Grays On Trays

Pamela at Passion for Addiction clued me into a new “reality” show about ski patrollers at Blue Mountain (Pennsylvania) and Crystal Mountain (Washington). She wasn’t expecting great things from it, but I decided to give it a look anyway. Unfortunately I made some sort of mistake and my VCR failed to tape last week’s inaugural episode.

There’s a lengthy discussion of the show over at the EpicSki forum.

It’s overdramatized? Sure. It’s “reality” TV. But I’m hoping to watch a few episodes anyway.

If there’s one truth that should get widespread acceptance, it’s this: use sunscreen. It’s one piece of advice that (by urban legend, at least) made it into a commencement address at MIT:

“If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.”

Snopes.com offers a debunking, but it’s still a good idea.

And sunscreen isn’t just for the beach. In fact, you might need it even more on the slopes. The coldness of the air temperature in the mountains can be deceiving, and the snow reflects harmful rays pretty well.

So lather up!

Now how do you do that? You might take out your favorite tube of stuff at home or in the hotel room, but replenishing throughout the day is smart.

Here are several products that make it easier to use sunscreen on the slopes. First, Rocky Mountain Sunscreen sells a variety of products, some of which you can attack via a lanyard or carabiner.

The second kind of product is sunscreen-in-a-stick. The beauty of this approach is that you don’t have to shed gloves (or at least get wet fingers) while applying it on the lift.

Finally, a variety of companies offer suncreen in a solid form, including Coppertone and Neutrogena. Pull off the top and slide the good stuff onto your face–and no more sunburns or sun sickness.

The common perception among non-riders is that snowboarding is much too risky of a sport. Maybe something like bungee jumping.

It’s true that injuries do happen during snowboarding. But sometimes the worst risks are those that aren’t so obvious. Take obesity, which is correlated with diabetes, high blood pressure, and other health issues that in turn have bad implications for health.

Writing on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, Phillip K. Howard explains Why Safe Kids are Becoming Fat Kids, and the item actually has some relevance to adults and their attitudes toward snowboarding.

You can read a summary here, but essentially the argument is that risk of physical harm is one thing that makes physical activity attractive. By removing opportunities for risk (e.g., banning tag at recess), our political and legal system encourages children to be inactive–and obese.

What’s the takeaway for adults? Some moderate amount of risk is still something that makes an activity enjoyable. Without it, there’s no testing of your abilities, and no “I did THAT?” sense of wonder and accomplishment after laying down a series of good turns or taking a pitch a little steeper than you did last time.

And so too many adults say “Snowboarding? Too dangerous. Not for me,” and they miss out on opportunities for personal growth–as well as a way to keep or get into shape.

Winter in the mountains can be a special time of exhilaration, joy, and purposeful challenge. Unfortunately, it can also be deadly.

Yesterday, three men who had gone on an overnight snowboarding trip in a wilderness area of Washington state were found dead. They had disappeared in December. Friends of the men took advantage of the coming of summer to get access to the difficult terrain. Officials suspect that the snowboarders were killed by an avalanche in an avalanche-prone area.

This won’t exactly entice adults to try snowboarding, but honesty requires a mention of a new report on injuries.

One AP story has this first paragraph: “More people are hurt snowboarding than any other outdoor activity, accounting for a quarter of emergency room visits, according to the first national study to estimate recreational injuries.” (Stephanie Nano, CDC: Snowboarding tops lists for outdoor injuries, June 10, 2008).

The Centers for Disease Control announced the report in a press release. It looked at 213,000 people who visited the ER in 2004 and 2005 for “outdoor recreational activities.” There were few surprises in the demographics: Half of the injuries occurred among those between the ages of 10 and 24, and two out of three were men. Together, that’s the population that is most likely to engage in sports, and engage at more dangerous levels.

The announcement says that of all the injuries, fractures and sprains were the most common injuries, but that’s for all sports.

Snowboarding represents 25 percent of all those ER visits.

That’s what got the headline. It’s consistent with the image of the sport. But look deeper into the report and you’ll find something interesting. On Table 6, snowboarding represents 25.5 percent of all cases.

Horrors! What a dangerous activity. I must go back to skiing!

But then look further. “Other” sports are responsible for 39.7 percent of the injuries. What’s “other?” Look at the footnote: “Includes … snow skiing (61.0%).” That’s well over half of the “other” injuries, which means that 24.2 percent of injuries come from skiing. Not that much different from snowboarding.

Granted, none of this helps if you’re suffering from a sprained wrist. But it does help keep things in perspective.

