Moving Targets?

[OhD]

I finished off the season at White Pass yesterday - bluebird day, slowly warming enough to keep the base that had been bulletproof on saturday nice and firm, but very much carveable. Mid-morning I was riding down the Cascade face making nice big full round turns on near-perfect grooming, followed by a couple of other instructor buds - one on softies and one on skis a couple hundred feet above me. About 25% into my fifth or sixth toeside turn near the left side of the pitch - pretty much committed, right arm out and looking into the turn, I hear the dreaded sound of skidding skis for a very brief moment and feel a terrific WHACK followed immediately by a brutal faceplant and a long slide to a stop. I think I may have lost consciousness for a moment, but I was certainly good and stunned, bleeding from my mouth and rapidly becoming aware of a sore shoulder. The skier who had hit me was far below, missing his skis and holding a broken pole. My friends stopped to help out. The skier started climbing to me, apologizing and asking if I was OK. I waited until he got up to me and my friends before spitting out some blood and advising him that I was not at all sure. After a few minutes of reasonably civil discourse and further assessment, I decided I wasn't going to need a sled, took down the skier's name and address and adjourned the meeting.

My friends and I rode down to the chair and loaded, and I realized as I put weight on my right arm while grabbing the seatback and sitting down that my shoulder was not all that OK, so I touched base with patrol at the top of the chair and took a careful run down to the aid room where the doc on call decided that I hadn't injured anything too seriously and the patroller on duty took down a couple of pages of my report and the offenders contact info. I had a notice posted at the lift base for him to go to the aid room so they could take a accident report from him, and I understand that he showed up later in the day and took care of that.

I rode the rest of the day - a little paranoid and a lot more watchful. I'd been taken out in a nearly symmetrical collision a week before perhaps 100 yards lower on the opposite side of the pitch, by a petite woman on skis. In that hit, I was launched into a forward 300 (didn't stick it...) but neither of us was injured nor was any equipment damaged - only a tiny scuff mark on the foredeck of my ATV.

In the first accident, there were a few other people on the slope and the skier was hurrying to keep up with some friends. Four witnesses at the base who'd seen the whole thing (including my wife) said she was skiing fast and kind of erratically, not really turning so much as just changing orientation, and had turned right (into my path) rather than left to pass safely behind me. Nobody is quite sure what the skier who clocked me yesterday did - my friends didn't notice him zipping past them next to the trees at the left side of the run until he hit me, but from the sound I heard I'm sure he was skidding, and I suspect he made the same mistakes:

- Going much faster than he could make a hard turn or stop under control on the firm snow.

- Not paying attention to traffic ahead.

- Fixating on his own path at the expense of any peripheral awareness (I was the only traffic for hundreds of yards ahead of him, and moving across his field of vision - should have been pretty obvious if his field of vision was wider than a few degrees).

- Trying to pass me on the side of the piste toward which I was headed. (Maybe not an utterly stupid decision if he realized I was starting a turn to the other direction, but the wrong call, too late and not effectively implemented.)

One could argue that I should not have been using so much of the piste - should have been making my turns a little further away from the edges to leave a passing lane (I teach kids to do so on the narrow runs and cat tracks, but this piste is at least 100 yards wide). I probably should have been looking uphill more often, however I suspect he was coming so fast I'd not have even seen him on my previous toeside transit of the fall line. I was kind of in the zone and focusing on my own ride - and it had been going very well - and watching for traffic ahead and from the sides of the trail. Maybe I should quit turning so much (and quit teaching people how to turn) and just join the straightline skidding society (at least on groomers). Maybe I should have taken the :AR15firintwerp out of the gene pool with his half-pole, but I wasn't feeling all that frisk when I had the opportunity.

I am advised that I should have kept everyone there until a patroller showed up to take an on-site report, FYI.

Something to discuss for the off-season...

Dennis

[*Ace*]

That stinks man.

You should get your shoulder checked out for sure.

I had a minor fall early in the season due to catching an edge.

Wasn't a big fall, but I ended up with an AC shoulder seperation.

