“Get busy living or get busy dying.” (Bob Dylan, re-phrased
quite well by Red (Morgan Freeman) in the Shawshank Redemption.)
It’s late April but today felt like the first day of the ski
season. I was so excited I could hardly sleep last night. It was my first day
on skis since mid-March, seven weeks to be exact. In March the doctor tells me I
fractured my tibial plateau and “no skiing, no running, and no impact to the
leg for eight weeks.” I was a week shy of the doctor’s order, but figured
one-week early wouldn’t harm anything.
The fracture came under an odd situation. Back in March I
was skiing at Snowbird for my employer, a “customer appreciation” thing, and
the “work” aspect helped create the scenario for injury. Before the lifts even
opened I got separated (ditched?) from the group when I went for a pee. So
there I was, a free pass in hand (courtesy of the boss), and alone at a world
class ski area, and I could hear the dissing already, “Sure, take a free pass
then bail on the customers, this is gonna look bad on your annual performance
review.” Not wanting to be labeled a
“slacker” by the boss, I went on a search and destroy mission looking for the group.
Whenever I saw a group of skiers below me I would straight-line it to see if it’s
them. Somehow I never find them.
I’m an avowed back-country skier and I ride lifts only a few
times each winter, but, like most b.c. skiers, my roots are in ‘alpine’ skiing.
When I was younger I got good enough to quickly get bored with groomers and the
chop-suey “powder” one finds at a resort. I wasn't a great skier, but good
enough to look for bigger and better things on skis, outside the box of the
resorts. When I was in high-school and college I liked to ski moguls, and I
still like the challenge of the quick turns on steep technical terrain, so
every so often I’ll go ski some bumps. I’m no good at it, but I still like the
challenge. I usually come away annoyed with the resort vibe and its
chest-thumping, ‘high-school’ bravado, and wishing I had gone hiking for my
turns.
So, back in mid-March I was skiing bumps at Snowbird, skiing
way too fast, looking for my boss and our customers, when my right ski
pre-releases. Still upright I try to maintain control with just my left ski
when I feel a hammer blow of pain to the back of my left knee, figuring it was
my right ski cart-wheeling. I then fall and tumble another 50-feet, down the
Rasta Chutes, a steep run just below Snowbirds infamous Pipeline. Hiking back
up to retrieve my ski I feel pain in just below my left knee, but I blow it off,
thinking I can “ski” away the pain. I ski for another two hours, looking for my
boss, but the pain gets worse with time and by noon I can’t set an edge with my
left ski. I figure it’s a lost day as far as work, and decide to call it a day.
That’s when the trouble really begins.
I had just purchased some new back-country ski boots
(Dynafit TLT-6), and they’re in my truck along with my AT rig. I was done
skiing for the day (PAIN!) but then I saw those new Dynafits smiling at me from
the back of my truck. I was in the heart
of the Wasatch so it wouldn’t hurt anything to go on a little tour, now would
it? My mentality quickly switched from “Poor me, I need a Doctor” to “I’m a
bad-ass hero of the back-country, I’m gonna ski Wolverine Cirque on a bad knee.”
I rationalized that since my boss had ditched me, the day was now mine. I could only salvage the day by skinning up to
Catherine Pass and check out the offerings. So I drive up to Alta.
My resort kit consists of heavy K2 skis, super-heavy Marker
Duke “touring” bindings (anyone stupid enough to actually hike in those things deserve their
monkey-tight hamstrings, and the resulting strain on the lower back), and super-super-heavy
Nordica Chargers. I only mention this because after years of back-country
skiing on squirrely gear without a hint of an injury, I’ve concluded that burly
resort gear, while offering power and control, can lead to injuries. Knees,
hips, vertebra and disks aren’t made for the weight and Sasquatch DIN settings of
today’s alpine gear. There is only one Bode Miller and one Ted Ligety in the
world, and they don’t live at my house.
So, my knee swollen and in huge pain, I load up my heavy
resort gear and drive to the upper end of Alta and re-gear, this time with my
BC-rig. I’m so proud of my new boots that I hardly notice the quizzical looks
I’m getting as I hop one-legged across the parking lot to the snow. It just hurts
too much to weight my left leg. I’m the stupid one now, not willing to give up
and go see a doctor until I’ve tested my new boots. So I skin up to Catherine
Pass, wincing in pain with every step, and when I try to weight my left leg to
remove my right skin, my knee buckles and I face-plant in the snow. I get more concerned
looks from the granola-hippies lunching at Catherine’s (and on skinny tele-gear
and leather boots). But that convinces me; I’ve finally had enough and admit
that I’m done for the day. I try to ski down but I can’t begin to weigh the
left leg. I end up skiing back totally on my right ski, mono-ski style. The
warm temps of early March have made the snow a mix of breakable crust and wet
slop, so it excruciating trying to turn one-legged without falling. After
numerous falls and much cursing, I weep with joy when I finally see the flat
cat–track below Alta’s Albion lift; it’s a sign that I’m almost to the truck.
