as ashley stood at the top of the run in i tried to convince her it was all good. ‘as long as you don’t under rotate, there’s no way to get hurt doing a backflip’. she had under rotated her first attempt this day and she was a bit shaken up. i couldn’t convince her to try again and in retrospect i felt bad for even trying. i made my way up top to give it another go since on my first attempts i had slightly over rotated and backslapped before skiing away. still can’t say i stuck it. this time i would get a little more speed and rotate a little slower. still i came down in the back seat and bounced into the air. when i returned to the white planet my skis augured into the slightly crusty snow. my body slammed forward causing my femur to smash into the tibial plateau with enough force that my season was over. i knew it immediately and let out a loud ‘fuuuck!‘ before coming to a stop and the whimpering started.

here’s the post op view

the tibial plateau fracture would require surgery involving the placement of a cadaver bone graft as ‘scaffolding’ for my bone to grow on plus the addition of two metal screws. i’ll add pictures of the post op xray as well as some of the knee during surgery as soon as i get them from dr. swanson. of course, none of this could happen unless we got ourselves out of the backcountry first. we were about a mile from carson pass and it would require about 1.5 miles of travel to minimize elevation loss and gain. i didn’t know what i had done but i knew i couldn’t weight the leg at all, especially at any angle at all. we made a splint by placing our probes on each side of the knee and then wrapping my skins around the area. then adding a couple voile straps to keep it as tight as possible (the video shows only one probe on the outside, we added ashley’s on the inside shortly after). the majority of the way back was downhill and i was able to ski it on one ski with the other ski on my foot but hanging in tele mode. the pain wasn’t too bad as we started but near the end the combination of the adrenalin wearing off and the snow becoming icy as we skied through refrozen tree pee sections had me on the verge of passing out. finally we hit the old carson pass road and i figured i could pole up that section since it’s uphill, but not steep at all. it was quickly apparent that i just couldn’t do it. ashley donned her skins and towed me through that section all the way to highway 88, where i waited for her to go get the car. if i was alone, things would be very different right now.
here’s the video, which starts out with a few short clips from kirkwood the day before

from the beginning
when we got to elephant back we skied one run to the bottom to check things out. there had been a huge slide during the storm cycle. note the rocks above the riders in the top of the pic. they are roughly 25 feet tall. the pic below is taken from roughly where ashley is standing in this pics (just follow the tracks below jeff)

this pic shows the rocks almost completely buried. the crown went from one side of the bowl to the other

ashley looking good in this pic of her backflip attempt

but the sequence tells another story

my first attempt went well

and here’s my second attempt. i was fine after this but it is almost identical to my final attempt

this is the final jump, taken about two seconds before my season ended (or did it?).

below here i”ll add the pictures from the surgery and some from post op.

beware – they may be graphic and gross

we’ll start with the first one i got. had to redo the dressing and it brought me to this. much bigger than i expected and would explain why so much pain seemed to come from lower than i would have thought.

beware – they may be graphic and gross. i considered not posting them
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it’s true! these conditions would be awesome if it were november, and not unheard of for october. unfortunately it’s the beginning of february. still, rather than look a gift horse in the mouth we took full advantage of the 16-20″ that mother nature provided. friday conditions were a little sketchy so we took it pretty easy and kept it above treeline (unusually, the advisory called for higher danger near and below treeline). saturday everything had dropped to moderate or below and the snow was still phenomenal. sunday another weak storm had pulled in and with slabby conditions and limited visibility up high we moved into the trees.

here’s the video from the three days to the sounds of alt-j

enough with the nonsense and on to the pictures. friday was jeff, myself, and nacho
jeff and nacho with elephant back in the background

meadow skipping with the emphasis on skipping

it was deeeeep

and it was purdy

nacho was so happy to be back in the snow

that he jumped for joy

then took a moment to teach jeff the basics of break dancing

then we ran into pete, and took a few laps with him. he was clearly happy with the conditions

pete, meet nacho. nacho, eat pete

jeff finds another fresh line to round out the day

saturday rolled around cold and clear and looked to be an awesome day filled with promise

for nacho, it was the promise of hunting wabbits

i was chasing something else

i would crash and burn in the pursuit. that didn’t matter i found what i wanted anyway

ashley found it too

nacho’s in the cloud too

jeff was on deck and ready to drop

sometimes you have to dig deep to find what you want

then ashley found something else, her very first avalanche

she was undeterred

time to leave and head to work, our exit strategy was a good one

super bowl sunday arrived with clouds and the chance for more snow. ashley had a different super bowl in mind and chad was coming from santa cruz so we were committed to head out.
the conditions were not awesome

after two laps above treeline we opted to hit some tress which held good snow, but lots of tracks as well.
we were able to find some well protected fresh lines
ashley swimming among the sharks

with marvin at her side

chad jumps over the sharks

next we happened upon an abandoned kicker

and then headed up for one more run
again, the fresh lines were well protected. me

chad

chad from ashley’s view