In an ideal world my first post of 2020 would be one where I summarize all of 2019. But it just wouldn’t feel right writing about my 2019 without first writing this post. I say that because just as 2019 was coming to a close I had perhaps the most impactful moment of my whole year.
I kicked off my Europe trip with wide eyed excitement about what laid ahead. Some of it was already planned but most of it was to be improvised. The first stop of the trip was Switzerland to ski in the Swiss Alps for just over a week. My plan was to start in Zermatt for five days then move over to Andermatt for another 4 days of skiing. From there I was set to head to Berlin for NYE, Ukraine and Poland to experience history firsthand, then jet off to Japan for another week of skiing in Niseko just like I did in February 2019.
Those plans quickly got derailed after my first day skiing in Zermatt. On the last run of the day I took a spill that put me in the hospital for the next five days and leaves me on the mend for roughly the next 12 months. I’ll do my best to recount my experience in this post. I received a lot of questions about how I crashed, how much my surgery/hospital visit cost, and what the future now holds. So let’s get to it.
ZERMATT
First things first: getting to Zermatt is no easy task. There are no major airports close by which means your best option is to fly into Geneva or Zurich (or another neighboring city) and catching a three hour train up into the mountains. I elected to fly into Geneva after connecting in London. My flight got me in around 7pm on December 21st so I found a hotel (The New Midi, $120/night) close to the train station for the next day and just stayed in to rest up.
The train system in Europe is highly regarded as efficient, comfortable, and clean but one thing that surprised me is how expensive the tickets can be. My flight from London to Geneva cost just barely more than my train ride from Geneva to Zermatt ($132 vs $98).
Originally I wanted to catch the early train up to the mountains to get a full day of skiing in but after checking the weather report and not being fully adjusted to the time difference I elected to sleep in and catch the late morning train to give me time to settle in without rushing around.
Quick sidebar: this was the first time I traveled with all my ski gear; skis, poles, boots, etc. I did this because I got a brand new set up and was itching to ski it. My goal for this season was to elevate my skiing as much as I could. Navigating airports, train stations, and taxis proved to be a bit more cumbersome than I expected with this much luggage (ski bag, boot bag, and my carry on). Moving forward I’ll probably elect to rent my skis and boots at whichever resort I’m visiting for sake of convenience (and cost. I paid an extra $400 to get all that there and back).
I arrived in Zermatt on December 22nd at around 3pm and checked into my hostel (Matterhorn Hostel $50/night). The hostel itself was bare bones and probably the least glitzy hostel I’ve ever stayed in. But whatever, I’m not in Zermatt to lounge around in the room anyway and hotels in the surrounding area were going for at least $500/night.
THE SKIING
The location of Matterhorn Hostel is hard to beat. Just a five minute walk and you’re at the base of the mountain where you can hop right on the gondola to start your day. I had a friend coming to meet me but he wasn’t set to arrive until later that night so I decided one day to get acquainted with the mountain wouldn’t be a bad idea.
One big reason I decided to ski in Zermatt is because I got myself an Ikon Pass this season to ski local in California. The pass offers 5-7 days for free at destinations all over the world. Switzerland, Japan, Chile, and North America are all listed on the pass and are free to ride for pass holders. $800 for a season pass and you get it all!
The weather in the Swiss Alps can be erratic, one moment it’ll be sunny and the next you’ll be swallowed up by a snow storm. This whole day things were basically just varying degrees of bad. Not often could you see more than 20 meters in front of your face but that didn’t stop skiers and snowboarders from getting out there to brave the conditions, myself included.
Growing up in the Aspen, Colorado area I’ve grown accustomed to skiing and riding difficult terrain that most people would turn away from. That skiing doesn’t compare to the terrain in Zermatt. The inbounds runs here blew my mind. I stuck to the main run the first time down to get a feel for my new skis, the condition of the snow, and just get my sea legs back. By the second run I was dropping off cornices into knee deep powder and collecting turn after turn of pure bliss.