[Keenan]

Unfortunately, in situations like these we are usually too stunned to react properly. Ski patrol should have been called by your friends to remove this persons ticket. I constantly have to remind myself that the downhill skier has the right of way, no matter how erratic they are skiing or riding. I don't think that most people have ever read the skiers code. I've been slammed and seen people slammed by others who thought that they had the right of way because they were going faster (usually a male under the age of 25). After this happened to me last year I decided next time I'm going to make a loud primal noise and charge them like a rhino, helmet first. Good luck with your healing.

[nigelc]

I have been hit three times by skiers from behind in the last year in almost identical circumstances to you. I am really losing my sense of humour about it. I am carefull. I check uphill before i start. I look uphill while I am riding whenever i can. Some of these guys are going so fast over unsighted rises or are so out of control that i am becoming very concerned. Also hit by one snowboarder in the side of the head when he launched unsighted onto a cat track leading into a lift line-up area. No sense of humour on that one - red mist and i just gave him the full benefit of a solid right hook with an angry 100kgs behind it. i believe he appreciated my point of view more keenly after that and i felt a great deal better.

[queequeg]

I was hit from behind several times this season often by skiers, and one time drawing blood. One guy hit me from behind, and after I recovered and shot downhill (this time providing an ample passing lane) proceeded to NEARLY DO IT AGAIN. I do think it is generally thoughtful to leave a passing lane, but even if you don't that doesn't excuse uphill skiers from ramming into you. I too, am very much losing my sense of humor about this.

It is a PARTICULARLY strong sign that the offending party was doing something seriously wrong if the collision was forceful (as with yours). If somebody *slams* into you from behind at full force it can only mean that:

a) they were not looking where they were going.

b) they were skiing WAY beyond their ability and therefore were unable to alter course/speed significantly enough to soften the blow.

c) were skiing WAY too close to you given your/their rate of descent.

d) just ****ing plowed into you on purpose.

None of those scenarios is acceptable, and IMO should result in a clipped pass, period. It ****ing irks me that this doesn't happen. I've seen plenty of collisions where one party realized what was about to happen and took evasive action - not managing to avoid the collision entirely but reducing the force of the blow and potential bodily harm - I see that as a different story. I still don't think that's good but it at least suggests that the offending party was not being 110% negligent.

I really don't think ski patrol pulls enough passes, at any mountain ... of course, ski patrol is not always there when these things happen.

On a related side note: given how many times I have nearly been hit by skiers, it REALLY pisses me off about how they are always yammering on about how they constantly get hit by snowboarders. I know they aren't talking about carvers, but it still sounds totally ridiculous to me.

[bjvircks]

Yeah... it sucks that you got hit and hurt... but at least the guy followed thru with you at the scene and afterwards at the aid room.

Too many times we get the attitude from them 'why don't you have eyes in the back of your head so you can get out of my way, you dumba$$ boarder??!!'

You can bill him for some physical therapy, pain relief massage therapy and throw in some chiropractic for good measure. I'm serious! He slammed you and could have broken your neck. If you send him some bills, he's still getting off cheap.

[b0ardski]

I've had several near misses this year, probably 65%/35% ski/board ratio. Most of the skier near misses have been racer types doing 3 times my downhill speed.

Admittedly I'm a piste hog & check a lot of speed carving slightly uphill which is very confusing to most people, even those with lots of expirience.

I am very diligent about waiting for traffic windows and often spin 360s at speed on heelsides just to check for oncoming speedsters. Also I've started adamantly telling people I ride/ski with to stay well behind me because I often check all my speed. After a collision with a fellow carver I am very leary about going 1st because I will NEVER hit anyone downhill of me, I'll eat it before that happens.

When I carve by others who are standing still and then they start down as I pass, I will carve hard to a complete stop below them & wait for them to go on, staring them down till they are well below me.

My sense of humor does not exist when people cut me off while riding.

I could not enjoy carving at a crowded area & try to avoid saturdays altogether.

[KingCrimson]

When I carve by others who are standing still and then they start down as I pass, I will carve hard to a complete stop below them & wait for them to go on, staring them down till they are well below me.

