The One Downside of a Downhill Job

By now, many people have heard about the knee injury I sustained up in Seward, Alaska this April.  I have yet to post about it mainly because I believe social media doesn't have a requirement that states you must share every detail of your life.  But more than that, I actually didn't have a concrete diagnosis and recovery game plan until yesterday.  So now that that is out of the way.  Let me tell you the story.

Run 1. Seward, Alaska.

I had been sick for more than a week.  Bed ridden with fevers and chills by a brutal case of Bronchitis.  But Alaska would get me off my deathbed for the chance of getting one run in.  So as the grey Alaskan skies parted, I buried my sickness below, mustered up all the energy I could and tried to have some fun with the little bit of strength I had.  The first afternoon and first two lines of the trip went well.  The snow was great, the setting was amazing, the zones we found were fun.  It seemed like I might be able to force my way through the Bronchitis on pure adrenaline and stoke.

The next morning was our first morning of skiing in Seward.  So we flew the heli around looking for new zones with morning light.  After one warm up film line on a really mellow mini-face, we flew to a rime covered mini-spine zone.  The zone was more of a time killing zone as the afternoon promised far bigger and better lines.  In fact it was high noon.  A time when most film crews set down for a long lunch or fly home for a break because the light at that time of day is heinous for filming.  But we were out pretty deep, the light looked not too bad and we were in Alaska with a helicopter, might as well keep filming.

The views didn't suck.

I dropped in on my spine and was very casual about it mainly because it was a short 300 foot spine to a twenty foot exit air.  I decided to do a warm up three-sixty off of the exit air not because I thought it would be rad for that line, but mainly because I wanted to spin off some bigger stuff later that day and this would be a good excuse for a warm up.

It was a minor fall in the wrong place at the wrong time. I nearly landed perfect.  My upper body was slightly over rotated, the landing was a little scooped out and the snow was a little punchy.  I crumpled over my body as my knee rotated horribly under my body. If you want a visual explanation of what I was witnessing as I crumpled over my knee, just refer to this; http://youtu.be/jNv7jmljWJk

Morning Day 2.

Before I even had tumbled I knew my knee was blown.  I tumbled once, popped up immediately to my skis and skied half way down.  The pain overwhelmed me within seconds.  Yet the depression of having just cut what looked like an amazing trip short, put me back under the knife and would require months of grueling rehab exceed the pain.  I screamed out a very frustrated sounding "FUCK!" as I gingerly descended down to the heli.

Fast forward two and a half weeks.  My knee feels amazing. It's stable, not swollen and feels like I could take a jog on it. Two doctors manually tested my knee and came to the same conclusion. Grade 2 MCL tear (it heals itself non-operatively), one big ass bone bruise (that's what hurt like a donkey kick to the dick) and an isolated PCL tear.  The subsequent MRI confirmed the manual diagnosis.

But now, I needed to figure out what to do.  The research into PCL repairs and injuries is more than a decade behind the more common ACL injury.  So along with that comes a wide variety of conflicting opinions.  Most PCL injuries are dealt with non-operatively.  And the ones that are repair operatively, go through a gamut of opinions on how to repair them.

But as my job puts me in a place of not being "most people" I had a very hard decision to make.  Do I destroy the bit of PCL I have hanging on in order to strap in a dead guy's achilles tendon or my own Quadriceps tendon?  Or do I rehab like mad and hope the injury heals itself, the laxity go away and this next Winter isn't put in jeopardy by a not perfectly tight knee.

After much discussion with a wide variety of some of the countries best sports medicine gurus, the best option is to heal non-operatively..  The laxity in my knee is less than what the doc even think he can get as a result of surgery.  With hardwork and astute training they say I'll be 100% by Winter.  There is nothing I work harder for then getting the chance to ski again, so the gym will be my life this summer and I'm excited for the road map of getting back to having fun.

The zone in which I blewth thy knee.

