Rehab’in

I cannot complain about my rehab, although i always want more. Its been a long process but luckily for me there is light at the end of the tunnel. I have never expected anything but a full recovery, which is testimony to my optimism. I expect my body to respond properly and heal it self so we can continue to have fun in the mountains.

Since my injury I have met people who had similar injuries and a longer healing time. So i consider myself lucky. I am also pretty diligent with my exercises and like I said I expect to come back from this.

On Dec 3, I went skiing. I assumed since I have been biking a lot that skiing would be fairly easy. But I left that day almost in tears. I was unable to bear lots of weight on my left leg, much less carve and be able to respond to the mountain. I ended up painfully sideslipping my way down the run and watching my kids shred away from me.

Since then I have spent many days on the green runs, re-learning how to ski. The groomers are the best for weighting my ankle and getting the angulation and movements dialled. Its humbling to have to practice on the green runs but I have been feeling the gains.

Now I am able to carve up the blues, not non-stop but with strength. Carving my left ski and gaining reflex strength. In a way I am re-teaching my muscles how to ski, how to anticipate, respond and basically shred.

I have back country skied a few times. The first was an absolute crusher. I toured a couple of thousand feet and felt ok until I skied down and then it got bad…. things went really dark… the terrible lower elevation skiing had me screaming at my legs. Urging them to keep responding. It got to the point where I could not snow-plow, I could not go straight. I couldn’t do anything… It was F@$%ed…. My good leg was so tired it couldn’t hold me up, my weak leg was useless. I was useless…. eventually it ended…thankfully.

Over the holidays I worked out, skied a bunch with the kids and slowly improved. Then a few days ago we toured up Avalanche crest with the family. The climb felt great and I was able to do an extra lap at the top with my sister Jesse. It felt so great to be gaining strength and getting back after it. Only 4000 ft but still uphill strength felt ok.

It was pretty awesome to be up there with this group, Graham, Don, Jesse,Adrian and Jeremy.

We then proceeded to shred down Avalanche Crest. I can’t say I was the best guide since my legs were tired and I just wanted to get down. The skiing was great and we had some fun turns. Graham was looking the wrong way when Jesse slashed her way to us.

Avalanche Crests is such an incredible run, 3300 ft of non stop, top to bottom skiing. So nice to be out. My legs were cherished by the bottom and I was mostly skiing on my good leg, but hey I did mess up months ago and barely survived the avalanche. So the fact that I am almost back at it 7 months later is pretty positive.

More touring ahead.