At first the ribs hurt like hell, especially the first couple days. But after 3 weeks they had mostly healed, and I started walking further. My ankle hurt a bit, something else I had injured in the crash, but it was getting better. At 4 weeks, I went out on the hill, stuck to the bunny slopes, and I didn’t seem the worse for wear.

A week after that, I went out again on a couple days. My ankle was bothering me, so the first day I didn’t do much, coming home after about 90 minutes on the slopes. Two days later, I stayed out a bit longer – about three hours.

Two days after that – my stomach started hurting, around 2pm, a couple hours after lunch. At first the pain was minor, but it continued to escalate. After 20 minutes I called it quits and my roommate took me to the hospital. Checks in the ER didn’t reveal anything, including a portable x-ray. It took a CT to diagnose the problem.

Turns out my spleen started bleeding. The timeline is weird – normally the spleen starts bleeding after trauma, not after trauma then a couple days of rest.

That night sucked ass. If you’ve ever had trauma like this, or maybe dental surgery, you know they ask how the pain is on a 1-10 scale. Mostly my pain was at 4-5, even on pain meds, but I had short bouts of pain that were much worse. My first horrid attack was at 10pm – excruciating pain that lasted for about 20 seconds. I continued to have these short attacks of bad pain. Sleep wasn’t really possible, just short naps while the meds blocked out some of the pain.

I was better on Sunday, with only a few bad attacks. One on Monday, none on Tuesday or later. I walked around a bit, gradually got off pain meds (Dilaudid) and muscle relaxants (Valium), etc. On Sunday I could barely breath in half a liter, on Tuesday I could do 2-3L in a breath.

One of the pains that I had when I went into the emergency room was shoulder pain. I didn’t know if this was an old injury resurfacing or what; turns out, if your spleen ‘hurts’, your body registers it as shoulder pain.

Now shoulder pain freaks me out. I drove to the grocery store today, and closing the car door sent a jolt of pain through my shoulder. Too much extension on the shoulder? Or did leaning over compress my spleen enough to cause pain? Trying to nap brings up similar issues: does my shoulder hurt because of the way I’m resting on it, or am I compressing my spleen again?

Plus my stomach hurts. Gas pain? Constipation? Pressure due to blood pooling in my abdomen?

I’ve been miserable for a couple days. The pain isn’t bad; fear of pain is crushing. Every little pain spasm brings the fear that I could have aggravated the rupture again. The “upside” is that most of these symptoms should resolve in a week.

If you like snowboarding (or skiing) through the trees, I suggest you take a look at my post on snowboarding dangers. When they say there’s a chance for serious injury or death, this is one thing they’re talking about. (Plus tree wells.) Risks can be managed, and I did a poor job of managing risks that day. Take a lesson, don’t ride when fatigued, work up to denser trees, and ride with a friend.

Conditions were pretty good. The storm had mostly stopped dropping snow, but skies were still cloudy. I expected the runs to be in better shape, but the powder was heavy and a bit crusty in places, especially later in the day. But oh! it was great fun to make turns in some fresh snow again!

I actually didn’t do too much. My ribs feel fine (after rupturing a lung and breaking ribs six weeks ago), but I had hurt my ankle in the crash and aggravated it last week. As I expected, stress on my ankle kept my time on the hill short. I hit a bunny lift four times, to see how my ankle would handle it and – being mid-week in May – the slopes were empty and untracked. It’s amazing how much untracked powder there is near bunny slopes. Anyway, I moved from there to Broadway Express (lift 1) and took a few runs, progressing up to the black-diamond race courses. By the last run my ankle was pounding so I didn’t really race… just kinda… made turns. It started snowing again so I called it quits and went home.

Within a couple hours my ankle felt much better, and it feels good today, too. But today I’m taking it easy, reading & writing. I plan to go riding again tomorrow.