After a few hours of exploring the mountain (so much skiable terrain and they only had a quarter of the mountain open at the time) I stopped off for some lunch. For how amazing Switzerland is, it sure is expensive. The night before I had dinner for one in Zermatt that ran me about $55 and now this lunch which put me back another $30. If you’re planning a trip to the Alps be prepared to spend a little more than usual.
THE ACCIDENT
Nearly a full day of skiing in the books and I was ready to call it a day. I took the same gondola up about 7 times and didn’t hit any of the same stashes, didn’t have the same run twice. Other than the poor visibility, it was an awesome day skiing a mountain I only ever dreamed of as a kid.
On my last run of the day I decided to cut hard left and dart through some trees I hadn’t been through yet. The snow was soft and not many skiers had been through there which meant more amazing turns! Halfway through the tree field I laid down to rest for a second because I was starting to get a little bit gassed. I should have taken this as a sign to stop pushing it as much as I was. Two skiers passed on by asking if I was ok which, of course, I was. I just needed to take a load off. After they passed I quickly jumped up and followed them out of the trees into an opening with only a few skied lines through it. It looked amazing! Steep and deep and I was standing at the top of it after having an unbelievable day of more of the same.
I pointed my skis down the mountain and blew right by the other two skiers but not long after that is when things went horribly awry. Given the conditions, it was hard to see all the obstacles that lay ahead. Sure enough, while I was blowing down the mountain hooting and hollering, an obstacle came out of nowhere and placed itself right under my skis. I skied hard into a rock that had hidden itself with a fresh dusting of snow. The second I hit the rock my left ski flew off and I immediately knew this wasn’t going to end well. My right ski, still attached to my foot, grabbed ahold of something while I was launched through the air and torqued my leg in a way it’s never been before. In the middle of my tumble I could hear and feel something bad happen to my right hip but I had no idea exactly what happened.
The dust settled as I laid on the slope for a few seconds, grimacing in pain and trying to get a feel for what just happened. I consider myself to be a fairly resilient person with high pain tolerance and can bounce back after a relatively large spill. I didn’t think this instant was any different so I laid there for a few seconds and just focused on breathing calmly. The two skiers behind me graciously grabbed my lost ski and brought it down to me as I quietly laid on the mountain. They asked if I needed any help but, at the time, I truly believed I didn’t need any. They placed the ski near me and went on their way. After a few more minutes of breathing, and waiting for the pounding pain in my hip to settle, I tried to stand up to get a move on down the mountain. This was the moment I realized I did something worse than I ever could have imagined.
Only a few days removed from the winter solstice, the days in Switzerland are short. The sun is up at around 9am and sets around 4:30pm. After a full day of skiing it meant that the sun was on its way down and that I didn’t have much time to figure out what my next move was supposed to be. If I didn’t get help before it got dark things would turn from inconvenient to life threatening.
I tried to stand up to get a feel for my body. I thought, at worst, I hyperextended my hip and had some ligaments that were going to be sore the next day. When I went to move my right leg into a position where I could push up off of it I felt muscles and ligaments down near my ankle that I had never felt before rubbing on each other. In that moment I knew things were far more serious than I imagined. I tore my ACL several times as a high schooler and my first instinct was that I did it again. But after feeling my leg up and down I realized I had no pain in my knee so it couldn’t have been that. I thought to myself that maybe I dislocated my ankle and that’s why I have these new strange sensations in that area. It wasn’t until later that I realized I was wrong.
It took all of about 20 minutes of me laying there to realize I actually needed help. At first I was determined to get out of there on my own. I thought I had the ability to do it but the longer I laid there the more the pain started to creep in. I laid silently for another 10 minutes in hopes that another skier would come by but deep down I knew that was highly unlikely. Fortunately I had cell phone reception so I was able to call Swiss Mountain Rescue but that phone call didn’t yield much of a result. The person I spoke with said they will leave a message with mountain rescue and they’ll call me back. I mentioned that I think this calls for a little more urgency than that and all it was met with was a “Yes, we know. We will get back to you shortly.” I never heard from them again.
