Whelp. My turn. Crested Butte on 1/15. Intertrochanteric Fracture. Which is breaking your femur clean at the hip. In my case, courtesy of an aspen tree. I did not hit any thing else, just my right hip.
Was skiing with my family and a friend of my kids, she was showing us around some new spots at CB, we decided to poke into a little aspen grove on the way down to get a lunchtime drink. It was pretty flat to the point of some ski walking going in, older powder underneath, fresh on top. We finally got a bit of pitch, I was skiing in a snowboarder boot track, felt it get suddenly faster and we all pulled up right before a fun pitch with an open glade to the left before dropping back on onto the groomer.
I got caught up on something underneath, either a sapling or more likely the older consolidated snow didn’t want to release, but the fresh on top was insanely fast. Threw me into a patch of aspens and I got skis, boots, knees, through a V notch of two trees, right hip took a huge impact and fractured. No shoulder or any other contact. I landed skis parallel in soft powder, thankfully, because any movement was excruciatingly painful.
We waited about 10 mins before getting patrol, to see if it was a bad contusion and I could ski it out. Fortunately it wasn’t very cold as it took 2 hours total before I was down, including a shot of fentanyl on the hill. Difficult extraction and ski patrol was extraordinary as was the care in the base clinic.
I was in an ambulance headed to Gunnison for surgery soon after, where I was repaired by Dr. Blake Clifton is is extremely well regarded - doctor/nurse/staff all told me “I’d have Dr. Clifton repair my hip”. I was told by the base clinic doc “you need surgery, but you won’t need a replacement hip.” (replacement hip, what !?!).
I ended up in the hospital for 2.5 days. I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since 9:30 that morning, which was good because I could go straight into surgery, but my blood pressure stayed very low and I start low, like normal is 110/60.
I was day one “weight bearing as tolerated” and starting PT. But first, here’s pics from the scene. I kept telling my crew to document, the first one my wife asks me to smile. She has a video of my sled trip, that’s always sobering to watch. The last pic I snagged a woowoo wagon selfie with them waving. I was on the big pain meds by then.