The Tru-Close Lung Reinflation Valve

I was in the middle of the trees. Although I wasn’t far from the lodge, the trees were thick enough that I couldn’t see either the lift to my left or the trail to my right. It took about a minute for me to catch my breath, and then I set to rescuing myself. I took of my board and hiked (through about two feet of fresh snow) about 50 yards to the trail. From there, I could see the lodge. I was tempted to sit down but thought, as soon as I did, I’d probably want to sit there and not get up again. I started walking down hill. Someone did stop and ask me if I was ok but I thought, if I made it this far, surely I can just walk the rest of the way to the lodge…

I got to the lodge (after making many stops), put my board in the rack, and headed down to ski patrol. They looked me over and put me on oxygen and called the paramedics. Assessment: broken ribs perhaps, but the real danger was internal injury. I took an ambulance ride to the hospital and they checked me out.

I broke a couple ribs, ruptured a lung, and did something to my right ankle for which the treatment is “don’t stand on it too much.” That’s pretty much the treatment for broken ribs, too. The ruptured lung, however, took some treatment. The valve (pictured) was used to remove excess air from my chest cavity, and then to reinflate the lung.

Today, 19 days later, it still hurts. The day after the accident, standing up and sitting down was extremely painful. Today, I can get around OK. Walking doesn’t run me out of breath. I still take a mild painkiller before I go to bed, but I get through the day fine.

I plan on going snowboarding again at the start of May, but I’m going to stay away from trees, jumps, and tricky terrain.

This injury spooked my sister, because her kids love skiing through the trees. But don’t be too scared; injuries do happen. It’s a risk. The ways to mitigate that risk are: don’t ski or ride if you’re tired (fatigue is one of the leading causes of injuries), don’t ski on terrain that you can’t handle, and if you do go through trees go with a buddy. And bring a whistle!

I’ve been riding small parks lately, getting used to the jumps, doing boxes, and trying out the pipe. I’m comfortable with the jumps and boxes now, and I’m thinking: where next? How do I progress? My two choices are to continue in the easy bits for a few more days, or to try something steeper, longer, and scarier.

Fear is obviously a great motivator. I don’t like falling hard. Most of my falls are soft enough that I don’t even feel sore, but a hard injury (like a bruised tailbone) is annoying enough that it makes me not want to try anything risky for a few weeks. That’s what’s kept me out of the more difficult parks. Plus I could be doing more even in the beginner parks, like spins — I haven’t even done a 180 yet.

I did challenge myself a bit more today. Not much; just some boxes I had avoided before, mostly because I had to come at them with speed after already having hit a few jumps. There’s a semi-pipe in the park I rode in this morning and I tried that a bit.

Bleh. Really, the question is: should I push myself to do more in the comfy place, or go try someplace new and see what happens? I guess it really doesn’t matter where I go as long as I’m pushing myself, and learning something.

I’m off to go hit the park, then. Maybe 11 (Disco Park) then 12 (for some blue runs), or 7 (for a more difficult park). I’ll decide between here and the bus stop!

My first day out since the day 10 review, I realized I was having trouble making turns. I went to June with a friend, and right turns were just spooking me. I wasn’t making the transition from left to right turn smoothly. My board is set up goofy, but it’s fairly neutral. I frequently ride switch. Actually, I’d ride switch to give my feet, ankles, and legs a break — ie to work both legs equally. Plus, get used to riding switch. So I was having trouble transitioning heel to toe when switch, and toe to heel when regular: ie right turns. Which was weird, because it wasn’t a heel-to-toe thing, or toe-to-heel; it was right turns. Anyway, despite the fact that I had been going down blue-black slopes, I decided to return to gentler slopes and start making a bunch of right turns. It took me a couple days to figure it out.

That’s one of the fun things about snowboarding to me. It’s all balance. Lean forward, lean back, lean right or left, tilt the board, pull up on the nose, whatever. Riding well requires a good sense of your own body and it’s a feeling I really enjoy.

I want to get into park and pipe riding, so after a couple days of just making simple turns, I rode into one of the newbie parks. My first day, I just went over the rollers (a mound of snow with a fixed cross-section left to right and a rounded profile when going over it). It took be a couple days to get used to hitting the rollers straight on, and with speed.

