January 5, 2014 Crystal Mountain

A lot of ice and rocks and a couple of really nice areas. We hung out on Powder Bowl's Main Chute till noon after a quick round of poking found lots of marginal coverage and skidded ice. Powder Bowl required a sidestep/walk through dirt and rock to get in – the weekend crowd hasn't been nice. Once in, it was smooth, narrow, and fast. Green Valley Bowl, north side was nice, but not much after that. After noon, the very sunny aspects below mid-Frontside softened, although rocks kept all but Upper Greg's Gulch and Lower Sunnyside in the loser column. By day's end, the bottom of Sunnyside's funnel was mandatory rock hits. Slim pickins, but good pickins.

Ken
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I had my 1st turns of the year and decided to ski the groomers. On 3rd run did Snorting elk not realizing it was ungroomed and fell on bottom creek crossing at very low speed and broke bone in writing hand. Out for month at least.

Moral of story is don't ski when you can snowboard instead.

At least I made the sacrifice to Ullr for the rest of you, it shoud dump non-stop for next 4 wks as result of this.

Sorry, conditions have been marginal. But I dont know about the ski vs board thing....usually snowboarders screw up their wrists. But anyway thanks for your part - weather forcast for a while sound nice.....thanks again.

forecasts are just a tease.
b

At least I made the sacrifice to Ullr for the rest of you, it shoud dump non-stop for next 4 wks as result of this.

You know, you can still ski with a broken wrist in a cast. A large fleece mitten in an XL waterproof shell mitten and one pole. Did that for 8 weeks one year. (the next year was 8 weeks with the other pole nursing a blown up elbow). Although with this year's snow, might not be worth the effort.

forecasts are just a tease.
b

Agree, but don't we all spend a lot of bandwidth trying to figure it out?

Ken

You know, you can still ski with a broken wrist in a cast. A large fleece mitten in an XL waterproof shell mitten and one pole. Did that for 8 weeks one year. (the next year was 8 weeks with the other pole nursing a blown up elbow). Although with this year's snow, might not be worth the effort.

Hmm, might be possible although I'm a boarder mainly but could mayby salvage the season if we get this big dump late this week and I can semi ride. Boarding is 100% guaranteed for me to fall but its also the best way for me to ride the mountain, maybe the cast will be OK. I'll ask the doc to make an extra beefy reinforced one when I get it set after the swelling goes down.

FWIW, several Januarys ago I collided with a jackass teenage skier at high speed on a groomed run at Stevens Pass who was skiing backwards to show-off for his friends. It happened so fast that my reaction to push him away from me as his tails crossed the nose of my board resulted in me punching him in the side of the head with a loosely-closed fist.

The collision resulted in a spiral fracture in my pinky finger and a cracked knuckle where the finger meets the hand. The ER splinted me up and sent me off to see a hand specialist over at UW. I dodged the knife by the narrowest of margins and therefore didn't need pins or a cast. They put me in a removable splint made of hard plastic molded specifically for my hand. Doc said I should take it easy and not participate in any impact sports for 4-6 weeks; physical therapist said as long as I had the splint on I would be good to go.

I Sat on the sidelines for a few weeks through our typical Jan. lull and got back out on it in early Feb. when the snow resumed falling. No issues, aside from the awkwardness of using mittens and having a hard splint under them. Fell on it several times, didn't do any damage and in the long run it probably helped with the PT.

In fact, I paid my first visit to Xtal with that splint on. If I recall, it was the weekend of the LBS and the avy danger was so high that both passes were closed as was 542 east of Glacier. Since the only option was to head south, south we went. But somehow I managed to grab two left mitts. Discovering my blunder upon arrival, I put a glove liner on under the splint then wrapped my hand in a plastic grocery bag and duct taped the bag around my wrist to keep it in place. Moral of the story: when using non-standard equipment, always verify that you have the right stuff before heading out the door... or maybe just don't punch a skier in the fi(r)st place.

Ha, I like your signature Pipedream!

Similar story today after getting the real analysis done. Hard cast for a long spiral fracture on index finger metacarpal (and broken thumb on other hand but that one is OK to leave alone). Doc said no way to snow stuff, he was a skier too. It is lose already and another impact could easily result in surgery even if light. That rules out riding for now but could probably ski with my kids as they are not on challenging terrain yet.

I think it was pole straps that caused it, i'm not leaving them on in future.

I'm so itching after this spell of decent snowfall.....