I survived my first ski trip after ACL surgery just fine with no injuries. The knee worked great and after I stopped wearing the brace on the fourth day, it felt perfectly normal. It helped that I only fell 2 or 3 times during the week, with no major wipeouts.
This trip was with the Clear Lake Area Ski Club and the Texas Ski Council. There were over 600 TSC skiers total, with 80 being from CLASC. Our club took two groups up. The first group flew into the Vail/Eagle airport and bused over. Our group, for which I was drafted to be assistant trip leader, flew directly into the Aspen airport Saturday evening. We had eight people on a later flight that got to spend the night in Denver when the airport closed due to poor visibility. They arrived around noon on Sunday. Our slopeside condos were very nice. We were about two blocks up the hill from the Snowmass Village mall. Those of us who didn't always take the shuttles up and down the hill got lots of extra exercise.
The first day we had an inch or two of fresh snow to play with. That still wasn't enough to cover all the rocks, etc. They could really use some more snow. The snow that was on the ground was, for the most part, in good shape. There just wasn't quite enough of it. It would've been a great week to be on rental skis. Mine survived with no major damage. Most of the rocks were pretty small and loose. The big rocks were for the most part already covered with Ptex. :)
On Monday some of us went over to Aspen. The wind was gusting to 50 mph and the gondola was shut down all day. There were a lot fewer rocks and bare spots there and they had more open runs. My first objective was to go back to the run where I broke my wrist the last time I was there (1/94). I got in 4 or 5 high speed runs on it before the rest of our group caught up with me. Except for the wind blasting me in the face when skiing down to the base, it was a great ski day. I'd love to go back there when the snow is good. The same goes for the other mountains.
On Tuesday I went over to Aspen Highlands with James Broughton. We hit tons of rocks on the blue and black runs. The snow on the four double diamond runs that we did was great, but there were also lots of rocks and tree stumps mixed in. Nothing like skiing knee deep powder knowing you could ski into a submerged tree or rock any second. Around noon we went down Kessler's Bowl, which had just been opened. The snow was fantastic and I didn't notice as many rocks. At the bottom of the run there were two gullies you could go down. I ended up going down the one on the right, since it was closer to me. After I got down to the catwalk at the bottom, a ski patroller came up to me and said I had just skied a closed run. I described exactly where I went and that I was at least 50 feet to the left of any closure signs. He told me to stay put so one of the ski patrol supervisors could talk to me. I told him exactly what had happened and how the only closed signs were on the far right edge of the tree line, facing into the run. To most people, this means "don't go into the trees". The standard rule of thumb is "if you can read the closed sign, you're on the correct side of it". He continued to insist that the gully was "clearly marked as closed", even though it wasn't clear to me, the 5 or 6 people who went down it in front of me, nor the 2 who followed me down it. I'm not sure I ever convinced him to reposition the signs. I did convince him that I had no desire to ski a closed run, especially in those conditions. He let me off with a warning. He said they'd been having a lot of problems with the locals poaching closed runs. James and I were tired of dodging rocks and had skied all of the good runs that were open. We went down and caught the shuttle over to Buttermilk to finish the day. Considering they were reporting a 15" base, they had remarkably good coverage. We never did find any good tree runs there, however.
On Wednesday, I skied at Snowmass. The Big Burn area was closed since most of the loose snow and been blown off of the area and deposited on the upper mountain. There were a couple of black runs under the High Alpine lift that were in good shape so I skied there most of the day. Only about 40% of the mountain was open at that point.
Thursday morning we had our club races on the Nastar course. About 30 minutes before our club was supposed to start, I was riding up the lift and saw James lying on his back with his eyes rolled back in his head. He had taken a bad fall after a near-collision with another skier and had been knocked out. By the time I got off the lift and got down to him (after making sure the ski patrol was on their way) he had regained consciousness. We convinced him to take the sled ride down to the clinic and get checked out. He lost an hour or two worth of memory and had a monster headache. He seemed to recover ok but was a little wobbly when we had dinner that night. I took him shopping for a helmet that night so he's ready for the next trip.
The next morning I got to see another skier get a concussion. She was an intermediate skier that I had talked to earlier and had helped fix her boot buckles. About 30 minutes later I came upon her as she was lying on the ground. Two ski instructors had sent for the ski patrol. She didn't remember talking to me or having had problems with her boots. In fact, she was doing good just to remember her name. She wasn't wearing a helmet either. At least one other member of our club has seen the light and bought one on this trip. Hopefully more will follow. The sight of a friend lying unconscious on the snow is not something I ever want to see again.
We really could've used James in the races, along with another good racer that hurt his ankle just before we started racing. We ended up coming in second place and had 37 racers start the course. Not a bad turnout, but with just one or two more racers, we could've taken first place. It was still nice to beat some of the other clubs. Dan Willett won a silver medal. I got a bronze with a 37 handicap. That's about 10 points higher than I'd like. Lisa Solberg, Kim Hutchinson, Georgeann Reitz, Sharon Deshotel, Dave Copous, Tom Logan, Dallas Ives, Rick Weller (our trip leader), and Jim Moncur also got bronze medals. The software used for the race had numerous bugs, including a Y2K glitch. It made my day a real pain, as well as for the other race directors and TSC officers. They worked until almost midnight to get things (mostly) straightened out.
For the individual races we had 8 club members race. Lisa came in fourth in the women's division, with Kim in eighth and Karen Ives in ninth place. They each won a bronze medal. Dallas finished thirteenth in the senior men's' division and got a bronze. Tom Logan finished eleventh in the men's division with a silver medal. I was 0.13 seconds behind him and got a bronze. Dan ended up fourteenth with a bronze and Lee Nash (a last second replacement after Dave broke his binding) finished in 23rd. Of course, there was yet another problem with the software and they miscalculated our handicaps. Supposedly our medals will be mailed to me after they recompute the results using the proper par times. The whole race thing was one big SNAFU. As soon as the races were over, we caught the bus to Aspen and skied there for the rest of the day. No wind this time and we got in some good skiing.
I met a man from one of the San Antonio ski clubs that has been skiing on an artificial knee for four years. He skied very well but avoided mogul runs, as would be expected. Another skier was wearing high-dollar custom braces on both knees. He had both knees completely reconstructed after a bad fall at Tahoe last year. Made my knee surgery seem trivial. Both of them competed in the individual races and did fairly well.
Our trip back home on Saturday was fairly uneventful. Now I just have to catch up on laundry. Rick was a great trip leader and was so organized that I hardly had to do anything. We got some great rental deals from the Gene Taylor's ski shop in Snowmass Village. I just wish I had taken advantage of them and saved my skis the wear and tear. I had planned on winning the Salomon skis and bindings that were given away at the final awards banquet, but Georgeann won them instead. At least they went to someone in our club.
Only 26 more days until I go skiing at Mt. Bachelor, Oregon. Think SNOW!!!