Setback in Utah

This was supposed to be a post about our new review of Snowbird, but AiRung never made it there.  We were skiing at the Canyons on Friday, March 1 when this happened:

Sled evac on 9990 - March 2013

Sled evac on 9990 – March 2013

We were skiing the double-black north bowl area of 9990 when we came to a very steep, narrow slot through some trees.  it didn’t look prudent, so we traversed out on what patrol told us is called the “Summer Road”.  As is usually the case when these things happen, it was relatively flat but bumpy and AiRung had a twisting backwards fall.  She heard a “pop” so we knew it was the ACL.  This was her good knee, because the other one already had ACL replacement and she has a brace on that knee.

The ski patrol was very helpful and got her down to the clinic from a very precarious spot.  According to them they don’t get many sled evacs from that area, but they did an awesome job.  The clinic took X-Rays and gave her a brace.  We came back a day early and she was able to see her favorite bone doc in Fremont, who amazingly was able to do the ACL replacement surgery the very next day.  So injury to surgery was only 5-days.

She’s recovering and will be back on skis next fall, but the project is on hold for now obviously.

To avoid this in the future, I am going to retrofit both of her skis with Knee Bindings.  Apparently there hasn’t been a single reported ACL injury with these bindings, and they are becoming quite popular so there is a lot of actual use of these things going on.  Why didn’t I do this sooner?!

I put up a new review of our home resort Heavenly.  The lack of snow and temps in the 60’s are not helping, but I do plan to get a couple more weekends out of this strange snow year.

– Ron

Heavenly on Feb 23-24 and a new review

Skied Heavenly on Feb 23-24 with our friend Bria.  She is from Australia and loves skiing Tahoe and the Bay Area.  Her husband Tyler was taking an Avalanche 1 course at Kirkwood.  We plan to do some backcountry skiing if it ever snows again.  After an incredible start to the season, in the past 2 months we have only had about 40-inches of snowfall, which is nothing by Tahoe standards.  Still, the conditions at Heavenly were pretty good and as a bonus they groomed the double-black East Bowl on Saturday.  Both days were COLD, but Sunday was windy AND cold, which kept some of the crowds away.

I put up a new review today: Alpine Meadows, California.

Tomorrow we head to Park City for 2 days at The Canyons, and one at Snowbird.  AiRung has never skied Snowbird, so it will be another new resort from the list.

The Ski North America 100 project begins!

The list is ready, the snow is ready, and we will be checking-in at a new resort in Utah in a little over a week when we visit Park City.  In the mean time I’m going through the list of resorts that we have already skied together and putting together reviews.  The first 2 are up – Angel Fire, New Mexico and Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Putting together these reviews involves plumbing the sometimes elusive depths of our minds for memories from up to 10-years ago and digging out some old photos.  Fun!

– Ron