At this point dusk was closing in and, with that, so was panic. As time wore on and the colder it got, the less busy the ski resort would be, and the odds of me finding someone to help me we’re diminishing by the second. I army crawled over to my ski poles to use them in hopes of flagging someone down. I waved them in the air for about 15 minutes while calling out for help until I finally heard a voice ask, “Are you ok?” After another 15 or so minutes my knight in shining armor skied up and said he’d be able to send his friend to get ski patrol down to me. I don’t have the means to properly thank this person but they stayed by my side from that moment until I was airlifted out of there. I did my best to let him know how appreciated he was then but I feel like more praise should be directed his way.
Another 15 minutes or so later and two ski patrolmen came down to us. One of them had a stretcher and I was so relieved to finally have a way down the mountain that didn’t involve me sliding on my stomach, over bumps, and through deep snow. Ski patrol first wanted to figure out exactly what was wrong with me so they ran through their protocol. My knee checked out, it seemed my ankle was fine, but once the applied pressure to the outside of my right leg I screamed in agony. There is no way really to immobilize a hip while you’re stuck on a mountain. Our first try to load me onto the stretcher proved unsuccessful and after further consideration they deemed it a bad idea to get me to the bottom. The rest of the run was just as bumpy and treacherous as where I had crashed and being on the back of a stretcher being skied down the mountain would have been unbearable. I told them I would do it if it had to be done but we were also fighting daylight and a storm system was moving in. The call was made to bring in the helicopter to get me lifted off the mountain and sent straight to the hospital.
This whole process of mountain rescue is what really blew me away. The last thing I wanted was to be heli lifted off that mountain because of how expensive that sounded but for the Swiss mountain rescue it just seemed routine. The helicopter came in, hovered above, and lowered a stretcher and a paramedic. The five of us worked to get me on the new stretcher and strapped me down. Once everything was in place the paramedic strapped himself to my side and the helicopter took off with the two of us dangling underneath. We both were winched up to be side by side with the helicopter door and stayed in this position for about five minutes while the helicopter found a safe place to land. Once on the ground, they threw open the doors and pushed my stretcher inside the helicopter where I could be put on an IV, pain killers, and safely be delivered to the hospital.
The total time from ski patrol arriving to me being airlifted to a hospital was probably between 20-30 minutes. It’s that kind of efficiency that I’m incredibly grateful for and puts the Swiss Mountain Rescue in a league of their own. There’s no question that I owe them my life.
THE HOSPITAL
At this point I am in a lot of pain but the pain killer I was given on the helicopter and in the hospital was doing just enough to make me feel okay about everything that was going on. I got carted downstairs into a room with at least 10 doctors who all helped me out of my ski gear and into a hospital gown. From there I was quickly skirted over to get x-rays taken to see exactly what I did to myself and what would require attention.
Still in a daze from everything that happened and pumped full of pain killers, in walks the anesthesiologist. I was terribly confused at first before I was able to piece together the fact that since she was there they were encouraging me to go directly into surgery. This whole process seemed rushed and informal having been asked questions like “are you healthy?” and “are you allergic to anything?” Simple questions receive simple answers but apparently that’s all they needed to know before putting me under to undergo this impromptu surgery. In hindsight I understand the urgency of the hospital staff. The quicker they’re able to operate and amend the fractures in my femur the quicker they’re able to feel confident about a full recovery. The longer we waited the more at risk I became for blood clotting, necrosis, and irreversible damage.
This is the second time in my life I’ve been put to sleep for an operation. The first came when I was 15; I broke my nose in a basketball game and the doctors had to put me under in order to reset it. As an adult the whole process seemed a lot more frightening. I was worried I wouldn’t fully fall asleep, maybe I would wake up half way through, or maybe I wouldn’t even wake up at all. They placed the mask over my face and after five long inhales and exhales everything went black.
I woke up several hours later in the post op room with a bandage on my right hip, a hose lodged inside me being used to drain blood from my hip, and a generally confused understanding of what was going on. Not too long after waking up I was wheeled to my shared room where I would spend the next five days resting and recovering.