Hopping one-legged across the parking lot brings more
stares, but this time I glare back and they quickly turn away, but I feel their
eyes on my back and I hear muted laughter and guffawing when as I slip and fall
on the slick asphalt whilst wearing new plastic boots. But I load up, climb
into the driver’s seat and just sit – and believe me sitting never felt so good
(in a non-Freudian sort of way) - and I then realize that the inherent cheapness
that inspired me to buy a standard transmission ten years before is now my
worst character flaw: I can’t begin to push in the clutch without huge shooting
pain. But, as my sweet, Australian mother taught me, when in pain or frustrated
let loose with God’s worst nightmare of linguistics and the weight of the world
will momentarily be forgotten. To put the truck in reverse I’m screaming the language
of Satan when I notice the family sitting in the Suburban next to me is staring.
The mother is glaring and blindly and frantically searching for the power
switch for the windows, or the radio (to drown me out), or both.
I make it down the canyon and to the Doctor, and he tells me
I’m fine, nothing abnormal shows on the X-ray, but come back in three weeks if
it still hurts. He thinks I tore a muscle and nothing more. I ask what to do
for the pain and he gets really indignant, and spits out, “I DON’T prescribe
any pain meds!” “OK, Doc, I didn’t ask for pain meds, just asking for your thoughts
on pain.” He must have gone to med school on some Caribbean Island. He was either
hung-over or surfing during the class on bed-side manner.
That was sign enough for me to go see someone else. I wait a
week, hoping the pain will magically go away (ice, ibuprofen, no narcotics),
but it doesn’t, so I go see another orthopedic surgeon who orders an MRI. That
is when my ski season falls apart. He tells me I have a fracture across my
tibial plateau and any pounding could shear off the top of the bone, requiring
surgery and a long recovery.
That’s it. I go home depressed and start chugging Mountain
Dew. For seven weeks I chug Mountain Dew. My aerobic life is shot and I
immediately put on ten pounds. I wear the added weight like a red-badge of
courage for injured skiers, too proud to go to water aerobics or the spin class
at Gold’s Gym. A gym rat is not the life for me.
Now, seven weeks later, a friend posts on Facebook that the
Farmington Canyon Road is now open, which means I can drive to my old haunts.
Farmington Canyon has great skiing, but, without the road, the additional approach
consists of eight miles of gravel road, requiring either a bike or nearly flat
skinning, depending upon snow cover. Since its closure four year ago, I’ve
biked it several times each year in the spring, skis strapped to the bike
frame, boots packed in my day-pack. Upon
reaching the snow-line where the works really starts, I’m usually already exhausted
and wondering why I have such weird hobbies, but the excitement of skiing
pushes me onward. I should learn to water-color or take up genealogy to fill
that void in my soul.
Today I skin up our old approach route, a route pioneered by
another friend who was bent on not losing any elevation while traversing the
three miles from the parking lot (no parking allowed on the road) to the top of
Rice and Mudd drainages. The route, while circuitous, is ingenuous because it
crosses three or four sub-drainages in a constant upward climb. As the crow flies
it is not the shortest route, but the straight-line route would entail much elevation
gain and loss. The genius of the route is realized during the descent, when one
is exhausted and in no mood for more climbing, and one can glide across those
maddening drainages without re-skinning. I call the route the B.F. Trail in
honor of that pioneering mind.
Back on point, I skin to the top of the Rice Bowl feeling
surprisingly strong considering I’ve been away from the sport for seven weeks,
and now carrying a ten pound Dew-gut. The skiing was fantastic. Five inches of
dense, blown-in-snow, the consistency of chalk, but offering idiot proof
turning. I ski three runs, and my broken leg feels great. I quit because of a
need to get back to help my son move home from college. Plus a wintry storm has
blown in, complete with strong winds, zero visibility and heavy snowfall. I ski
down towards the approach, but it all looks different now. Many of the eastern
aspects, slopes we normally ski for bonus turns, are melted off and I see a lot
of brush where in mid-winter they're open snow through glades of aspens.
I get suckered into skiing a thin line of the remaining snow
on an otherwise snow free face and ski too far down. Before I know it I’m lost,
well below my skin track. I stop and contemplate the quickest escape: continue
down the drainage to the road, which would require a mile or so of walking the
muddy road back up to the truck, or re-skin and hike back up to my skin track
for a glide back to the truck. I choose the later, fearing a brush-fest in the
lower drainage. In the fog and heavy snowfall, everything looks foreign and I’m
stumbling through a wet, dark forest. I top out on a sub-ridge, thinking my
skin track should skirt that ridge, but I find nothing. I continue along the
ridge for a hundred yards and the ridge starts descending where it shouldn’t,
and I realize I’m way off my approach route. I’m not worried; it’s tough to get
lost up here, but a bit disturbed that I’ve lost my way. Stumbling out of a
thick stand of firs, out of nowhere I come across another skin track. I’m
confused, who else is up here? I then realize the skin track is mine from the
morning approach. A weird twilight zone moment.
I make it back to the truck, wet, and a bit
confused, but smiling and happy. It was a great day to get back in the game. 