Then we got some powder, and I spent a day riding through the trees and the ungroomed bits on the side of the trail. It was a ton of fun! I hunted for untracked paths through the trees. I rode a bit of powder before, and this wasn’t too deep (about 6 inches), so I wound up working on making turns in the powder, especially on steeper slopes. I know I’ll need more practice in steep powder, but it was great to head through the trees, dart across a trail, then back into the trees again!

Then it was back into the park. At this point, I was more comfortable going left-foot first (which would normally be called a regular stance, cept for my board being mounted goofy means that this is actually switch). So on the non-park bits, I’d ride right-foot first to get better at those turns, then back to left-foot-first for the jumps and whatnot. Terminology is confusing; I wish there was an accepted term for riding left-foot first, for riding mounted-forward-foot first, etc. Really there’s just “goofy” (board is mounted backwards) and “switch” (riding reverse to how the board is mounted), and everything else requires a lot more words…. I figure most people rarely ride switch. It’s a big deal in tricks, and evidently not something most people do much, but … meh. Anyway.

I hit the rollers for a couple days, then started hitting jumps, then got more comfortable hitting jumps at speed and getting air. I’m still not jumping much over the jump; ie pumping my legs to get a boost. There’s a couple small parks; one (Disco) has smaller jumps on a shallower slope, so easier to learn jumps. The other small park (Wonderland) is a bit steeper, and the jumps themselves are shaped a bit more aggressively. I’d usually ride one for a couple hours, head across the mountain to the other, then hit that one for a bit.

Although I’d ridden a box or two before, today was really the first day I did boxes. Still haven’t hit a rail.

View from the top

I also went back to the steeps today. It’ll take me a couple more days to really get used to it. And I also took the gondola up to the top of the mountain. It was incredibly beautiful. They have a great center in the station at the top of the mountain which points out nearby peaks and has a bit of history (both human and geologic) of the region. I peered down the slopes and… couldn’t see it. It’s not a cliff, but it’s effin steep. I got back into the gondola and rode that down.

Next weekend, I’m taking a park-and-pipe camp. Should be interesting. Before that, I’ll be working on both steeps and the park, going for rails, longer boxes, and bigger jumps. They do split the camp up according to skill level. I have a feeling it’ll be me and a bunch of 13-year-olds, but what the hell! hehe

See ya on Monday.

Burton Cattleman's Rail Jam

There’s a rail jam here in town on Saturday. I’m not competing, but one of my roommates is. Until you get to the big pro competitions, they’re really structured for entrants, not spectators. I think the rail jams are a bit different; footage and photos I’ve seen of other rail jams look like parties with some snowboarding going on nearby. There was a Gatorade Free Flow Tour event here a couple weeks ago, which is an amateur event for the 21-and-under crowd. Spectators? Feh! Spectators can go f themselves!

When I played “pro” chess, it was the same way. There wasn’t really room for families and friends, and of course no effort made to draw the public in. But chess isn’t much of a spectator sport. But is that because they don’t try? I played in some video-game competitions and they were the same way, even though there was a much larger group of spectators — usually friends and clan-mates of the competitors.

Online coverage of tournaments is mostly the same. Some info for competition entrants, tables of results, but no flavor, no reporting, no hype, no info for spectators or people that just want to follow the sport.

Magazines like to push personalities. This was one of the keys to the success of poker on television: drama. They turned the players into characters (or characatures), then pit them against each other and exaggerated past conflicts, as if there was something personal going on behind the scenes. It worked for the Travel Channel; they were able to make money from it.

Money would be the obvious reason why it’s difficult to be a sport enthusiast. No-one’s figured out how to make money from it. No-one wants to offer me coverage of upcoming snowboarding competitions, competitor profiles, behind-the-scenes looks at training and tournaments, and info for spectators that want to go watch a competition live. As with poker coverage, I think that it’s a Field of Dreams thing: if you build it, they will come.

The “obvious” answer would be to go offer that stuff myself. Sadly, I don’t have the time. Could I outsource it, 4HWW style? Hmm.

