December 9, 2009 E-MAIL PRINT

Returning from injury? Seek out corduroy

by Tony Chamberlain/

Corduroy is the way to go when returning to skiing after an injury. (photo: Tony Chamberlain)

Corduroy is the way to go when returning to skiing after an injury. (photo: Tony Chamberlain)

Learning to ski all over again after a severe injury or surgery is not as daunting as it first seems. Sometimes it’s a matter of rethinking your entire approach.

After 40 years of skiing, I had grown into one of those people who never put much thought into the process. Click in and take off (after very slight stretching) was my approach. I would ski the first couple of runs on well-groomed snow with my boots pretty loose, and as I increased the challenge I’d gradually crank down the boots so that in uneven surfaces — bumps, crud, heavy powder — my skis would go pretty much where my feet steered them.

And I was lucky to be one of those people with a well-developed center of gravity: I never fell much. That always encouraged me to take risks, especially when skiing with younger, better skiers, and I think now of my son and his friends who have been at the sport almost since diapers. They could be dangerous to ski with.

All such luck runs out, of course. Knee and shoulder surgery for many people go with the territory called aging, and the question remains how and when does one go back to a sport such as skiing after surgery.

My latest was an operation to reattach my rotator cuff tendon, which had been severed in a fall from a mountain bike. My sentence — six months before I even thought about skiing again. As I contemplated this, I was thinking of an old friend who one day out of the blue called to ask my advice. He had had both knees rebuilt along with his hip, all in an eight-year period. He had been a great and complete athlete in high school and a very strong skier.

"My doctor told me not to go near skiing, but it drives me crazy to think I can’t do it anymore," he said. "What do you think?"

I told him: “Sunapee.”

This western New Hampshire area has one slope entirely dedicated to beginner skiing and boarding. It is groomed to a fault to remove all the uncertainties and little surprises that people on snow deal with all the time.

After this start, and moving very deliberately, Bruce has been skiing for two years now. He never ventures off groomed snow and doesn’t seek the challenges on which he once thrived.

“It’s different,” Bruce said. “It’s not as exciting as it used to be, but it’s skiing. With my body, I guess it’s just exciting to still be on snow.”

So, in recovery from my latest surgery, I didn’t need to call Bruce for advice. Doctors told me that another fall on my shoulder could be disastrous, so that was my guide: Do not fall on shoulder.

What that meant was rethinking my approach to skiing, to utterly eradicate risk by skiing on unchallenging terrain and on well-groomed surfaces only. The time may come when, a year or more out, I can extend these bounds a bit. But for now I can live with the medical sentence handed down to me.

My first time on snow since the surgery? I clicked into the bindings on my Volkl A3s, poled lightly, then descended a wide corduroy slope. As I picked up speed and started to make some round turns, I looked out on the distant purple horizon of the Maine’s Bigelow Hills and I had a single thought in my mind.

“After thinking I might lose something most important to me, here I am, still skiing. I’ve made concessions, but I’m still able to ski. Hallelujah!”

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