In 2019, spending five days stuck in a hospital bed really isn’t all that bad. You have access to unlimited entertainment at your fingertips through your phone and books, you can talk to everyone you know via facetime, and the food in the hospital was better than a lot of restaurants I’ve visited over the years. The pain was manageable, even with light doses of pain killers and the physical therapy was painful but effective. There are a lot of places in the world where an accident like this can happen and I count my lucky stars that it happened to me in Switzerland. Not only is their healthcare top notch but the patient experience was really impressive.
THE AFTERMATH
So now that I have been discharged from the hospital and left to fend for myself, things get really interesting. No longer will I be in a controlled environment with medical professionals monitoring me and aiding me on what to do and when to do it. Many would say that the most challenging part of this whole experience still lays ahead of me.
As I write this, I’m laying in bed with my right leg under a few blankets to keep the blood circulation up. The longer I keep it straightened the better. I’m about two weeks removed from surgery and every day is a slight improvement over the last but also presents a whole new set of challenges. As it stands currently, I’m only allowed to put 10-15 kilos of weight on my right leg while I crutch around Europe and work my way back to the USA.
As I mentioned above, originally my plan was to fly from Zurich to Berlin for New Years Eve but, after I requested special services with Swiss Air, they deemed me unfit to fly because I’m unable to keep my leg bent at a 90 degree angle for the duration of the flight and they didn’t have the appropriate seats to accommodate my requirement. Honestly, this was for the best. I wasn’t ready to fly. Instead, me and Caelynn slowly worked our way from Zurich -> Frankfurt -> Brussels -> London via train. Spending two or three nights in each location allowing me to rest and recuperate as much as possible.
I fly back to Los Angeles in about a week to meet with an orthopedic surgeon and begin my physical therapy. I’m hoping to make a full recovery but have no idea what to expect. I’ve never had metal screws holding parts of my body together like this.
This whole experience is a strong reminder that I am not invincible. In fact, I reached a certain point where I felt like there were no physical consequences to my actions. I always seemed to be able to hurl my body at whatever I wanted and come out the other side more or less in decent shape. Whether it’s skydiving, rock climbing, cliff jumping, skiing or whatever, I never felt like true danger lurked around the corner. I do consider myself lucky that this is all that came from my accident. Things could have gone much differently and ended much more grim. Or if nothing happened at all and I came out of Switzerland unscathed, who knows, maybe I would continue to push myself and throw my body into harms way and ultimately I would’ve been met with a fate much worse than this. All in all, this accident is a good reminder that I am not above death or injury. I am capable of seriously hurting myself and causing permanent damage, or worse. I’m looking forward to slowing down for a bit, relearning what makes me happy, exploring new hobbies and ideas. At the end of the day, I do strongly believe more good will ultimately come from this than bad.
FINAL THOUGHTS
After it’s all said and done, Switzerland wound up being the most expensive trip I’ve taken in my life. I purchased travel insurance but it remains to be seen if they will be reimbursing me for my medical expenses. Here’s to hoping that all works out.
I researched online what the cost of a similar experience would cost someone in the USA and it turns out to be roughly 10x more expensive. According to health.costhelper.com/broken-leg.html which has firsthand experiences of these types of surgeries. One recount in particular looks very similar to mine:
“Broken femur
Amount: $109,000.00
Posted by: TR in Colorado springs, CO.
Posted: September 7th, 2017
Medical Facility: Penrose Hospital
This is for a broken femur with i.m. nail installed, not including the 21,700 flight for life bill... This was a 130,000 + dirtbike crash.”
This is only one other persons experience but I’m willing to bet this is roughly what it would have cost me in the USA. That’s crazy!
My plan is to continuously update this post with my recovery. Once a month I’ll check back in to let everyone know physical therapy is going and what my milestones are. Not being able to travel as freely will be a big bummer but all I have to do is learn new hobbies, explore more locally, and cherish the smaller things in life that I may have taken for granted before this.
Have you ever had an experience similar to this? Any advice for me as I move forward with my recovery? I’d love to hear it all!