This is basically my rule. If ANYONE is behind me, I stop and let em go. I trust myself more to not hit them than I do them to not hit me. This goes for everyone, especially since my dad is now making hardbooter half moons, it's good that we stagger run starts. But never again will I allow someone to be less than 100 feet behind me when I'm doing GS turns, not after I got hit by my brother

[Arclite]

My dad's dislocated the same shoulder twice, same story both times. once at mammoth too.

When he was perpendicular to the fall line and slowing down, someone took his feet out from under him and he landed on his elbow and pop, there goes the weasel.

[Loc]

Sucks to hear about your accident! Lots of close calls for me this season as I got better and faster. The only thing I've been able to do is scan for everyone uphill that can be a problem on toeside and stop for a breather if I don't feel comfortable. Not so easy on heel tho. Someone needs to step up and make goggles with carvdar.

[bumpyride]

First we have to take a look at the typical skier/snowboarder.

Skidded turns very little lateral movement across the slope.

Some mainlining down the hill, almost imperceptable turns or speed checks.

Those on carving skiers typically seem to use 25 to 50 % of the lateral area on a slope.

Sill level, slope awareness and skier/snowboarder awarenss vary from day 1, to rank beginner, to rank intermediate, to rank experienced, and then just to rank period those morons mainling down the hill

Now go to the carving community here. Let's face it boys and girls, nobody take the slope like we do when we're in full carve mode. We are the wild card here. Nobody does this and there are so few of us that the skier/snowboad community just doesn't have a sense of what's coming up. The only ones that know what is coming around the next turn is us. As the sole beneficiary of that knowledge, it's up to us individually to assess the situation and act accordingly.

When there are muliple accidents happening in the same manner, ie. hit from behind by a skier/snowboarder that just didn't see us coming, it is of little comfort to be in the right and in the hospital. Downhill skier having the right of way just doesn't count when we're hurt.

boardski is correct. I follow that rule also. I will stop if I see someone coming because I know they don't know what the heck is coming up from my bag of tricks, and why should they? They haven't seen it before so why should they expect it. We are coming from the periphery not from their immediate line of sight. It's almost like we are getting t-boned when running a stop sign. Who expects a car to run the stop sign so they keep going, until it's too late. We're coming from a side road.

Protect yourself and wait until the coast is clear and then check uphill every opportunity that you can or join me in the bumps where I never worry about getting hit from a bunch of wimps. I was going to say pu**ys but I didn't want to offend anyone.

[b0ardski]

I agree with you Bumpy, in the last 20yrs I've never once been worried about being hit on a bump run, but I don't get those lovely layed out G's there either:1luvu:

[Dr D]

I have taken to signaling bicycle style with my arms at every transition in the slope and anytime I pass stationary people. I also have ditched the earphones in favor of loud off key singing/yelling particulary when approaching trail merges etc.

IT sounds dopey but it has saved me on many occasions. people hear something out of the ordinary and they check up to investigate. war whoops work too!

one of my boarding crew wears a cow bell on his pack that klanks and klunks all the way down the mtn. IT works pretty good and of course you can always yell " we need more COWBELL":eplus2:

[b0ardski]

I do arm signals too, with the added extension of poles for emphasis:eplus2:

[Allee]

Hope you heal fast. There's nothing scarier than being taken out from behind like that. especially when you hear the skidding skis just long enough beforehand to know 'crap, this is gonna hurt'. I got nailed at Nakiska in March. I have to take some of the blame for it because after being careful to check uphill all morning in heavy traffic, I pulled a lazy heelside across the hill without looking, mainly because I was only 150 yards down the run from the cat track. When the guy hit me, he knocked me clean off my feet, and I'm not a lightweight. I had screwed ribs for six weeks even after my back protector took 90% of the hit - I shudder to think what I'd feel like without that.

We can only figure that he must have BOMBED off the lift, and rather than following the cat track around, had run straight downhill from the exit ramp. That's the only way he could have been up to the speed he was by the time he got to me. Seriously though, when there are as many people around as there were that morning, you have to know that pulling those sort of speeds is just asking for trouble.

