Josh crashes out of the season (in style)

As I've mentioned previously.. over the last month or so Josh had just been getting better and better on the slopes. He was taking on everything the hills could throw at him.. tree runs, kickers (even building them himself), double blacks, bowls, hiking out to runs. He was on Fire!! So, it was no surprise that his confidence on the hill had reached an all time high.

That was until a fateful day in the last week of February....
We were with a group of friends and he split off with another good friend of ours Guy to go do a few runs through the terrain park. Until this point Josh had stayed away from the terrain park (as that is where most of the injuries on the hill occur). Josh decided to do one of the biggest jumps in the park - however a few factors went wrong... a) it was a really quick day on the snow b) he didn't wait to see how fast everyone else was taking that jump c) he decided to go first so that he wouldn't opt out if he thought about it too much.

He took the jump too fast, got way too much air (witnesses say the roof of a house high) and missed the down ramp completely landing on the flat ground after the jump and didn't get back up. He was consequently taken down to the gondola on the back of a skidoo on a back board, wrapped in yellow plastic (that's how I first saw him after this adventure), transported down on the gondola and straight into the ambulance to the hospital.

The whole experience was awful. However, once they had him in the ambulance they could rule out the worst possibilities - he was lucid and could feel his fingers and toes.

The outcome was that he had crushed his L1 vertabrae (which is the one in the middle of your back - common in this type of accident as it acts as a hinge point in your spine and is the first one not attached to your ribs). Luckily the doctor said after he got through the initial pain (which was really severe) he would get back to normal movement pretty quickly and wouldn't suffer any long term pain or consequences.

The bad news was - banned from riding for the next 6 weeks. The worst part of that news was... Josh's brother and sister were arriving in 3 days!!! and we were leaving the country in 8 weeks. However, when you see his helmet which was split in half at the back and think about what could've been - all we can do is thank our lucky stars and be very thankful he got out of it as lucky as he did.

Look at the close up of his helmet..

So here is a picture of the famous jump. He hit that kicker at the top and went totally past that down ramp part..

Here's our friend Guy showing us how it's done :)


3 weeks later and Josh is a lot improved. He's not in pain anymore (unless you touch the exact spot and then he yelps) and is almost back to normal with what he can do physically. And it looks like he might get 2 or 3 weeeks on the hill before we leave for the UK.