Skiing Catastrophe

By: Ryan G.

You might laugh your head off when you read this and to you it might honestly be funny. You should believe me though, if it happened to you, there wouldn’t be any laughing. So read on. I envy you for being able to laugh about this, but even if you laugh, this is my story. I remember it like it was yesterday…It was a wonderfully snowy day and I was taking advantage of the snow which of course meant, skiing. I was skiing at Pine Knob with my friends Jake, Evan and my brother Sam. Jake and I split with Evan and Sam to go on a very steep black diamond ski slope. We had skied down that slope two times before and I had done fine so when we went back for the last time, I was arrogant and full of myself. As we started up the chairlift I thought to myself, this is going to be great. What could go wrong? It seemed I would soon have an answer to that question. After what felt like forever, we finally got to the top. As I looked down, I had a flash of worry and for a second I was thinking I wasn’t going to go. In seconds though, the feeling disappeared and I was ready to go once more. Jake and I talked for a minute and then my skis went over the top of the hill and I was heading down.

At first as I made my way down I was fine and going slow but then I went over the second part of the slope and it was all over. I just couldn’t turn! I was heading down the hill snow flying behind me the wind smashing in my face and I was probably going 100 MILES PER HOUR! I saw Jake wipeout hard but I still couldn’t stop. I fell backwards and landed on my skis but I still kept going! I crashed into a chairlift pole, fell over, hit my skis, and had the wind knocked out of me! I try to stand up and felt an aching pain in my right ribs. I was desperate. I was yelling for help desperately until the ski patrol finally came to my aid. They took me to the patrol building to make sure I was okay. Hours later I was at the hospital to get X-Rays. The doctors said that I bruised my ribs and that I just needed some pain reliever medicine and I would be fine.