achilles injury - season ender

On April, 2nd I was still searching for some north sided venues with powpow, especially because I had to cancel my first Alaska trip a few days ago. We got the advice from the local heli operation that we should not come, because of low and bad snow conditions (plus I got ill too). So I was not really happy about that, but I tried to make the best out of it... that means ski your frust away while getting some faceshots ;-)
I went to a local ski resort with my buddies Michi, Fabi (better known as Junior) and Joi where we expected some good runs. And thats what we found...

Joi / Burger - posing shot ☺

But it was no surprise that wind and especially sun always gets stronger at this time of the year,

so conditions were changing and sometimes pretty gnarly and tricky.

Just one more reason to ski some northfaces where the snow was stable and still powder. After we skied all the easy accessible stuff, we decided to hike a bit and try something new.

What should I say, this hike brought us a super cool run with a steep entry followed by some nice faceshots...

Joi droped in first

and got rewarded

followed by myself

and Junior

Unfortunately that is not the whole story, but it was fun until that point...
After this powderturns we had to go through a channel which brought us on the next slope, which was wide open but not northsided anymore. There was about 5cm firn on alot of frozen snow and it was nothing special anymore, more or less just a field that brings you back to the traverse into the ski area. As Joi skied before us we´ve seen that it looked good, so I skied a bit faster and more to the left of his tracks and there the shit started. I was in a big right turn when I got into a field of wind created snow rips, I was able to compensate the first hit, followed by some more, till I got poped out and crashed really bad with a few cartwheels.
Thereby I cracked my Achilles tendon, my in-band ripped out of the bone at the same ankle, some ruptures of the muscle fibres below my ass, my groins were also hurting alot and my left knee's in-band is teared. Nice Package, hm?

At this moment my body was just full of pain, but I didn´t know that it was that bad, so I tried to ski further down, because I was in an uncomfortable dangerous position of the slope... but after a few meters I realized that I wasn´t able to manage it on my own feet. Thx to my buddies that they reacted so well and brought me out of this avalange zone while ordering the rescue heli which brought me to the hospital.

At least surgery went good and everything will heal again without a permanent damage at all. Yesterday the cast has been removed and I already started the physio...

I´m feeling better now and I´m really motivated to train hard to get back on skis in autumn...

Fotos by Michi Troyer
Cheers, Burger