One last interesting anecdote to share. I was introduced to a sports medicine doctor, Dr. Jonathan Finnoff, who specializes in non-operative, alternative therapy.  But he's not one of those hippy doctors rubbing Deer Antler spray on you.  He's a Western trained doctor who moved to Tahoe via the Mayo clinic.  After some discussion about the nature of my injury, we came to the conclusion that a PRP (Platelet Rich Plasma) injection directly into my PCL might help promote the healing of my injury.  So within ten minutes I was laid out on a table, with a giant needle stuck into the back of my leg literally pumping up my PCL full of PRP.  The sensation of filling my PCL with concentrated blood was weird...and surprisingly painful...to say the least.  It felt like someone had stuck a balloon in my leg and overfilled it with water.  I first I was nervous to even bend my leg because it literally felt like I might pop that overfilled balloon in my leg.  While the magic of PRP is just starting to be proven, a PRP injection like mine is quite rare.  But supposedly, the concentrated blood gives the injured site a super dose of "healing juice".  The concentrated blood gives the body more oxygen, white blood cells and nourishment to not necessarily speed along the healing process but provide a more thorough and sustained healing process with less scar tissue build up and more healing tissue build up.  So here's to hoping our little experiment works.

Shots from Alaska- Part I

The indubitable truth

I love this view

Mandatory group heli shot. L to R: Me, Richard Permin, Steve Reska and Mark Abma

Can you find Richie?

Richie found an avalanche and wasn't happy.

Merk Abner sending the pink elephant

Some fun tracks.

Gnar Bar Face

Afternoon Delight

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Last Frontier Heli. Bell 2 Lodge. Northwest British Columbia. February. 2012.

Guided by the gulls, heading West to Vancouver Island

No need to explain how beautiful this was

The road north through Vancouver Island.

Bryn Hughes, photographer, getting iced on the long ferry to Prince Rubert.  This would be the first of many many icings.

Trails

Bell 2 lodge.  Day 1 broke sunny and just a wee bit windy.

Chris Rubens maching out a little straight line.

Rubens finding a pocket of good snow.

Extra sized mountains.

Shotgun!

Rubens punching a big three behind my tracks.

Zone = Shredded

Chris Rubens.  Rastafari!

About 95% of what we skied looked like this.  Firm boiler wind pack.

Flying into Stewart, BC

Islands in the Sky

The gnarest of the gnar.  Gonna have to come back for this one one day.

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Japanese Adventures

I recently embarked on my first trip to Japan, and while I'd love to do a write up right now about how simply amazing Japan is, Ian Millar from F-Stop Bags, just did an amazing write up on the Salomon team's recent film session in Hakuba Japan. Read the tease and click the end link to read on.

I live in a small town that goes by the name Hakuba. It is located at the base of the North Alps. Our peaks are up to 3000m tall and the weather requires a lot of patience to truly get the most out of the surroundings. As a photographer the weather and location of the seaside mountains can be a blessing- but it can also be very frustrating... especially if you’re working with timelines and budgets.

In Japan, most film and photo crews head straight towards the North Island of Hokkaido. With consideration to the cost of travel and the people paying the tab obviously looking for marketable results- it is easy to see why most crews go with the same proven formula. I can’t blame them as it has one of the most reliable snow falls on earth and in overwhelming amounts. Packaged with culture and novelty it is an easy trip to accomplish success. Sadly the more money spent- the less the words “unique” and “adventure” stand a chance of making its way into the story line. READ ON HERE

An Escape

aWith the most exciting thing going on in Tahoe being watching three skydivers air into the snowless Squaw Valley, it was time for Elyse and I to go find some snow.  Problem was, it wasn't snowing anywhere but Alaska.  The problem solver though was the fact that Elyse's parents live at the foot of Alyeska ski resort in Girdwood Alaska. Time to escape to AK.

Can you spot JT, Jesse and Charles?

Time to hit the road...to the airport that is.  No way we were driving to AK.

From a snowless Tahoe to a Winter Wonderland.

Elyse and I were stoked to see the snow.

The one day of sun.  The sun is in fact so low at this time of year that where we are standing received only about 5 minutes of direct sunlight.  We soaked it in.

Tenderfoot Ridge, AK.

Powder caught by the lens of Charlie Renfro

A little night skiing in AK

Good night.

