I got hit twice this past week on the same steep slope, predictable, round practice turns.
On Monday they were slow controlled turns, when i felt a "click" against the back of my boots and was sort of nudged forward. Looked down and there was a kid scrabbling backwards on the tails of my skis apologizing frenetically "sorry mister, sorry sir..." I grinned and asked him if he was ok as we both stopped moving.
The second, on Friday, was a much harder hit and i realized after the fact that it had addled me in terms of proper response.
A senior instructor was leading me in a funnel of decreasing magnitude carved turns, at a fair clip by the 3rd turn when suddenly i had the sensation of an incredible impact to my back & ribs just below the right shoulder blade, followed by visual stars & a spin on tumble dry in the laundromat. Things stopped moving with my legs interlaced and folded up in the lotus position, skis still attached underneath. Someone was dancing around above screaming at me as close as they could occasionally lunge toward my ear "you cut me off, you cut me off....". I could neither stand up, nor click off a ski from my tangled position and finally had presence of mind to calmly state "there is no such thing as cutting off on a ski slope, you ran into my back". The senior instructor told me later that another skier had arrived at the bottom and told him someone was hit bad and it looked like they broke both their legs.
My biggest concern was being down in the snow, in uniform, some maniac swearing, screaming & dancing above me, and the majority of the chairlift crowd who had not directly seen it being impressed i had crashed on my own, or quite possibly even thinking i was the culprit who hit another skier. I rolled over legs above head to untangle them, clicked out and stood up. The guy calmed down a little bit and stated: "so you are alright, right? You are OK? why did you cut me off?" Several people who had seen it stopped, but did not quite know what to do. I was the supposed "official" in uniform and not giving clear directions. I said i couldn't tell yet if i was actually OK, but nothing seemed broken. I repeated that he hit me from the rear, and that there is no such thing as "cutting off." The downhill skier has absolute right of way. This set him off into another tirade that ended up being successful on his part because it completely befuddled me.
He demanded to know how long i had been skiing and i said well i started in 1965. He began literally jumping up and down (on a fairly steep slope) with glee yelling "see, see, i've been skiing longer than you, you don't know the rules!" I was starting to find the whole thing so preposterous as to be funny and said "just how the heck old are you if you started before 1965?" He yelled "72!" I was almost starting to laugh, and said OK, you got me, i'll be 71 by the end of the season. That clinched it for him - He crowed triumphantly, "see, that proves it, you don't know the rules". "You haven't been skiing long enough to know the real rules." Someone else asked if i needed help and i said i thought i was probably OK. By then i just wanted to get away from the guy. We both acknowledged we seemed to be OK and skied off. I learned later that ski patrol had seen it. It would have been nice if some neutral party had lectured the guy a bit. Clearly i had lost my presence of mind to act in that capacity for myself, at least during the time it would have been productive.
smt
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