Winter Crucifixion

12/15/74 

Sometime in the early to mid-70’s I was skiing on a pair of 170 cm Kneissl Short Comps with Besser bindings.  It was during the market-driven short ski craze when short skis and freestyle encouraged bad technique.  If you were a type III skier you could either ski correctly (because you had a racing background or were from the East Coast) or you could try to emulate the latest freestyle weirdness.  I’m sure that there were things in-between but I wasn’t interested in them.  I was self-taught and too dumb to not be proud of that fact.  I had never raced and wasn’t good enough to overcome or accommodate the design-imposed limitations of conventional skis.  Consequently, I was drawn to the darkside.  The Siren's call included:

Royal Flying Christy

Back Scratcher

Daffy

Space Walk

Jet Turn

Slow Dog Noodle………..bad technique.  

One night at Ski Acres I came face-to-face with the co-mingling of bad gear and bad technique and lived to tell about it. 

The Besser was a plate binding which provided release faces for “legacy” boot soles.  If you don’t know the binding imagine an aluminum plate about the length of the boot sole with an over-center lever to hold the heel down (like a step-in crampon) and a toe lug that slipped over the front of the boot sole.  The ends of the plate had release faces that coupled with a piston on the front and a housing on the back.  Since this design pre-dated integrated ski brakes there was a short metal loop attaching the toe lug to the piston in front.  Those ski retention devices were great because you never had to climb up hill to get your ski after a release (assuming that you hadn’t been beaten to death during the fall).

I was on a steep bump run and as I went into a trough, I edged towards the fall line and sat back to absorb the bump and initiate a jet turn (bad technique).  The skis flexed deeply and as I reached the top of the bump, they began to counter-flex.  Since I was sitting wayyy back looking ever so cool both plates released vertically at the toes.         

"Shit"!  

I remember watching my yellow Astral Slaloms move up into my field of view and realizing that I was now airborne with my skis detached.  I figured that landing on my butt would be my least hurtful course of action.  Since I was flying through the night air facing downhill I had lots of time to see that nobody but me was about to be injured.  I also remember looking at the traffic below on I-90.  Such a strange, silent and slow moment.  Dreamlike really.  Just floating through the air on a clear winter night.  Both skis were just sort of out there in front of me waving around, tethered to my toes with those damn wire loops.  

Finally, I approached touchdown.  Just before I hit the snow my right ski rotated enough so that the tip entered the snow first.  I felt the body of the ski come up between my legs and gently touch my crotch.  So far a pretty pleasant experience.  Still dreamlike, however, my reintroduction to the surface of the earth coupled with the connection of the wire loop at the toe drove the ski tip deep into the snow.  Since the tail was between my legs it forcefully slid up past my butt, under the waistband of my coat and in the blink of an eye was driven through the back of my jacket.  

The full impact was violent and very abrupt.  I stopped with my right knee bent back with my foot hanging from that damn wire loop retention device.  My left foot and ski were dangling downhill.  The tip of the right ski was buried nearly to the toe of my boot while the tail stuck grotesquely out of the back of my jacket.  I was hanging at a 45-degree angle as if nailed to a post facing downhill on the tail of that ski.  The zipper of my jacket was up tight against my throat restricting my breathing.  I tried to loosen it but it was jammed.  I couldn't quite reach the heel lever on the right ski so I had to hang there gasping for air until I could flag down some other skiers which is hard to do in that position.  Think about it.  

Eventually my rescuers got a good laugh and made a few jokes at my expense before releasing me.  Two of them first unzipped my jacket.  With that pressure reduced they were able to release my right foot.  Once on my feet I removed my jacket from the tail of my ski and tried to put it back on with as much dignity as I could muster.  There was insulation everywhere from the gaping hole in my jacket.  It was very humiliating. 

Damages: Ski jacket was destroyed.  Ego was severely bruised.  My neck suffered serious zipper rash when I came to such an abrupt stop and flailed to get loose.  Not the last time I would be crucified but one of the most humiliating to date.