I see a lot of people in the park that don’t know how to ride; that are barely staying up. Going over the jumps is a bit much for them, I think. At least they’re getting used to the jumps, but I don’t know how useful it is. One of the key bits that I’ve heard and seen about tricks is that you want to control speed, takeoff, and landing. If you can barely ride, you might be getting air but you aren’t likely to be learning to do it in a way that you control, can repeat, or can improve on. I really think it’s important to be able to link turns first.

Part of the reason I say that is because of my experience on the rollers. Before I tackled the jumps themselves, I went over dozens of rollers. They’re like an intro to jumps; there’s a ramp up, and ramp down, and you’ll feel a little less gravity (but not quite weightless) as you ride over the top. Trying to carve over the top of a jump tends to mean making a sharp turn right after the crest of the roller; I’ve heard that riding flat (ie not on edge) over the top (unless you’re spinning) is crucial, and all those rollers helped me not just practice riding flat but to see first-hand what happens when you’re not. Snowboarding is a balance sport, like surfing and skateboarding; the key ‘trick’ to learning to ride is getting a feel for balance. Where to put your weight, how hard to lean, etc. And jumps are the same thing.

Between jumps, I also scrub off a bit of speed and take a line for the next feature; that means good board control. It’s forced me to be ready and able to make quick turns; I can’t sit and traverse and take my time waiting for a turn; when you’ve got to get lined up within yards to make the next jump, and don’t want to be cresting over it at a crazy angle, you’ve got to turn quickly.

Getting air isn’t really difficult. It’s a matter of speed and direction. Learning to make jumps just means getting a feel for how fast to go, and how to get lined up. That’s what I’ve been doing for a few days; getting a feel for the speed, getting used to going over the jump, getting used to air, and getting more familiar and comfortable with speed. Which brings me to the second big thing to learn: speed.

When I started riding this year, I worked on making turns, staying on my feet, not getting tired out or lacing my boots to tight. At the same time, I worked on going faster. I eventually realized that I really wasn’t comfortable making right turns, either normal or switch. So I slowed back down and worked on making turns, over and over. (And on powder days I worked on getting used to powder, which is hella fun!) Now I’m speeding back up again. One of the things about jumps is you need a certain speed at the takeoff, and once you launch you can’t slow down until you land. Speed happens. If you’re not comfortable at speed, then I suggest working on that before you hit too many jumps.

There’s a couple great areas to learn to get air here at Mammoth. One is a bit steeper than the other, but has a bunch of rollers; the other has jumps that are very easy to work into. Sessioning these two has been great, a bit of variety to try one thing or another. If you don’t have options, you do what you can, but if you do have options, then go for it. I feel like it was easier to get air on the lower slopes, but I learned more about speed and takeoffs from the steeper slopes.

Of course I’m no pro. I’m not even doing any grabs or spins yet. But I feel that the rollers have taught me a lot — not just in words, but in feel. And now I’ve got a feel for air. I plan to hit the same areas tomorrow, maybe I’ll actually be doing 1s.

My first trip down a run in Colorado on December 22nd, I stopped about 14 times — about every 100 yards. My first run down Round Robin here at Mammoth, I stopped three or four times. Today, I made it all the way down Easy Rider/Comeback without stopping.

I feel more fit, at least on the slopes. My legs don’t burn as much, my ankles don’t hurt. As I talked about in the Ten Day Review, there’s a virtuous cycle there: I’m riding faster, making more turns and slipping less. As a result, I get down the mountain faster with less time spent straining my legs. I’ve dropped 14 pounds so far this year, in addition to about 8 in December, so that helps too; less extra mass to throw around the mountain.

I’ve heard a number of people say that snowboarding (and skiing) aren’t great workouts, but they’re fit people. If you’re overweight and/or unfit, walking up stairs can be a great workout, so I think snowboarding really does count. I remember back in December when I stopped, my heart and breathing was fast; I was obviously working hard. I haven’t done any weight training while I’ve been here but I’d like to start.

