Nine weeks ago, on February 2, I broke six ribs while skiing at Sugarbush in Vermont. I spent a few nights in the hospital, and then a month living in a recliner and even longer sleeping in a recliner. After recliner life ended, I slowly started to return to normal and eventually, about two-and-a-half weeks ago, I was able to return to skiing, albeit taking it easy.

In my road to recovery, there was one more thing I knew I wanted to do before this ski season ended, and that was return to Sugarbush and ski Sleeper, which is the run where the injury happened. I wasn’t fearful to return to the mountain or that run per se, but there’s something about carrying that weight into next season that bothered me and I wanted to put it behind me. With it being April 6, and the snow base slowly dwindling as the days passed, I figured today was a good time to finally head to the Mad River Valley and return to the spot where it happened.

My very first run of the day was down Sleeper. While riding the lift to access Sleeper, I saw a fox run out onto the snow and back into the woods. It startled a skier close by, but it was pretty cool to see. When I got to Sleeper I was delighted to see there was still plenty of snow on the run. I like Sleeper because it has a couple of trees scattered around. The run isn’t a glade; there just happens to be trees.

The scene of the accident. I caught an edge between these trees.

As I skied down Sleeper, I came to a rest in the exact spot it happened and briefly reflected on all that had transpired since. I won’t bore you with it here, but my life has changed since that day. In many ways, I’m a different person. I caught an edge between the two trees you see in the picture above. I don’t know if I hit the tree or not, but if I did, it would’ve been in a slide, because I fell forward. All of the broken ribs were in my back, which makes me think maybe I slid into the tree and then bounced off it and back onto the trail.

I skied Stowe yesterday and I can say with certainty there is more snow at Stowe than Sugarbush, but there’s still a lot of snow on the groomers at Sugarbush, though you can find plenty of bare spots. Outside of groomers there’s basically no snow, which was not the case at Stowe. I was skiing trees yesterday at Stowe.

Across the mountain, the snow was pretty soft, but there were definitely some firm spots up high. Visibility was low up high, so I got a few runs in up there and then spent the rest of my day lapping Super Bravo and North Lynx. They had around 40 or 45 runs open total, which was enough to keep things interesting. There’s still a lot of snow on the runs they tend to keep open deep into April.

I’m not sure when my next ski day will be. As I mentioned yesterday, I've got construction work going on at my house and that’ll be continuing this week, which means I won’t be able to ski after work. However, if the weather isn’t favorable, they may not come, which means I may be able to get out. With that being said, Whiteface has concluded daily operations for the season, so if I ski this week after work it’ll definitely be in Vermont.

Never Quit Skiing,

Lincoln

RETURNING TO SUGARBUSH 9 WEEKS AFTER INJURY

SKIING TREES AT STOWE IN APRIL