Copper Mountain 1983. Three hours on a bunny hill does not a pro make. BIL lived there and was an instructor and groomed the Breckenridge slopes. BIL said, "C'mon! let's go up the mountain and I'll teach you." I looked at the ski lift and it only went up a little bit or so I thought. Thirty minutes later, we "got off" the lift. My left ski "got off" first, then me. I was bailed out about 15 feet from where I was supposed to exit while at the same time I was watching my ski go straight down the black diamond slope. I think it was about this time I lost my BIL too.
I followed my ski after taking off the other one hoisting it over my shoulder in knee deep snow. About 100 yards straight down, (can yards be measured straight down?) I found my errant ski and jammed myself against a big tree to put it back on. I put my right ski back on and was perusing the terrain in a futile attempt to return to a much flatter and welcoming part of this mountain. An hour later, traversing the mountain I reached the Blue Slope I was supposed to get off on.
Half skiing, half falling my way down this slope I was approaching a right but the mountain sloped left. I was turning pretty good by now but this was something the bunny hill did not have. I attempted to turn but got turned around too much and was skiing backward down the slope. During this maneuver my knee decided it wanted to ski forward and it went "BANG!" It felt and sounded as if I was shot in the knee. I went down hard and again lost my left ski which was interesting because it was my right knee.
A beautiful blonde ski bunny had seen my fall and came to my rescue. She found my prodigal ski and took off the right ski and made an "X" with them in the snow next to me. I was in so much pain I was thinking it was a cross and the way they were looking at me they were just waiting for me to die so they could bury me.
It was getting dark when the ski patrol arrived and tobogganed me for another hour down the rest of that mountain. They loaded me up into a waiting ambulance, drove 100 ft. at $5 a ft. to the hospital across the parking lot and gurneyed me into a waiting line of gurneys and wheelchairs with lousy skiers occupying them.
The diagnosis was the forty third case of ACL, anterior cruciate ligament, tearing that day. I got an air cast and a prescription for Tylenol 3 and was sent out to the waiting room where my wife was tapping her foot with her arms crossed giving me "the look "waiting to give me a hug.
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