Pain. Searing, overwhelming, radiating pain. That is all I remember feeling as I laid in the cold, wet snow on the side of Sugar Mountain. Somehow, in managing to avoid the beginner skiers camped out in the middle of the ski slope, I had panicked and picked up uncontrollable speed and subsequently I had fallen. I don’t remember the fall itself, but I do remember the pain. Luckily, another lady had fallen near me (it must have been a real popular place to fall). I have to say she was my guardian angel that day. She crawled over to me (because if you ever been skiing you know how hard it is to get up from any fall). She looked at me from beneath the hood of a ski parka.
"Can you get up?" she asked.
"No… it’s my knee" (it was about all I could do to get that out).
"Are you here with anyone? Can I help you find someone?"
"My friend, Jennifer. She’s in a white ski parka with fur. She was coming down behind me. Please try to flag her."
The lady flagged a skier down.
"Tell them we need ski patrol up here. She’s hurt her knee and there is no way she can ski or walk down".
After she’d done that she immediately began to look for Jen. All I could think was that Jen and her boyfriend were going to get to the bottom and not be able to find me. They’d probably think that I’d gone up again and would keep on skiing – while I was hanging out in the ski lodge’s medic unit with a knee that felt like someone had twisted it out of the socket.
Lost in my thoughts, the ladies chuckle brought me back.
"Well, I found your friend. She feel about 3 feet from you"
My best friend had fallen only three feet from me. I couldn’t help but laugh. I looked over and saw Jen starting to get up. I called out for her and she finally turned around and saw me.
"What happened? Are you ok?"
I explained to her as best I could how I fell, and that I was sure I’d hurt my knee cause I’d never felt so much pain in my life. Finally John showed up also went after ski patrol. It seems like hours (although I’m sure it was only a few minutes) before the ski patrol snowmobile came to take me down the mountain. I’d always thought it would be fun to ride in one of those thing…. Boy was I wrong.