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Arcade

Oh hello there, nice to see you again, it's been too long. After developing a decently regular habit of posting, suddenly a few new projects have taken their course and robbed this site of its precious content. What projects you may ask, well one in particular is called Arcade and its a company a couple friends and I started.

It's been interesting starting a company. I've learned more than I ever planned to, become competent in a business language that was Greek to me until a few months ago and ultimately have jumped head first into a mad world I thought I understood, but didn't comprehend. I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

Attack of La Niña

If you haven't seen it, you'll be that much older when you do.

Attack of La Niña Trailer HD from MSP Films on Vimeo.

Last week on my last day of shooting with MSP in Terrace, BC, I sent one of the larger cliffs I've ever sent, in the middle of one of the cooler lines I've ever laid eyes on. The run was going great until the moment I left the ground and started sailing over the final big exit cliff.

Suddenly I realized that the trajectory, slope angle and rock face was far different than what my 20 minutes of scoping had told me. The cliff stuck out nearly 30 feet, the take-off was at least 45 degrees steep and the angle of the take off sent me right into a point of rocks sticking far out into my planned landing. The seconds before impact I realized I was going to land on rocks and time slowed down to a primordial pace. I landed feet first onto a tall pillar of rock spotted with a dusting of snow. Upon impact I crumpled, buckled and somehow shot outwards past the next set of rocks into soft snow. Fortunately not a single piece of my body hit the rocks in the milliseconds of impact. I tomahawked for a solid 50 feet after hitting the snow and when I stopped I immediately heard the panicked screams into the radio asking if I was alright. I struggled to find my radio, stood up and waved to everyone that I was indeed alright. I didn't feel a thing in fact. Then the adrenaline started to subside and I realized my left knee was in a world of pain. It didn't feel horrible, didn't feel shattered, felt somewhat stable but still hurt like hell. I hiked up, grabbed on of my two missing skis and skied down to our guide Yvan with one ski. The other ski has been sacrificed to the mountain gods. Immediately the fear of a devastating knee injury began to plague my brain. I flew directly to the hospital and as the heli ride lingered on I welled up fearing the worst, embarrassed by the accident and worried about the future.


(The ending line. If you look closely you can see my bomb hole and me down low. My bomb hole in the snow is directly below the rocks I landed on)

As the initial pain began to subside and the X-rays came in negative my spirits began to lift again. Now, a week later and after 34 hours of driving back home, aided by my beautiful and gracious fiancee who flew up to Vancouver to drive me the rest of the way home, I'm back in Tahoe and have a fresh set of MRI's.

Today I just got back from the reading with surprisingly positive news. Here's the tick list: Tibial plateau fracture, 2nd to 3rd degree MCL tear, strained LCL, a partially torn meniscus and some serious bone bruising. Considering the force of the impact, I am super lucky. It could have been a career ending injury, fuck it could have been even worse than that. So to be left with an injury that might not even need surgery, I can easily say I'm stoked.



Now, it's on to healing and coming back strong. It's a healthy dose of motivation and I can't wait to be in Physical Therapy, on the bike, in the gym and getting prepared for this coming Winter.

Arcade/High-Fives Skinny-Ski-A-Thon Fundraiser

Skis with sub 80mm waists are about as relevant to me as a map is to a goose. They're just not really needed anymore. But alas, I have found an exception; to have a shit ton of fun while raising money for one of the best charity foundations in sports. So without further adieu, I'd like to announce the Arcade/High-Fives Foundations "Skinny Ski-A-Thon" on March 28th.



What I'm hoping to do is to reach out to the community of skiers, friends and partners to pledge a quarter, a dollar, two dollars or hell even ten dollars per run that I will ski on 215cm Downhill boards while riding KT-22 at Squaw on March 28th. This isn't like your typical 5k walk pledge, this is going to be a hell of a physical challenge. Lapping KT-22, on giant, heavy, skinny, DH skis from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm will be a serious test of endurance. So I'm hoping you out there can back my challenge by pledging your support.

If you are interested in pledging, get in contact with me by commenting below, emailing me at codytownsend at gmail dot com, facebooking, tweeting or any other of the thousands of ways to reach out on the interwebs.

Thanks a ton my friends.