When the crew and I carve at Nakiska, we're so, so careful to stay out of the way of skiers. The riding we do means that we take up most of the hill, so we're pretty much against the traffic heading down. Sometimes we'll wait on the edge of the run for two or three minutes waiting for an opening, and we'll always signal the rider coming downhill if we're parked and we see a b-liner coming. Nonetheless, we have close encounters all the time.

The next time I went out I almost had a repeat - except this time I saw the kid (a ski jibber) coming, and bailed on the turn. One of the crew saw the whole thing and gave him an earful - and he was right, in that the kid SAW me pulling a predictable, controlled line down the hill, using one side of the run, and chose to ski straight into me! WTF are these people thinking?

[philw]

WTF are these people thinking?

No, I think they aren't thinking. And I don't think that's going to change any time soon. Defensive techniques are the way to go: ride faster than them.

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

Sorry to hear about your accident and injuries. Pretty scary for sure.

Keep in mind that in the US, accidents in the ski areas can be very similar to an auto accident in regards to liability. The ski areas are largely protected via your lift ticket liability waivers. The skier/ snowboarders are on their own when it comes to the accidents. Much like an auto accident, if you hit someone from behind, you are at fault.

[Radial]

Hey,

Sorry about your accident. Those things take a lot of energy and even if you arn't hurt the anger can ruin an otherwise good day.

I kind of agree with Bumpy about the fact that we are in the minority and really have to accept the burden of looking out for ourselves.

I was just thinking about something Mike Jacoby (see other thread) said to me at a clinic last year which has changed my riding style and helped with this problem. He told me to focus on the first part of the turn through the middle with less edge on the bottom. The effect of this is that the acceleration comes down hill, not across. I used to have a tendency to freeze into my "Jack M" pose at the end of every turn which takes up a lot of space and is not really porductive in terms of setting up for the next turn.

Now my line down the hill is more consistent with the surrounding skiers and I am much harder to hit.

[Dr D]

ITs perfectly possible to run a similiar line as the skiers however it leads to mach scnell speeds and puts us in the same category as the previously discussed perps:freak3:

[OhD]

Thanks for all the expressions of concern. I went to my orthopedist (the shoulder one - not the leg one, the foot one, the back one or the wrist one) friday to get it checked out now that the initial trauma has subsided. He determined that nothing was very seriously injured, but that I will be needing surgery in the indefinite future to correct subacromial impingement that has apparently been developing for awhile now. He did my left shoulder a couple of years ago - milling out bone that's been growing downward into the acromial arch and pinching off the bursa and rotator cuff. He gave me a shot of cortisone to mitigate the inflammation and a follow-up in a month. The shot worked wonders - not back to 100% but I can sleep better even after spending the weekend on heavy yard chores entailing my chainsaw (almost as much fun as Fin's CNC mill) and various other implements of destruction. It's still kind of sore, but tincture of time and ibuprofen should take care of it. My lip is back to normal size and the scabs are all gone, so my love life is even recovering.

As to riding style - I came into carving via skiing, then 14 years of snowboarding and trying to master on my board everything I could do on skis. That included zipper-line bumps, the wedel, short-swing dynamic skid turns, powder-8's, and carved GS turns. I always was under the impression that the single fundamental skill was turning - actually changing the direction of travel. One could see skiers and boarders of any skill level tearing down the mountain at silly speeds - but you could distinguish the skilled ones from the herd by the fact that they could control where they went at any speed, and control their speed wherever they went. I've always tried (OK - I've had a few idiot lapses of judgement) to ski/ride within my level of skill, but to frequently push it higher (which occasions quite a few falls) where I can do so without endangering others. Even so, I've been on both sides of a good scare more than once.

