What to do after getting hit on the hill

Skiing on tower 10 this morning I got rammed hard in my back and dumped over by an out of control snow boarder going straight trying to keep up with his moron friends that had just straight lined past me.  His defense was the that is goggles were fogged and he could not see me.  I'm hard to miss.  I'm a little sore but so far ok.  We will see how I feel in the morning.

What if this $hithead had hit a small kid?  He could have seriously hurt some one.  After yelling at him for 5 mins I told him to follow me to Patrol so we could gather his info.  He didn't come down the hill and after waiting for him for 10 mins at the bottom I figured I put the fear in him suffieciently and gave up.

This guy was a 20 something young adult that appeared to have been drinking already on a Sunday morning.  Snowboards are inherently less safe than skiers due to the blind spot they have but it just as well been this buddy on skis that just missed me.  There is limited terrain out there so excessive speed or straight lining is just something that needs to punished do put to a stop to.  

I didn't have my uniform on or I would have taken his pass and made him come get it from the office.

How do you all handle getting hit?

Had a very similar experience several yrs ago .the SOB a late teena type was out of control on a trail way over his paygrade .

i saw  it coming in my peripheral vision  , so i got as far left as i could at the edge of the trail to avoid him but the db couldnt turn right .  Well Right at the lip of the headwall the sob lost it , slid out and nailed me . The impact broke my binding , spun me around backwards ,down i went hitting my head on the hardpack . Luckily my helmet took the blow but i was stunned . The prick never stopped to see if i was ok . I cursed him out but that was it .

 I was skiing alone .so had no wingman to tail him or I swear i would have cold cocked the prick .

But his fat ass was gone by the time i got straightened up from the impact . I reported it but that was cold comfort ,but the hill gave me some rentals to use the rest of the day

Too many assholes with few skills out there on stuff they have no right to be on .

Last year my daughter was hit twice on her first day out. I always give them a good talking to and I try to remain unemotional as best I can but apparently I have a look in my eye that scares people. A few weeks later a kid hit a friend and her two kids on a catwalk traverse, that look came out as I explained why you need to be in control and I swear his lower lip started to tremble and then I kind of felt bad. No one was hurt but my thinking was on par with yours, what if you do hurt someones kid? All three people that hit us were on skis btw.

It's just not worth it. Now that I'm older I don't give a damn about the being "rad" factor, if you are possibly going to hurt someone you need to mellow out. I go the other way too sometimes, and by that I mean when it's real busy and I'm a little scared because of how fast unskilled people are going I just leave or go hiking away from he crowds. I swear, wrod skiing imo is way more dangerous than back country skiing.

Around the year 2000 my at the time girlfriends college buddy was visiting Jackson with his wife and while skiing down the bowl under the Sublette lift they stopped in a highly visible and safe spot. A young snowboarder was playing a game of buzz the tourist and hit his wife. She suffered major head trauma and in order to try and keep her airway clear he had to do two finger sweeps to remove the blood and the fragmented pieces of teeth and jaw bone. She died in his arms.

On a serious note. I remember when I first took my kids skiing, the people at windham said that the helmet was more to protect them from other skiers than from themselves. RA, that's horrible. Sorry to hear that.

2 years ago I started a shit storm on this site after I was hit from behind by a snowboarder. I was hit so hard I had a total yard sale..I almost killed the kid, but held my cool and the kid apologized. But I was hurt and had to go home.

RA. That is horrible ,what an incredible episode .

Hope you feel better soon Coach.

As an aside, my daughter is learning how to drive.  I've tried to make it very clear that it is probably more likely to get into an accident due to the carelessness of another driver than due to your own error provided you drive safely.  The same probably applies to skiing.  Provided your not the A-hole.

That he was a boarder is not really relevant.  That he was an AH that was riding way too fast giving the conditions and limited terrian is.  With limited trails open a host patrol on tower 10 might be a good idea.

Coach Z wrote

How do you all handle getting hit?

Avoid going to the shit show

I was there to work.  I honestly felt like sleeping in but that was not an option.

warp daddy wrote

RA. That is horrible ,what an incredible episode .

 Ya, it is. I know the story is kind of a buzz kill but I tell it so people realize how serious it can be. If people are skiing out of control and are a danger to others they need to learn about this stuff. It's amazing how unaware people are of their surroundings these days. I kind of think it's in part of what we have become with our litigious society. I wonder if this behavior is a product of our overly abundant focus on safety and people constantly having railings to lean on, orange cones marking icy sidewalks, and any other example where people are coddled and told about dangers. Have we been dumbed down?

