Maybe it was denial, maybe it was shock, maybe it was PTSD, maybe it was a combo of all. Whatever it was, charging mountains and carving rails was about as far from my mind as you could get for the many months I was well and truly deep in the trenches of recovery from said ‘whoopsie’.
That late August morning, I had misjudged where I was and had taken one turn too many as I arced turns of white dusty chalk promptly proceeding to be bluffed and launched at pace off the precipice of Chute 7 at the very top of Treble Cone's Motatapu Chutes having had zero intention of going in there that day. Without any intention of being where I was, I embarked on the ultimate tuck-n-roll extravaganza over anything and everything in my path to come to a stop no less than 450 vertical metres below where I had unintentionally launched.
In full yard sale style, by the time I had ground to a halt I was minus anything that could be ripped off with the impact including goggles, gloves, poles and skis.
When you chew yourself up this well the helicopter comes to you. Cue a scenic flight in the Otago Rescue Helicopter, checking out from real life via anaesthesia to relocate my hip, a full body CT scan, a bulk bin supply of opioid pain relief, issued with a set of crutches and sent on my merry way the following day.
Everything was a blur, including how it had happened and why I was now couch bound looking at the mountains rather than being up and amongst them.
I was sore, but I’d been worse. The reality of what had happened was a long way off and my usual method of coping with the immediate shock of the situation was to find ironic humour when having to converse about what had happened.
“It could be worse”, “I’m still alive”, “I don’t remember it after the ‘oh f*&k moment”, were a collection of some of the one liners I had on lock.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October - November 2019-Ausgabe von Adventure Magazine.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October - November 2019-Ausgabe von Adventure Magazine.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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