The findings were published in the journal Wilderness & Emergency Medicine, which is published by the Wildness Medical Society. [Citation: Flores AH, Haileyesus T, Greenspan AI. National estimates of outdoor recreational injuries treated in emergency departments, United States, 2004-2005. Wilderness Environ Medicine. 2008;19:91-98. (Link to 8-page PDF); HTML version]

Also check out the New York Times blog The Lede, which points out some methodological limits to the study. There’s also Well, a health blog at the NYT, which reports on an earlier study.

Is snowboarding an “extreme sport?”

Think about it this way: Is driving a car a sport, extreme or otherwise? It depends. Are you driving a Honda Accord down a suburban street, or are you driving a Formula 1 car through the streets?

Got the picture? It all depends on what you’re doing with the equipment.

If you’re cruising down groomed blue trails, that’s not extreme. If you’re riding off cliffs and dropping 50 feet, that’s extreme.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “extreme” as “of, relating to, or being an outdoor activity or a form of a sport (as skiing) that involves an unusually high degree of physical risk.”

Writing in the Tampa Tribune, Eric E. Coris, M.D., wonders if today’s kids are a little too interested in extreme sports. “What,” he asks, “is this infatuation with going faster, higher and more dangerously than ever before?”

Participation in traditional sports such as baseball and basketball are down; participation in skateboarding and snowboarding is up. (“Snowboarding now claims 7.2 million participants, up 51 percent from 1999,” he says.)

Dr. Coris, who serves on the faculty of the University of South Florida, has stitched up patients after skateboarding accidents, asks if it has all gotten out of hand.

His response? No.

“Extreme sports offer an opportunity to challenge and express yourself. There exists an air of cooperation, without specific winning and losing that may help some children’s development of self-esteem. There is little organization into teams or leagues, and no overzealous parents screaming at their kids through the backstop fence.”

Another reason: injury rates for most so-called extreme sports are low.

Sensibly enough, the good doctor, who describes himself as “a very bad snowboarder” and “a slightly better downhill skier,” advises helmet use.

(“Are Extreme Sports a Good Thing?, Tampa Tribune, May 9, 2008)

Ask your typical snowboarder what he thinks about leashes, and he may say “They’re stupid. I don’t see why I should wear one.”

A leash can be useful for several reasons. The most common one is that it lets you drag the board behind you as you walk towards the lift. “Walking the dog,” as this is called, is a useful alternative to carrying your board.

But there’s reason why a leash can be useful: it can keep the board attached to you during the ride on the lift.

The particulars of the story I’m going to tell depend in part on the type of bindings I use–Flows have a releasable highback, as seen on this page–but if you change a few details, the story could apply to other riders.

When I descended the exit ramp, I locked my back finding into place. But I also discovered that I had not snapped the highback on my front foot into place before I got on the lift. During the lift up, the board was hanging in space, secured only by the fact that there was a single (though large) piece of very stiff fabric (I believe Flow calls it the “I-strap”) on top of my foot. The whole concept of Flows depends on being able to recline the highback for an easy entry to the bindings, and then pushing the highback back into place. Instead, I had something different–something roughly akin to wearing a backless sandal while hanging in the air.

I was horrified at what might have happened on the lift. The binding did fit pretty well over my boot, so it was unlikely to go anywhere. To shed the bindings–and hence the board–I would have had to point my toes toward the ground and shake my foot a few, or many times. I don’t normally do that, and I’m not sure that I even could. But consider what would have happened if that highly unlikely event would have happened: My board would drop 30 feet to the ground. At the least it would land with some force and slide a ways. At worse, it could land on someone.

That’s where the leash comes in. Had the board fell off my foot, the leash would have arrested the fall.

Maybe this is all belt-and-suspender stuff, or maybe two pair of suspenders. No matter. The cost of using a leash is trivial, and the benefits (potentially) substantial.

One of the good things about being a snowboarder is that you can do simple maintenance on your gear. Most skiers don’t–and shouldn’t–adjust their own bindings. But snowboarders can adjust their bindings all the time.

A lot of these adjustments simply involve changing the alignment of the bindings on the board. Are they pointing straight across the width of the board in a “zero-zero” stance? Are they pointing towards the tip of the board? Or maybe they’re at a “duck” position (think of reversed pigeon-toed). How far apart are the bindings, and thus your feet, from each other? These are just some of the adjustments that a rider can make.

But there’s a more simple task that you should make as a rider: make sure that you don’t have a screw loose. I’m not talking about your mental state, but whether or not your bindings are actually snugly stuck to the board. That’s really important because the binding is what keeps you from flying off the board when you make a turn.

