Hitting Trees Really Freaking Hurts

[allmountainsnowskating]

But for real, his kneecap was such a champ to take nearly the whole impact and shatter and spare the rest of his body.

The doctor was talking about how he was really lucky it played out that way and he fell backwards. Apparantly it takes an insane amount of force to shatter a patella.

The folks at the University of Utah Hospital fixed him up like a crystal necklace at the Country Fair. He was skiing Palmer Glacier by July and still got 10 days in that season after the injury.

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[yeahman]

January 2021... I slide into the DMs of this cute guy on a ski forum. He flies to Utah to go on a ski date with me at Solitude. He fires out of a short chute and crashes knees first into a tree and breaks both his legs. I take him to the ER. Massively shattered patella on the left and small fractured femur on the right. Lucky to be alive. He gets surgery and stays with me 17 nights to recover. He flies home, and I call him every day for 6 months to check on his physical therapy. We fall in love. I move across the country to be with him. We live happily ever after.

January 2023... I see your photo of a shattered kneecap from a tree collision and go, "aww how romantic".

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Great story!

[Meadow Skipper]

January 2021... I slide into the DMs of this cute guy on a ski forum. He flies to Utah to go on a ski date with me at Solitude. He fires out of a short chute and crashes knees first into a tree and breaks both his legs. I take him to the ER. Massively shattered patella on the left and small fractured femur on the right. Lucky to be alive. He gets surgery and stays with me 17 nights to recover. He flies home, and I call him every day for 6 months to check on his physical therapy. We fall in love. I move across the country to be with him. We live happily ever after.

January 2023... I see your photo of a shattered kneecap from a tree collision and go, "aww how romantic".

I feel like this was one of the better posts of today.

[EWG]

But for real, his kneecap was such a champ to take nearly the whole impact and shatter and spare the rest of his body.

The doctor was talking about how he was really lucky it played out that way and he fell backwards. Apparantly it takes an insane amount of force to shatter a patella.

The folks at the University of Utah Hospital fixed him up like a crystal necklace at the Country Fair. He was skiing Palmer Glacier by July and still got 10 days in that season after the injury.

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Great story, except the part where you left Utah.

Breaking a kneecap is not comfortable. My lovely wife did that a few years ago 2 days into an 8 day rafting trip. Had to ride out the rest of the trip before she got medical help. Not ideal. I feel bad for your husband, but sounds like he’d do it all over again to meet ya, so that’s awesome.

Revisited the scene of the crime today. Goddamn that was not a small tree, and the bruises that are coming out are also not small. Perfectly placed to sneak up on you.

Still feeling lucky. Sore, but lucky.

[Shorty_J]

6 years ago I was carving hard turns in ideal groomed snow conditions on some new to me used skis. Nothing rad.

I pre-released from the bindings at very high speed on a pretty steep pitch with a fair amount of lateral momentum.

I had zero chance of self arrest as planting a boot into the snow would have just created the most violent rag-doll ever, and my clothes must have been fast because I didn't even slow down a little as I slid off the side of the run into the huge spruce trees on the right.

I hit one of those trees with my femur just above my right knee. It hurt so bad I swear I broke my leg and reached for it and thought I felt broken bone chunks. Turns out what I probably felt was my kneecap, which was now where my femur should be.

I tore my ACL, MCL, PCL, Popliteal ligament, Patellar ligament, and 1 more I can't remember. Basically my upper leg stopped moving immediately and the lower leg kept going... I was told I was lucky I didn't have a complete lower leg dislocation.

I actually think I was more lucky I hit the tree with my leg instead of my head or my back because I'd probably be dead otherwise.

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[baron]

Revisited the scene of the crime today. Goddamn that was not a small tree, and the bruises that are coming out are also not small. Perfectly placed to sneak up on you.

Still feeling lucky. Sore, but lucky.

totally- critical hit but you made your saving throw

there's an old thread somewhere here about a wasatch skier who hit a mere sapling; woke up in hospital with his lower leg amputated...super sad story

Glad you're alright OP

[fantastic_damage]

About 14 years ago was doing hot laps through the Sangri La glades on the backside of Vail on a pow day, blindsided a small tree. I was in denial for about 5 minutes that I actually broke something, clean femur snap. Pain starts to set in, ski patrol shows up, then a Dr on skis happened to be on the mountain carrying fentanyl nasal spray pain killer, gave me a couple sprays of that in each nostril which immediately made me very comfortable and at peace with the situation. Patrol had to snowmobile me up about 1000 ft of vert and then back down the front side about 2000 ft of vert in the burrito. That Dr saved me from a lot of pain.

[Timberridge]

If you're gonna hit trees on the reg, aim for softwoods like white pine and poplar. They have a bit of give compared to oak and maple. Whatever you do don't hit hornbeam (aka ironwood), it's crazy hard and that shit will fuck you up.

[Boissal]

A few years ago I took a glancing blow from a 5" aspen. I was skiing in pretty thickly treed terrain, had jello legs from a huge day, and caught an edge in a patch of weirdly affected snow. Didn't get a chance to straighten things out and realized I wouldn't make the gap I was headed for. I managed to twist my upper body enough that my shoulders made it between the trunks but the pack hit the tree on the left and bounced me into the one on the right. Thought I had a fractured pelvis for a sec, the pain was shockingly bad. Ms Boissal took one look and told me to sack up and ski down to the car. I couldn't get in on my own and had to lay down on the back seat.

