Sunday January 7th, 2007 the last morning before driving back to Germany! I didn´t even get the chance to ski that day! Coming out of the lift, trying to avoid a kid on its way to collide with me, I blocked my skis under Karen´s skis and lost my balance. I fell backwards , my shoe stayed stucked on the ski and I felt a TERRIBLE pain in my left leg.
I thought it was broken, until I gathered the strength to move it and realized that if I could move it, it was surely not broken. Axel, my lovely brother in law helped me up, I tried to stand on my left leg and heard a nice "clack"sound feeling even more pain as if that was possible!
For a few minutes, I thought I was going to faint, I felt sick to my stomach, I was in schock and in pain. I sat on the snow, holding my leg, thinking that I would surely not be able to ski down! And then strangely enough, the pain got better and I started to focus on the people around me.
Two Austrian mountain rescuers were busy setting up a stretcher for me, Axel was helping them and Karen was trying to comfort me! When I was safely installed, they covered me up, leaving my face free and tried to put me on the lift. But it didn´t work our and they skied me down!
The ride was kind of fun, one guy in front one on the back, and me laying down in the middle popping my head every now and then worrying that they would tip me over! But they were very professional and very nice and we got back to Kleinarl in no time!
Karen and Axel met me at the lift. I had to wait another 30 minutes before laying down warmly in the ambulance. Why, would you ask me?! Because, the ambulance got snowed in, and they had to call for a tractor to help them out! Karen was keeping me posted on the progress of the ambulance while I was "abandonned" on the pavement, still in my little cocoon with no possibility to see anything! This is where we left Axel who went back up the piste to join his family.
Then we had a 15 minutes ride to Wagrain´s hospital: the pain in the knee wasn´t the harder to handle, the german spoken by the paramedics was! We needed to fill in a lot of papers and I had to concentrate really hard to follow and understand the questions! Karen met us at the hospital.
A doctor examined me, confirmed after taking an X-Ray that nothing was broken and sent me home advising me to consult an orthopedist during the week.
The drive back home was 6 hours long, not exactly confortable but we made it!

I do keep a very nice memory of Kleinarl, here is another page with info for summer and winter fun!