In a less severe situation, if your bindings have a couple of loose screws, your control of the board and where it goes will be sloppy. It’s like driving a car with wheels that wobble from side to side. Not good.

How often should you check the binding screws for tightness? In theory, before every time you go riding. In practice, some of us don’t follow through with that rule, and depending on how fast you ride, where you ride, and how long you ride in a day, that can work out just fine.

But if you’ve been riding long trails at high speeds and it’s been “a while” (you be the judge of what that means) since you’ve looked at those bindings, it’s probably time to check them again.

By the way, it’s very useful to have a pocket tool with you on the mountain. Think of them as the Swiss army knife of the slopes, equipped with screwdrivers and wrenches of various sizes.

You can usually find a bench somewhere at your favorite ski area, provided by the patrol. But sometimes the necessary screwdrivers aren’t there, or they’re on the lift on the other side of the mountain and you just realized that your bindings are wobbly. Time to bring out the pocket screwdriver!

If you’re traveling on an overnight trip, be sure to pack a long-handled screwdriver in your bags. That way you can give the bindings a good once-over in the lodge before heading out to the slopes.

The International Ski Federation – or FSI – offers its advice to skiers and boarders in the form of a 10-point “code of conduct” for the piste / slope / trail. Here’s what it says:

Respect: Do not endanger others.

Control: Adapt the manner and speed of your skiing to your ability and to the general conditions on the mountain.

Choice of route: The skier/snowboarder in front has priority – leave enough space.

Overtaking: Leave plenty of space when overtaking a slower skier/snowboarder.

Entering and starting: Look up and down the mountain each time before starting or entering a marked run.

Stopping: Only stop at the edge of the piste or where you can easily be seen.

Climbing: When climbing up or down, always keep to the side of the piste.

Signs: Obey all signs and markings – they are there for your safety.

Assistance: In case of accidents provide help and alert the rescue service.

Identification: All those involved in an accident, including witnesses, should exchange names and addresses.

Always stay in control, and be able to stop or avoid other people or objects.

People ahead of you have the right of way. It is your responsibility to avoid them.

You must not stop where you obstruct a trail, or are not visible from above.

Whenever starting downhill or merging into a trail, look uphill and yield to others.

Always use devices to help prevent runaway equipment.

Observe all posted signs and warnings. Keep off closed trails and out of closed areas.

Prior to using any lift, you must have the knowledge and ability to load, ride and unload safely.

Only the U.S. code mentions knowing how to use the lifts and using devices to prevent runaway equipment.

Only the ISF code mentions walking up or down a slope, or what to do after an accident.

Both mention obeying signs, but only the U.S. code specifically mentions trail markings and trail closures.

The U.S. says that you should “be able to stop or avoid” others, while the ISF has more general language of not endangering others.

Both advise looking uphill when merging trails and give the right of way to the person downhill.

Both say that when you stop, do so in a place where you’re visible. Note: Neither says “don’t stop in the middle of a slope.” On the other hand, it’s a courtesy to stop near the edge rather than in the middle anyway.

Oceans and lakes provide pleasure to countless people–but can also kill. The same holds true of snow in the mountains.

In Final Tracks: Earlier this winter, three men went snowboarding in Crystal Mountain’s backcountry. They haven’t been seen since. What happened? And what makes the backcountry so alluring?, Courtney Nash talks about three Washington men who disappeared in a snow storm and were presumably killed in an avalanche. Nash provides a little information about avalanches themselves, but even more about the appeal of the backcountry, taking risks, and the most important piece of safety equipment.

Why do people bother going into dangerous situations? Says Nash:

In the backcountry, you feel more alive because you’re wholly responsible for your own survival. Surrounded by beauty that could kill, every moment is heightened. Combine that with thousands of feet of untouched powder, and the draw for any skier or boarder becomes even more apparent.

Are such people reckless? Not necessarily: risk is all around us, and something we accept as part of our everyday lives. When it comes to the backcountry, says Nash, there is a wide spectrum of possibilities.

What is the most important piece of equipment to have?

The hardest thing to acknowledge after people die in the backcountry is this: Being caught in an avalanche is not an accident. It is the result of a combination of terrain, conditions, and human judgment. Your brain, not an avalanche beacon, is the most important piece of equipment to bring into the backcountry.

Nash brings a personal dimension to the story, both as a backcountry skier generally, and as someone who ended up in avalanche country while researching a story on avalanches.

It’s a great read, even if you never have plans to leave the groomed slopes.