Raging While Aging: Falling down

Tetons in the distance from northwest Yellowstone

Winter didn’t go as planned. The plan was simple: lots of alpine and skate skiing. The older I get, the more my alpine skiing tends to be off-piste. Bridger Bowl allows lift assisted side-country skiing, where after topping out on a lift, one can hike or skin into the adjacent backcountry. I typically do that a lot. On powder days—the only days I ski—I’ll start the day in bounds, but as soon as in bounds get tracked up, I head out of bounds. In part, I do this because this old body doesn’t like being bounced around through heavily tracked up snow and bumps, but it’s also that I relish getting into the backcountry: I earn my turns through smooth powder and wide-open runs in a quiet world.

Bradley Meadows. Bridger side-country

This year my plans were bigger. I had made preliminary plans with my son-in-law to make a few trips far outside the vicinity of the ski area and do some winter climbing and skiing. I also finally met someone my age, Rich, who is into day long backcountry ski treks. We managed two treks together, one into the Spanish Peaks Wilderness, the other into the northwest corner of Yellowstone.

Our ability to get out, however, was hampered by a winter that wasn’t. One of the warmest on record; rain instead of snow; brown instead of white in Bozeman. The few times it snowed, it warmed up right afterward. This turned what little creamy powder that fell into slush which heightened avalanche danger. The famous Bridger Bowl Cloud that dumps and protects snow at the ski hill was largely nonexistent this year.

Skate skiing was an even worse disaster. I do that on a golf course near my house. I got in 6 days before the year turned. That’s the only time there was snow in the valley.

Rich and Rob in the Spanish Peaks

So I bitched a lot about the conditions and didn’t get a lot of days in, alpine or skate. By late February, however, I was anxious to get more downhill skiing in before the season was over. I headed up to Bridger following an overnight 2.5-inch snow. I knew the base was thin, but I couldn’t help myself, I love to ski. I was in line when the lifts started, and I was still out skiing at midday on some fun steep terrain when things came apart. I uncovered a log on one turn and two turns later I was thrown down hard on ice. I don’t know what I hit. Maybe my tips got mired in slush while my tails were skating on ice and I just lost my balance, or my tips caught the nub of a buried tree branch. Whichever it was, I caught an outside edge; I heard my ribs crack on impact.

I lay in the snow just trying to breathe. My buddy Huk was right there. My ribs are broken. “Can you get up?” Not yet. It took about five minutes for me to stand and start gingerly making my way down. Just like that, the winter that wasn’t, was over for me. I limped home. The X-ray showed three broken ribs. I was going to be down for a while.

It’s psychologically difficult whenever the wheels come off. One doesn’t have to be 68 to sense the risk of lost time and lost fitness and to feel the press of the question: will I be able to get back to where I was? At this age, though, the question may press a bit harder. There are few my age out doing the things I do. In that sense I’m already on borrowed time.

It hurt enough to land me in the hospital for 2 nights; the nurses taught me that it was okay to take enough meds to kill the pain and stop the muscle spasms.

Spanish Peaks: view into Big Sky; local peaks

I started taking walks 6 days after the accident and started using a runner’s gait, at a walker’s pace, 2 days later. I lost some fitness for sure, but as the weeks progressed I was slowly getting back to myself. I was even considering a morning of corduroy skiing, but I wasn’t yet ready when the ski area shut down for the season in mid-March—unheard of, I know.

It’s now almost 5 weeks post-accident. I’ve run 80 miles and eased back into weightlifting. My back is mostly healed. I was starting to get excited about having regained most of my fitness when my right ankle started aching and became inflamed. My first reaction beyond "What new hell is this?" was to ignore it and keep running until it got bad enough for me to head to the doc: tendonitis. No running for the next few weeks.

Trail running with Forest on a rare snowy March day

This won’t be the thing that keeps me from getting back to where I was, but my fitness will lag this year. I see swimming and biking replacing running in my immediate future, and I’ll likely run less going forward even after the tendonitis relents.

I hadn’t planned to run much during the winter: skate and backcountry skiing filled the winter of my dreams. Tendonitis is just one more effect from our warm weather and lack of snow.

Longer term, the question looming in the minds of all of us, skiers, ice fisherman, even farmers, is whether this season is a one off or a harbinger of the future. Montana papers have made two points: this is among the warmest winters on record, and this has happened before. So maybe we have more seasons with fresh deep cold smoke in our future. Fingers are crossed.