Today was my first real day in the park. I sessioned Wonderland yesterday, mostly hitting the rollers but also rolling over the small jumps a couple times, not getting air. But today I rode over to Disco Park and hit the rails, boxes, and jumps, getting some real air. There’s an “eighth-pipe” down at the bottom that I consider a gentle introduction to pipe riding. I like Disco; I find it much easier to ease into park stuff there than at Wonderland. Wonderland is much less crowded, however, and it’s easier to get some speed going into the jumps. Forest Trail, Main Park, South Park, and Jibs Galore are all a bit above my pay grade at the moment.

I also think I injured about every part of my body today; my knees, left wrist, and left shoulder. I found a stat (from 2000) that says that skiers have about 2.6 injuries per 1000 visits, whereas snowboarders have nearly 7 injuries per 1000 visits. Yeah, that was me today. (I didn’t visit ski patrol tho, so I guess this my injuries are uncounted in that total.) Luckily one doesn’t actually use their upper body when snowboarding!

We’re expecting about three feet of snow between now and the end of Saturday, so I plan to ride for a couple days, getting more powder experience. I might hit the park tomorrow morning, maybe not, but even tho Saturday will be crowded I do want to learn how to ride powder better. Sunday will be bluebird, but prolly groomed. Hmm. Choices!

I’ve been snowboarding for eight years now. Kinda. I actually first started snowboarding eight years ago, but I only went about six times each of those first two years, only about twenty times the last time I was up at Mammoth, and just a few times outside that. I didn’t go at all last year, and I think I didn’t go any the year before that… so back during xmas week was the first time I went snowboarding in three seasons. These past ten day have been kind of like starting from scratch – minus the first couple days of falling on my ass all the time.

When I was in Colorado, I’d take a run, then take a 30-minute break (with my boots off) to recover. I stopped a dozen times during each run. I stopped for several reasons: boot pain, fitness, altitude, and leg burn. Eventually I got used to the altitude, but the other problems persisted.

The first problem I had to get over was boot pain. I eventually figured out the trick — I don’t tighten my lower boots at all. My boots have three sets of laces: one for the inner liner, one for the foot, and one for the calf. I don’t tighten the inner liner at all and leave the foot alone. I still occasionally over-tighten a boot, and usually that means I wind up taking the boot completely off and re-lace it. Larger boots would help, but with sufficiently tightened upper laces and bindings, and I don’t get a lot of foot movement inside the boot while I’m on the slopes.

Despite running up to two miles a day before I came out, I’m still not that fit. This is a combination of being overweight and unfit; snowboarding is a hefty physical activity and I’m a hefty guy. Losing weight will help, I’m sure. It’s hard to tell how much it’s helped so far, but if I continue my current losing streak (about .4 pounds a day) I should be at fighting weight… about when the season is over. Anyway, every bit helps. I’m thinking of sprinting up stairs on my days off to try to boost both leg strength and fitness.

Which brings me to my next point: leg burn. There’s a virtous cycle in snowboarding: the faster you go, the less time you spend on a run, the less you stop, the less tired you get, the less your legs burn. And the less I stop/etc, the faster I complete a run. Fatigue and leg burn build; a trip up the mountain resets that fatigue clock, allowing me to make the next run fresh. Because of this cycle of improvement, it’s hard to tell how much better my legs are doing. Plus I’m kinda working around the problem by riding switch for a few turns, then swapping again. This way I burn both legs, not just one, plus get more experience riding switch. I’m only marginally less adept at riding switch than normal and, as I’ve improved I’ve gotten better at both.

Although I’ve recently been riding blue-black slopes, I still spend most of my time on blue-green trails. “Blue-green” and “blue-black” seems to mean that the slope has characteristics of both; a blue-green is a green trail with some blue-level steepness in some parts. I’ve only ridden a true green slope once and I was surprised at how shallow it was. The steep bits on the blue-blacks aren’t too long, and are wide, too. I can handle the steeps, but not at speed.

