End of Season Woes

Teaching the last few weeks has been much harder than it should. It's like a perfect storm of bad things coming together. First and foremost is the weather. While I don't have anything against snowboarding in sunny, 60 degree weather, it's absolutely horrible on the snow. Last week we had slush that was over four inches thick! It's like trying to snowboard in the sand. And underneath the layer of slush is rock solid ice. Which makes falling very, very painful. The slush is so thick and heavy that it literally throws lighter snowboarders around. Instead of gliding though heavy patches of snow, kids and small women are unexpectedly bounced around the slope.

Unfortunately, two weeks ago this led to my second broken wrist of the season (for a student). She was a good rider and was on easy terrain. She just got knocked sideways by the slush, fell onto the sheet of ice and snapped her wrist. It's just as distressing for me now as it was at the beginning of the season. I've spent a lot of time playing the "what if" game to see if there was anything I could have done to prevent the accident. But aside from taking her board off and telling her not to snowboard, there wasn't much I could have done.

That day I was the second instructor to take someone in with a broken wrist. The school had five broken bones the day before. And that's just in the ski and snowboard school, where we take a lot of precautions to help minimize the risk of injury. During the last two weeks there have been a steady stream of snowmobiles riding back and forth from the Ski Patrol HQ. Pretty much any fall has a strong chance of ending unhappily. For this reason, more than anything else, I'm looking forward to the end of the season. It's dangerous out there right now and I don't want to get hurt in the last two weeks.