Of Gravity and Lampshades

This story is a glimpse into my accident-prone life.

You might be feeling a little queasy looking at the photo of my youngest son jumping off a cliff into a relatively small bit of water. Still, I assure you his proclivity to regularly test Earth’s gravity is hereditary. I didn’t have any pictures from back in my day when I used to do this sort of thing, so I thought I’d use this picture to help paint another picture: the cold and snowy day I spent in the Banff Hospital. Kierin (pictured here) did not go to the hospital. He’s fine.

I had just bought new downhill skis, boots, bindings and poles. The skis were Kästle 195s, and the bindings were Marker M46—the boots and poles don’t play a part in this story other than tertiary characters. If you know stuff about downhill skiing, this equipment list should adequately date this story as having been from “way back in the day.”

My friend Scott and I took a day off to ski at Sunshine, as we often did back then. In this case, we rode the Brewster's Ski Bus up from Calgary. This was the first day I had with my new equipment. For whatever reason, I hadn’t double-checked that the Ski Tech who mounted the bindings tightened them to my request, “Please crank these up to 14. I’m a really aggressive skier and don’t want to pop out on the moguls.”

The powder was fresh, and Sunshine was covered in it. Scott (not Scott Schmidt) and I would often sneak “Out of Bounds” and hike our way up to secluded powder cliffs to ski off of—we were fans of Warren Miller’s “Steep and Deep” films. Today one of the first cliffs we went to would have us landing in a Black Diamond mogul field.

I was the first to go off. FssssshhhhhhhhhAaaaaahhhh. CLUMP! snikSNIK! I landed on my edges to prepare for a fast turn and clicked out of my bindings. Unfortunately, I landed thigh-first on my left ski. Ouch! Limping a little, I gathered up my skis and noticed the bindings were set to 5, not 14. Well, shit. That’s on me for not checking. I’ll grab a screwdriver when I get to the bottom of the run. I waved Scott on and told him I’d catch up with him at the bottom of the hill, clicked back into my bindings, and headed down.

Holy crap, my left leg hurt. I tried to “ski it out” to work out what just felt like a bad “Charlie Horse.” After about a minute of skiing, I got out of the mogul field and was able to look down at my leg. I was wearing stretchies (as we did back in the eighties), and they were torn. Muscle tissue and frozen blood were hanging in chunks off my thigh. I guess this wasn’t a Charlie Horse. After a quick assessment, I decided it would be faster to ski to First Aid than wait for someone to find me.

I skied on one leg, keeping the weight off my injured one for five minutes or so until I reached the bottom of the run. I got out of my skis and limped into what I thought was the First Aid Station. I calmly asked the lady behind the counter, “Hi, do you have a bandaid?”

“Oh, sorry, this is the Ski School. You’ll have to go to First Aid which is below the Gondola Station.” She gave me a quizzical look, “Are you okay?”

Nonchalantly pointing to meat and blood hanging from my leg, I said, “Just hurt my leg a bit.”

She went pale, but to her credit, she kept it together, “I’ll call First Aid for you. Can you sit down?”

I replied, “I think it would be faster if I just skied down. It’s not far.”

By this time, I had attracted a small crowd of curious onlookers, primarily kids with very protective parents who didn’t want chunks of meat or blood sprayed on their precious angels.

I limped out of the Ski School, clicked into just one ski this time, held my other ski, and made my way down the 200 metres or so to the Gondola and First Aid Station. I ran into Scott and explained I needed to get patched up before we could do any more runs. Of course, that was a bit naive—maybe it was the blood loss that had me thinking it was not that bad?

Scott helped me to the First Aid Station and got me squared away. I tried the “got a bandaid” thing again with the medic. He looked at my leg, back at me, back at the leg and laughed. He laughed a lot. “Mate, you’re going for a ride.” He quickly and professionally wrapped my leg tightly (direct pressure for the win) and got me to the Gondola. He slid a “Medical Emergency” placard on my car and sent me downhill.

Scott was left in charge of my stuff and offered to bring it all back home on the bus at the end of the day if I didn’t make it back—it was pretty obvious at that point I’d not be doing any more skiing.

It was about a 20-minute gondola ride that went through four stations. A team of people came running out at each station and escorted my car through to ensure it didn’t bump or bounce. When I got to the bottom, I was met by a lady with a wheelchair who quickly sat me down, rolled me to a Sunshine Van, and drove me directly to the Banff Hospital.

I got admitted at around 1130AM. At noon a doctor came in to check on me. He was eating half a sandwich that was cut in a triangle. It’s weird the things you remember. He put the sandwich down on a table beside my bed and asked the nurse for something (no clue what it was). The nurse passed over a bottle of something, and with one hand (the one that recently had the sandwich in it), he pulled open the gaping wound in my leg and poured this white powder into it with the other hand.

“Looks like you need some stitches,” he said, expertly assessing the situation. “See you soon.” He grabbed the rest of his sandwich and left.

An hour and a half later, he returned, snapped on gloves, poked around the wound, injected me with freezing, stuffed the muscle back in, and stitched me up. I think there are three or four dissolving stitches on the inside and twelve stitches on the outside.

“Have a great day!” he said cheerfully, pulling off his bloody gloves and tossing them in a biohazard bin.

The lady who drove me from Sunshine showed up a moment later with a wheelchair and wheeled me back to the Sunshine Van. By the time we got back to the hill, the Brewster’s Ski Bus was there, and Scott loaded up my gear.

“Thanks, Scott,” I said, limping onto the bus.

“No problem, man.” Scott said, “the powder was great!” Friends.

One of my favourite authors, John D. McDonald, once described one of his characters as not having enough unscarred skin to make a decent lampshade. Of course, I’m not comparing myself to Travis McGee here, but I do feel this description on a personal level.