On a few days I’ve sat in the lodge watching people come down the slopes. I’m surprised at the number of unskilled snowboarders that attempt the “true blue” slopes, slip-sliding their way down, falling every hundred feet, crouched down and bent over and arms splayed — or all of the above. I think either ego or a friend convinced them to try the more difficult slope, and I wonder if they’re getting anything out of it other than bragging rights, which to me seems stupid. I’m content riding the blue-greens, over and over. There’s tons of paths I can take so I don’t get bored of “the same trail,” especially if I venture onto nearby lifts and hit a blue-black now and then. I do fall; I fell once today, in my brief two hours of riding. I don’t like falling. I can look back at my path and figure out why I fell; lately, I’ve been working on cases where I roll from edge to edge but my board isn’t pointing straight, ie I roll onto my downhill edge while trying to link turns.

We had tons of snow last week – about 8 feet of fresh on the mountain. I wish I was a better rider, because there was tons of powder to take advantage of, especially with new snowfall every day and living local to grab it. As it was, I spent a bit of time in the powder, getting somewhat used to it. The powder-hounds tend to hit the top of the mountain, but one of the great things about Mammoth is that you can ride through the trees nearly everywhere; the trees have about the same base depth as the trails. Whereas many of the resorts out east tend to have trails that are built way up above the surrounding areas, some of the trails here are *below* the level of the surrounding snow, due to grooming packing the snow down.
As hinted at in Wednesday’s post about progression, I plan to keep riding the blue-greens until I’m much more comfortable in my turns. I need to get used to turning when I don’t have an easy, perfectly straight downhill path, ie when a turn might not put me perfectly across the fall line. I’ll hit the blue-blacks on occasion, to add variety and to test out my tolerance for steepness. I also plan on hitting rollers, a few rails, and maybe the eighth-pipe set up in Disco park.

See y’all next week, enjoy your weekend. I’m spending tomorrow morning watching the local Gatorade amateur event, and planning on going to June on Sunday.

I haven’t really had specific goals so far this year. I don’t think I went out at all in the last two years, which means that xmas week was the first time that I’ve been snowboarding in three seasons. I might have spent 30 days on the snow before that, but that’s definitely not full days — the last season I spent up here, I had bad boot problems and tended to only ride for a  half day.

What are my goals for this year?

I dunno. Have fun? I want to take a lesson, possibly this weekend or next week. I want to take the 3-day park and pipe workshop next month. I want to ride more of the mountain — the blacks and the steeps.

Part of the problem is that I don’t know how long it will take to get good at riding. How long til I’m riding blacks  comfortably? Should I take a lesson to learn some advanced techniques before hitting them? It’s foolish to think I’d be doing double-corks before the end of the season. What wouldn’t it be foolish to think? Threes? Fives? Sevens? Flips? Blacks, double-blacks, chutes?

I think the only realistic plan is to have long-range goals (without a time schedule attached). I tried searching for a good timeline for learning various snowboarding skills, but had no luck. Since most people aren’t riding five days a week, and most people just ride on the weekends a few times each season, my experience is way outside the norm. I found no good guide for how many days of riding each step of advancement will take.

What I did find is a number of people that claimed that, once you’re linking turns, you can move from greens to blacks very quickly. I know that’s different with skiers, since advanced (black-diamond and double-diamond) ski turns are very different than what you learn on the green slopes. Snowboarders, evidently, learn to carve turns … and then go down blacks.

I’m already carving turns. In fact, I was carving turns before this year, but I started on the blue-green trails mostly cuz of boot issues. (More on that in a couple days.) I’ve already focused on gaining comfort going down steeper terrain. I guess I ride blacks tomorrow?

So: My plan for this year comes in two stages. First, ride blue-blacks comfortably then ride blacks comfortably. Second, work on tackling harder terrain while simultaneously moving over to the park and pipe. It seems that I have the skills (except maybe for jump-turns) to ride the blacks, just not yet the confidence.

Also, I plan to keep improving fitness, so I can stay out longer, and to lose weight (for the same reason). Plus, having to bend over my belly makes it harder to reach my bindings.

Tomorrow, my plan is to ski across the mountain, from Canyon to Mill to Main to 12, and ride the blues all day. On Friday, I might stick to Canyon lodge, which tends to be less busy than Main in general and especially on the weekends.