This picture is from the first evening (hopefully not considered NSFW, I'll remove if needed). It got a lot worse after that and there was talk of draining the hip hematoma as it was not resorbing on its own. The tramp stamp stayed for weeks and went through lovely shades of purple, green, and yellow before disappearing.

[Core Shot]

That pic would awesome on grindr

[Boissal]

That pic would awesome on grindr

Bet that's how the tree felt after it molested the shit out my rear end. Almost literally.

[allmountainsnowskating]

I feel like this was one of the better posts of today.

How it started...

How it's going...

[emoji3059][emoji3059]

He sure played that well !

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[total_immortal]

How it started...

How it's going...

[emoji3059][emoji3059]

He sure played that well !

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Mine was far less romantic and involved calling my SO while she was waiting for her best friend to get out of brain surgery, a night in the hospital, a night on said friend's couch, and a 6 hour drive home with a jeep that was misfiring in one cylinder.

[allmountainsnowskating]

Mine was far less romantic and involved calling my SO while she was waiting for her best friend to get out of brain surgery, a night in the hospital, a night on said friend's couch, and a 6 hour drive home with a jeep that was misfiring in one cylinder.

Sounds like a bad day!

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[total_immortal]

Sounds like a bad day!

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Not my finest moment, but copious amounts of painkillers didn't make it seem too bad. My friend driving my shitty jeep and SO on the other hand...

[Angle Parking]

Following my 7 year old through some side trails through the trees yesterday. She's charging, loses control and smacks right into a tree. Sickening to witness. Bruises but otherwise she is fine. She was seriously traumatized by the whole thing and we had to go home. It will go down as a valuable lesson for her but it could so easily have been a life changing event.

[neckdeep]

I saw a stinking drunk guy hit a tree and first responded it. Chopper evacuation. Broken arm, broken vertebrae, broken hip and broken femur. He hit a dead tree about 4" in diameter with so much force that he snapped it.

Dude nearly died. Ran into him on the hill three years later, totally shitfaced and riding with a pony keg in his backpack.

[Meadow Skipper]

I saw a stinking drunk guy hit a tree and first responded it. Chopper evacuation. Broken arm, broken vertebrae, broken hip and broken femur. He hit a dead tree about 4" in diameter with so much force that he snapped it.

Dude nearly died. Ran into him on the hill three years later, totally shitfaced and riding with a pony keg in his backpack.

What some 1st responders call a member of the frequent flyer program.

[smartyiak]

Fuck trees

Indeed!




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[Supermoon]

Geez. Total carnage in this thread! I have never hit a tree that hard (knock on wood), but those bruises remind me of the years I was hitting a lot of rails. Not fun. Heal fast everyone.

[baron]

Geez. Total carnage in this thread! I have never hit a tree that hard (knock on wood), but those bruises remind me of the years I was hitting a lot of rails. Not fun. Heal fast everyone.

these pics in this thread are the lucky ones..

Video-Violence Calling in the Coroner V



4:15

[Rasputin]

Hmmm, yeah.... trees and bouncing off them in various ways, lucky to be alive and all, ski good or eat wood.

[sb]

This thread brings the ouch.

[Rasputin]

Late season one year, when the snow was very thin around exposed parts down the middle of the Bowl Outrun, I was cruising down the left edge, which was a strip of slush about three feet wide right next to the bank that goes down to the creek. There were some snowboarder girls slightly ahead which I intended to zip by, straightlining the left edge, as I very often do. I wasn't going very fast for the Outrun, maybe 25-30mph, when I caught my right ski under a pile of slush, pulling it up behind me, and initiating a full starfish roll. I knew where I was on the trail, and that I was coming to the part of the creek bank where the trees start, I knew I was about to hit a tree with momentum, slowed slightly by the impact of my hands and feet, as I cartwheeled a hundred feet or so.

The tree's trunk was not exposed, as its large lower branches were frozen down into the snow. The impact felt like I had hit the trunk, and like I had broken ribs (which turned out do be just deep muscle bruising). My right knee had been punctured by one of the smaller branches I broke, my right thumb had been hyper-extended. I was about fifteen feet down a steep bank and tried yelling when people skied by, but they didn't see or hear me, and it hurt to breath, and more try to yell. It took a while to disentangle me from the trees branches, and get my feet below me, but I did, then I started climbing toward my skis, which, mercifully, hadn't gone down to the creek.

I managed to climb back up on the Outrun, and in my skis, and limped to the bottom, where the head liftie took one look at me crumpled in spasms of pain, and ran over to me with a chair to sit down. After opting for an ambulance to the ER ( in retrospect I would have gone to the bar and asked if I could get a ride, the fancy ride was expensive), getting my knee stitched up, and x-rayed to rule out broken ribs, I went home and took the next day off from skiing.

[hutash]

I found out the hard way 8" diameter Aspen feel hardly any pain when you hit them...me on the other hand...

Fortunately I was checking my speed way down and must have hit something under the snow because all of a sudden I was slammed right into the tree. Hit with my head face and chest. Fortunately it just rung my bell a little though I am still a bit sore 24 hours later. A bit more speed and it would have been serious. Fucking glad I wear a helmet or it would have been a concussion at the least.