Day 4: Snowbird

Andy and I finally made it to Utah, and after waiting on the snow for a couple of days, headed up to Little Cottonwood Canyon to ride at Snowbird. Six to seven inches fell overnight, and the conditions weren’t bad, though it was definitely an early season day. I started out on Mineral Basin waiting for Andy to finish a work call, and did laps in the bowl. Little Cloud was next, before we started traversing across the ridge line to get back to the tram and meet up with Phil. Andy hit some exposed rock, falling on and likely breaking his left index finger. We did find some of the best snow of the day, unfortunately it led us to a cliff that we had to climb down – sketchy is the word that comes to mind.

We assumed that Phil was late and just wanted to get some runs in as it was late in the day, so we headed to Alta to grab a beer. The day took a decided turn for the worse when I finally got in touch with Phil and found out that he was in the clinic with what was assumed to be either a broken or dislocated femur. We immediately headed back, and arrived at the same time as an ambulance was pulling up, which definitely was not a good sign. After being transported to the hospital, we stopped by for a visit before heading towards Colorado (which I felt really bad about). We learned from the road that it was actually a broken pelvis, tailbone, and a chipped vertebrae, which sounds terrible but hopefully is better than what could have been and will heal as quickly as possible.