Keeping the speed under control when carving requires that we hold turns longer - through greater angle - so we can spend time running across the slope where friction and aero drag can burn it off. Clean carves incur very little of the "displacement" resistance created by pushing snow around. Clean carves are quiet for that reason - most of the work is spent packing the snow into the track and edging on the intact structure, rather than bulldozing it off to the side and balancing largely against the continuous force it takes to move snow at that rate. When we give up the skidding drag, we have to either go faster until aerodynamic drag limits our speed or spend more of our path out of the fall line and effectively on a lower grade. I suspect most of us like to find the happy medium where we are carving clean lines at near our personal limit of strength and edge-holding ability (for given snow). On medium pitches, that usually means full 180-degree C turns.

Dennis

[OhD]

Thanks for all the expressions of concern. I went to my orthopedist (the shoulder one - not the leg one, the foot one, the back one or the wrist one) friday to get it checked out now that the initial trauma has subsided. He determined that nothing was very seriously injured, but that I will be needing surgery in the indefinite future to correct subacromial impingement that has apparently been developing for awhile now. He did my left shoulder a couple of years ago - milling out bone that's been growing downward into the acromial arch and pinching off the bursa and rotator cuff. He gave me a shot of cortisone to mitigate the inflammation and a follow-up in a month. The shot worked wonders - not back to 100% but I can sleep better even after spending the weekend on heavy yard chores entailing my chainsaw (almost as much fun as Fin's CNC mill) and various other implements of destruction. It's still kind of sore, but tincture of time and ibuprofen should take care of it. My lip is back to normal size and the scabs are all gone, so my love life is even recovering.

As to riding style - I came into carving via skiing, then 14 years of snowboarding and trying to master on my board everything I could do on skis. That included zipper-line bumps, the wedel, short-swing dynamic skid turns, powder-8's, and carved GS turns. I always was under the impression that the single fundamental skill was turning - actually changing the direction of travel. One could see skiers and boarders of any skill level tearing down the mountain at silly speeds - but you could distinguish the skilled ones from the herd by the fact that they could control where they went at any speed, and control their speed wherever they went. I've always tried (OK - I've had a few idiot lapses of judgement) to ski/ride within my level of skill, but to frequently push it higher (which occasions quite a few falls) where I can do so without endangering others. Even so, I've been on both sides of a good scare more than once.

Keeping the speed under control when carving requires that we hold turns longer - through greater angle - so we can spend time running across the slope where friction and aero drag can burn it off. Clean carves incur very little of the "displacement" resistance created by pushing snow around. Clean carves are quiet for that reason - most of the work is spent packing the snow into the track and edging on the intact structure, rather than bulldozing it off to the side and balancing largely against the continuous force it takes to move snow at that rate. When we give up the skidding drag, we have to either go faster until aerodynamic drag limits our speed or spend more of our path out of the fall line and effectively on a lower grade. I suspect most of us like to find the happy medium where we are carving clean lines at near our personal limit of strength and edge-holding ability (for given snow). On medium pitches, that usually means full 180-degree C turns.

Dennis

[Fastskiguy]

Let's face it boys and girls, nobody take the slope like we do when we're in full carve mode. We are the wild card here.

Gotta second this comment because it's really true. Yeah, the downhill guy has right of way but if you're doing 180's down the hill, you're moving so fast from one side to the other, the averages snowsports enthusiast isn't going to be able to time a pass. You literally have to go *at* the guy in front because when you get there, he'll be safe on the other side of the run. But that's not "instinctive" so we get hit. Rules are great butpeople are stupid and it doesn't matter when YOU get injured. And the ski patrol and hill management don't really know what we're doing out there.

So....keep checking uphill and be careful out there!

[Radial]

I was just looking at the video on the Crazy Wild Guy thread and thinking about his turns. He is obviously riding at a very high level in a style that many of us would aspire to. Please note that he is not turning 180 degrees and is not taking up the entire run. His turn radius and general line down the hill are pretty similar to an expert skier. He is going fast but is clearly not out of control. I think he would be pretty hard to hit but it is always helpful to be on a perfect empty run......

[Fastskiguy]

LOL, as an expert skier I can say that expert skiers get clipped too when "free carving"....but realistically, the alpine board is better at 180's than any ski so the riders are more at-risk