Story Of A Ski Injury At Snowbird Part 1: Initial Occurrence

At the start of the 2022-23 ski season, I ended my ski season prematurely. On the afternoon of November 28 at the beginning of a strong storm cycle after a solid start to the snowpack throughout the early-season, my season came to an early close before it even got started when I took a hard fall.

My brother Brian and I had headed up to snowbird from Salt Lake in the afternoon as the beginning of the first of a series of storms started to materialize. We were anticipating a few amazing days as the forecast called for a few feet of snow on top of an already well-established base. As luck would have it a friend had a timeshare that they were not going to use so we even had rooms to stay in, avoiding the headache of getting up and down the canyon in gnarly blizzard conditions. Brian had booked his free night well in advance for the 2nd night and we were going to stay in the timeshare on the first night and then use that room the second night, both in the cliff Lodge. Needless to say, we were stoked! When we arrived the snow was starting to fall fairly hard with the storm just rolling in and things were looking really good. We jumped on Peruvian and did a few laps as the snow started to stack up. I mentioned how I needed to stay mellow so that I didn’t get injured… unfortunately that would turn out to be a fortuitous statement.

After a couple of Peruvian laps, we headed over to GAD 2. Because it had not snowed in a while, conditions were firm off trail so we were largely sticking to the groomers and kept mentioning that we would just keep it mellow. We did a lap down bananas and I was enjoying myself skiing the first day on a pair of Blizzard Rustler 11 192s that I had recently mounted after purchasing them two years prior. As I merged onto Bassackwards from Bananas, the light was a bit flat and snow was coming down making for not great visibility which calls for slow speed, a call I did not heed. I was going pretty fast as this is just a groomer area, although in hindsight that was a terrible decision. As I skied ahead, my right ski hit a hard transition and the ski popped off and threw me off balance. I lost my balance and went down on my right side at high speed throwing my shoulder out to brace the fall. I believe in looking back, thinking it would be softer but instead impacting very hard onto ice. The impact was hard enough that my vision went black for a second and as I regained composure and went to brace myself to get up with my right arm, I couldn’t feel the arm at all and was immediately very confused and scared. I looked down and saw my hand but it wasn’t doing what my brain was telling it to do…very scary. I pushed through being under the lift and not wanting a big scene pretending I was ok, but thinking my arm was in bad shape. Brian skied up behind me threw my ski to me not knowing my situation and I popped back in and skied down to the lift trying to make my right hand and arm work with limited success.

When I skied up and onto the lift with him, I told him I was done for the season and my arm wouldn’t work and I started to go into shock. During the lift ride up, I tried to use my hand but could barely make it work. I was trying to breathe since I could feel myself getting light headed and knew I was going into shock. At the top, I thought about calling ski patrol but didn’t want to ride down in the Tobbogan knowing it would be painful and take a while so I pushed through and skied down in a snow plow, stopping periodically to sit and breathe as the pain level ramped up. I made it all the way down to the Snowbird center and was in excruciating pain and lightheaded from shock and denial that I had just injured myself at the beginning of an amazing season and amazing few week ahead.

I thought about going to the clinic right there, but instead irrationally decided I would try to drive down the canyon so Brian could stay and enjoy the evening himself. Because we parked on the bypass road, he had to ride Peruvian and I decided to ride Chickadee to wait for him. I skied down in agonizing pain, pretending nothing was wrong and got on Chickadee and rode to the top trying to breathe and not pass out. I got to the top and skied over to the parking lot and struggled to get skis off and find as comfortable of a position as possible and sat there waiting for a few minutes. I thought things through and realized how stupid it was that I didn’t just go to the clinic, so I struggled to get skis back on and skied down to the Snowbird center. Irrationally and in shock, I carried my skis and poles in one hand and walked inside struggling to get down the stairs. Eventually I made it to the clinic and burst in the door. The staff was all making Christmas decorations with nobody to attend to, so when I showed up they all stared at me and immediately dropped everything and came to my aid.

The nurses and Dr. were very good to me and the staff immediately recognized that I had dislocated my shoulder and was in bad shape, telling me that it was one of the more painful injuries they see and that once it was back in, pain would reduce. I told them I skied down and they were shocked. They helped me get a few of my clothing items off which was brutal and informed me that they needed to do X Rays before they could put it back in. Positioning me for the X Rays was excruciating as they tried to have me sit upright and move for different angles. Ultimately, they got 3 images and I couldn’t tolerate anymore and they called it good. After looking at the images tickets see that I fractured the upper tuberosity of the humorous basically the ball on the top of my shoulder bone. Finally, inform me that they were going to put the shoulder back in with the process that has been long proven over time. The doctor had one of the nurses look me in the eye and help me breathe and relax while another one of the nurses took a rubber strap and placed it around my torso. The doctor took another rubber strap and placed it around my upper body somewhere around my shoulder not sure exactly where because I was focusing on the other nurse. He told me he might take up to a minute and I tried just not to resist took a few deep breaths and they made a movement and it was back in. Immediately I can feel the blood rushing into my hand and a lot of the tingling residual tingling subsided and there was large amount of pain and pressure released. Sometime in this process, my brother Brian showed up figuring out that I had gone to the clinic because I was still on the snowbird app and had not had a chance to text him. He was talking to the doctor and they had relatively sober faces which wasn’t great although I kind of already knew the situation that I was in.

During this process they had given me ibuprofen and then ultimately some painkillers and those we’re starting to take effect so I was starting to slowly feel a little more normal in terms of pain. I was still shaking from the cold and the shock from the pain and they had me in a warmed blanket and one of the nurses gave me some warm tea which was amazing. As I slowly started to warm up they gave me a sling and then retested the strength in my hand and fingers which was substantially better compared to when it was dislocated. After resting for a little while I was slowly able to put a few of my clothes on, gather my stuff up and get ready to head home. By this time there was a raging blizzard outside and the roads were pretty rough. Brian graciously drove me down the canyon and took me home before linking up with Zack and turning around and going back up to stay in the room. I had dinner with the family and tried to get some rest after a rough day.