I thought about this the other day while skiing at the Snowbowl. Lines of snowboarders dotted across the slope sat on their rears and no one was looking uphill. Half a ski runs real estate was occupied and none of these kids thought that they might be in danger, wtf?

These damn kids got their heads implanted up their asses.

A note on that story: I only met them once so I wasn't close to them. It was a terrible tragic event, from what my x told me she was the love of his life.

RA

Do you know if the caught and sent the scum that hit her to jail?  

You know I followed the story for a little while but I don't remember the final outcome. No matter what tho it won't bring his wife back.

Back in high school I used to ski at Mountain Creek a fair amount. Some of the trails there were like being in the middle of a shooting range. I still remember hearing some punk kid in my math class say "I know lots of people get mad when we buzz people at high speed, but they don't know how awesome it feels. It's just such a rush, man!" I felt like punching the dude in the face.

I agree with RA, I generally feel much safer in the backcountry.

Haven't had this experience in many years but I would advise getting a picture of the dude if possible. Not sure what else you can do. It's a tough one. This kind of thing is the height of irresponsibility. I just let my older son sign up for ski club at school. It'll be the first time he skis without me. A dope like this is my worst nightmare. Worst part is his school goes to mountain creek which is combat skiing on a good day.

raisingarizona wrote

You know I followed the story for a little while but I don't remember the final outcome. No matter what tho it won't bring his wife back.

One of these turds going to jail and becoming somebody's bitch might get the rest of $hithead nations attention and make our slopes safer.  One can dream right?

Sorry to hear you were clocked, hope no other complications arise.
I was only hit once many years ago so I don't know how I would react. I am usually not out in crowded conditions though.

Happened to my wife her second time trying Alpine skiing.  She wound up having an AC separation in her shoulder.  She won't do 'downhill' skiing at a resort anymore.  She will however go down hills with her XCD skis with no other people around.  No other serious injuries to report thus far.

Correct, some of Mountain Creek's trails are a bit of a demolition derby.  I've been hit at least once there, and had many more close calls.  The biggest shitshow of a trail is Horizon on a weekend.  It's full of marginal skiers with no clue what they're doing and has tons of 4 way trail intersections.  There's also plenty of other people who are skiing way too fast on it.  

The other bad trail(s) is/are the main run on South Peak.  That peak as well as Bear Peak used to be completely terrain parks, so no one who wasn't going to be hitting the jumps tended to ski there.  Then they decided to make the racing trail on Bear Peak which resulted in no more park features on that peak anymore, which meant... even more people on the already overcrowded South Peak.  

Meanwhile, when there's racing on Bear Peak, the trails are laid out so that there is only one trail open to the public on big racing days, which ends up being a demolition derby, or if there's no racing, the entire peak is so quiet that you could hear crickets, while South Peak's liftline looks like Six Flags, and the trails like the NJ Turnpike with fast moving, heavy, aggressive, traffic.

They also did away with the Park Pass during this transition, which although never widely enforced, helped a little bit in making sure that those in the terrain park were at least trying to hit stuff.  The only way to get to the non park runs on Bear Peak, and back to Vernon and Granite is through the terrain parks on South Peak which results in even more close calls.

I've had too many close calls there to count.  I've had someone swerve directly in front of the takeoff or landing of a feature, which sometimes results in a crash due to not having enough speed for the feature.  I've almost landed directly on top of some idiots who were sitting on a blind landing of a jump.  There are also these areas where one must keep their speed up to avoid getting stuck, especially on a snowboard, and I've been cut off in those areas by skiers who didn't even look up when their trail merged in, resulting in the loss of all my momentum, and getting stuck.

The original "All Park South" was Intrawest's knee-jerk reaction to the failure of the Appalachian hotel.  It was supposed to get the "rif raff" park kids away from Vernon Peak and the hotel.  The hotel really failed because of the fact that a lodge is a prerequisite to lodging, and Vernon Peak had circus tents as a lodge at that time.  The new/old owners seemed to realize this and built the new Red Tail Lodge almost immediately after they came back.  They also seem to be moving away from the "All Park South", but not fully so.  I'm guessing that they're in a transition period and it gets done away with completely.  With terrain parks on both sides, there'd be more even crowds between south and north, and some more cruisers, which Mountain Creek needs more of.  South's terrain park trails should be Red Tail, Flying Fox, and the skier's left portion of Bakersfield.  Vernon's parks should be Independence Pass, Twist, and a mini park on skier's right of the Sugar Slope.  These parks need to be filled with features, and I mean multiple lines filled all season long.  That would probably be the best way to do things, and might be what is being moved toward.