and my bearings. Luckily, no concussion (although I never got it formally checked out). Got up and took an easy last run to ski it off. No lasting effects. I'll just be avoiding nasty snowmaking whales from now on.

 

[AHM]

There have been sooo many............

That is a pretty hard one to call............worst crash.......hmmm......

1. Cliffs at Sugarbush prior to re-installing the GMX. Skiing on my 210 Kastle SGs and treating the run (groomed) as a super G. Unloaded a crash mid way down the face, one board came off at DIN > 12. As the ski came off, I thought no sense hiking for it as I am gonna rag doll the whole run. Was headed for the woods going way too fast completely out of control and bouncing. Redirected by hammering my arm and shoulder into the hill and then continued the tumble down the face. When I came to a stop, the ski was about 5 ft from me, burried to the binding toe.

2. Bravo at Sugarbush. Was launching this rocky headwall and getting about 10' of air all day. Was skiing the run non stop, so when I got to the headwall each time I was going decently fast. Threw it too big on a late in the day run and just smashed huge. Knew when I left the ground that it would be a major crash and it was.

3. No crash but quite scary. Was skiing parachute at Big White BC. Knew I was in a cliff section, but felt it was all pretty doable. First clue should have been the fact that I couldn't see very far past my tips. Turned onto a pretty big rock face, and sheared off a refrig size chunk of snow to reveal all rock, a couple more turns like this until the bottom fell out and I dropped about 35 ft onto a steep face, but thankfully full of pow. Since it was the second unplanned cliff drop of the day, I said to my buddy Mr Big, let's get out of here before I do something really foolish.

 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

At the 1999 Ski Vermont Discussion list party. I ducked the rope to ski bypass..and the rope caught my forehead and I had a full yard-sale

 

[JD]

I watched a buddy try top ollie the rope on upper upper lift line at Stowe. He had just come off the first chair and had everyone beat to the coveted hollywood line. He later claimed that he was on a new board that day and the stiffer tail forced his nose down when he ollied. The result was him hooking the rope with the nose of his board in mid air and cart-wheeling down into upper upper liftline while the other 3 that were on his chair shredded past him. He recived a LARGE round of applause from all of us who witnessed. Classic.

 

[tcharron]

At the 1999 Ski Vermont Discussion list party. I ducked the rope to ski bypass..and the rope caught my forehead and I had a full yard-sale

That has to be the best one to visualize yet. As soon as I read, 'and the rope', it was all plain to see. :-D

 

[bvibert]

My worst so far wasn't really that bad. It was last season at Gore on a pretty 'firm' surface. We were tooling along at a decent clip when I hit a death cookie and went down hard, my face took the majority of the impact... The only injury was bruised, bloody lips. It rang my bell a bit and caused me to ski a bit more conservatively the rest of the day.

http://forums.alpinezone.com/14752-gore-mountain-3-16-2007-a.html

 

[2knees]

not my worst but still so clear in my memory. Magic last year. Coming out of twilight zone, anyone who has skied there knows the runout hugs the treeline on the left before merging with another trail. I saw greg who i thought was far enough ahead that i could just stop turning. next thing i knew, i was catching up way too fast so i veered off to the right into a gulley that ended with almost a vertical wall of snow. plugged both my skis into that and double ejected right "over the handlebars". Flew like a human missle about 10 feet or so and landed headfirst and then flipped over onto my back. thankfully it was right after a pretty good storm so it was all soft semi-packed powder. My head left a nice little bomb hole. Greg and JimG got a hearty laugh out of it. I did too once i realized i could still move my limbs.

then there was the slow speed mugging of some poor skier on vertigo last year. almost too hard to even describe.

 

[koreshot]

Does wrapping myself around a tree at Burke count? I missed crushing multiple ribs by inches.

I have had many other spectacular crashes including a huge rag doll down a steep face in the Portillo OB. When I finally stopped, about 20 feet above a pretty nasty cliff. Everything loose was ripped off and I spent the next hour searching the 200 foot long crash zone for skis. Amazing how badly your neck will hurt after landing on your head 10 times over, even if its in powder.

I gotta say though, that the worst crashes seem to be the ones that don't look that bad. Like the tree one in Burke - nothing spectacular about it, but I realise that had I hit the tree slightly differently, I would have many broken bones, or worse a scrambled brain.

 

[sledhaulingmedic]

Most entertaining:

Circa 1986 @ Magic: End of the day. big time early season dump, 30+ inches first week of December. I carry every bit of speed down the top of Wizard to Launch onto Master Magician by powering through the drift.

I bust throught the drift and both skis ride under the snowmaking pipes. There is a full 20' of untracked snow between me and my skis. If my friend had laughed any harder, he would have been squirting milk out his nipples.

Most painful:

Valentines day, 2005 at K-Mart. Dust on Crust, cruising out of the bottom of Cascade where it starts to flatton out before Merging with Dipper/Downdraft, whatever else is in there. I look skiers' left to be certain I'm not going to get cleaned out byt some yahoo and as I dip into the shadows... Bam! I catch an unfilled water bar ("Thin will win" was the motto for the groomers that year, screw them!) and my head is slammed against the hardpack and I can feel my brain hitting the anterior aspect of my squash. As I stand up, I haer from the Canyons Quad: "Holy $h!t. He's getting up!"

I could barely move my left shoulder and I had an eccymotic outline of my cellphone on my left anterior thorax. Two days later, I coughed and then could barely inhale. I drove to the ER and Patty. the triage nurse looked at me and said "You look like a$$.". I said "Thanks, you look lovely as always." X-rays ruled out a Pnuemothorax, but it was a bear to take a deep breath for about four weeks. My should took almost a year of PT and rigorous exercises to get back to where it was,

 

[marcski]

I have had 2 good ones throughout my ski career. One while I was in HS. Anapurna. Conditions were pretty good, I was skiing great that day. I was there with my brother, who was in college at the time. I stopped about half way down at the edge of the trail and turned my tips uphill, stopping on my inside edges in a "reverse snowplow" if you will, so I could stop and watch my bro come down. I lost my balance, and fell off the trail. Headfirst on my back. It's pretty steep off that trail into the woods. I actually put my hands behind my head worried that I'd hit a tree or rock. Eventually, my lower back wedged into a tree. I was very sore, but able to move. Some guy saw me fall off the trail, my brother never did. I told him to tell my bro. Ski patrol came...the guy fell about 5 times as he made his way down to me. When he reaches me, he asks me if I think I could climb back out. I said, "I'm not sure, do you think you can?" They ended up boarding me and taking me in for x-rays. Just a bad bruise.

I also was at K-mart the day after Christmas one year and it had poured christmas eve. Top of double dipper. Again, kind of just lost my balance right at the top of the steep section, I wasn't even skiing or turning, but it was so icy, that I started to slide. Tried to use my skis, but they popped off. Then I'm trying to use my boots to stop myself. Couldn't. I ended up sliding on my ass all the way across and down under the lift finally, just about to go into the woods and there was enough soft snow there (where they hadn't groomed the wet rainy snow) that I was able to stop. Someone luckily brought my skis down, it was literally the entire steep face. I had some good "ice rash" on my butt and hip. And, I tore off a double riveted buckle on my san marco tr2 race boots. The owner of the race shop where I bought them said he had never seen anyone tear one of those off completely like i did.