Any day now, that early season storm will roll through, dumping some fluffy white powder in the mountains and subsequently covering their inherent rugged features. The anticipation and temptation of busting out our skis or snowboards for the first time since last spring will, for many of us, become far too great to ignore. From now on I will refer to this apparent gravitational force luring us into the shallow snowpack Pre-season Shredding Syndrome, or PSS for short.

I’m not going to start preaching about the seemingly obvious risks associated with PSS, instead I’d like to share an experience I have had and let you decide for yourself whether it is worth it or not to give into the allure of venturing into the mountains for a few quick, seemingly harmless ski runs before winter really sets in.

This story begins in Salt Lake City, UT in mid to late October, and by this time people are getting restless as usual to get the ski season started. We got a storm that left a solid two feet of snow that covered up an almost undetectable dusting that was left in only the upper most bowls of the mountains from previous small snow accumulations. I got invited by a group of about five other friends to head up to the base of a popular ski area called Alta (which hadn’t opened yet), located 8 miles up Little Cottonwood Canyon and about 30 minutes from the University of Utah where we all attended school. The plan was to do some hiking and make a couple turns down the mountain.
Now, one must understand that Alta is one of the very few remaining ski-only resorts left in this country (Deer Valley, UT and Mad River Glen, VT are the other two after Taos Ski Valley lifted it’s no snowboarder policy in 2008). That being said, this can be a very tempting golden opportunity for usually forbidden snowboarders who never get to shred this terrain during the season when the resort is open to come and see what they are missing out on.

I was still a somewhat inexperienced snowboarder at this point in my life and I just ended up following the herd when it came to deciding how far we were going to hike up the mountain before starting our descent. We ended up hiking all the way up to a shoulder connecting to the one of the peaks called Baldy, somewhere around 10,000 ft in elevation. Being relatively new to Utah back then I hadn’t seen what this area looked like in the summertime. Looking back, now that I have seen that boulder field at the bottom of this giant bowl in the summer, I would never have hiked that high into it that day.

We stopped to rest for a few minutes and eat a snack before my now good friend Jason (who I barely new at this time) decided he was going to go drop the first line in the untouched snow that lie beneath us…

Jason started his line and quickly disappeared in a shroud of white dust. I started my much more cautious descent a few seconds later and not more than 10 feet into my run I scraped across an enormous boulder that lie beneath a mere inch of snow. I stopped to scope out the area a little more cautiously to see if I could see any more obvious rocks. A few seconds later I saw Jason at the bottom of the bowl absolutely flying, pointing his ski tips straight with no turns. Then, all of a sudden, he took a tumble and disappeared in a  white snow cloud once again. Only this time it didn’t look like the peaceful cloud emitted from a fresh powder turn 10 seconds before, it was much more chaotic than that.

I slowly made it down to the bottom of the bowl, hitting numerous rocks on the way, and I could immediately tell something was very wrong with Jason who lie on his back motionless in the snow. The first words I heard him utter were “My femur is broken. My leg is broken.”

A little bit of panic set in with the group, but we acted quickly. I had the only working phone in the group, and called 911 immediately and was told that help was on the way. I believe we were instructed to pull on the heel to apply traction and straighten the leg, or somebody had some training and knew this had to be done. One other person was sent down the mountain to the base to try and seek help. We all knew this was a very serious injury and wondered how the hell we were going to get him down safely.

It was at least an hour before anybody else showed up on the scene. A few search and rescuers arrived on snowmobiles and started taking vitals and talking with Jason. We were instructed to go stomp out a landing-zone a few hundred yards away for the helicopter that should be arriving shortly. It was almost another hour before we heard that chopping sound of helicopter rotors coming up the canyon. Once the helicopter landed it took another 45 minutes for us to carry Jason on a stretcher down to the heli’s LZ and get him up in the air.

I remember being impressed with how calm Jason was during this whole ordeal, but now I understand after getting to know him. I’m sure he was in shock at first, but Jason was no stranger to severe pain and injuries. When Jason was 18 he was a professional rollerblader, and suffered a broken back while performing a double back flip on a trampoline, and was supposed to be paralyzed. That didn’t stop him from coming back and pursuing his love for skiing when he moved to Utah.

This mountainside rescue operation took almost three hours, and the only complaint I ever heard from Jason that whole time was that he said he was cold once, after he had already been laying on his back in the snow for about half an hour with a severely broken femur. I quickly took off my jacket and wrapped it around him and thought to myself, damn this guy is one tough bastard.

Jason remembered that he had began to hit a series of rocks on his way down, but by this point he was carrying too much speed and he made the decision to just point his tips and not make any more turns to hopefully avoid his edges clipping any more rocks. He made it all the way to the run out of the bowl but unfortunately all that lay there was more boulders. He clipped one hard and was tossed like a rag doll onto a bunch of rocks just beneath the surface of the snow. He remembers it sounding like “a baseball bat breaking, and when I looked down my leg was facing the wrong way.” So needless to say, Jason’s ski season was done for, with a 6 month recovery on the way after surgery. He made a full recovery and now teaches freestyle skiing in Park City, UT.

Reflecting back on this whole ordeal, a few basic guidelines emerged that would have negated this whole situation had we followed any one of them.
If you make the decision to go pre-season hiking for some turns…
Do your geography homework. Make sure you know what type of landscape the terrain is where you are planning on going by hiking the area in the summer…Is it a giant boulder field in the bottom of the bowl, is it short shrubs, is it smooth and grassy, etc.

Logically determine whether the snowpack is deep enough to really warrant you and your friends risking their whole ski seasons for a few shady turns and some core shots blasted out of your gear.
Early season weather and snow conditions vary greatly, and shallow snowpacks can equal dangerous avalanche conditions. Make sure you consult the local avalanche center before you go (www.mtavalanche.com).

Take it slow on your first run. Scout the area well and go down one at a time.
Some of these suggestions may seem obvious, and this certainly isn’t an all inclusive checklist. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment and stop thinking when Pre-season Shredding Syndrome takes a hold of you and your crew. So please, if you’re going to be crushing the slopes early season style this year, do some planning before you go and think before you act out there.

Adam Lenkowski recently moved to Bozeman from Salt Lake City, UT where he attended the University of Utah and graduated with a meteorology degree. He now works with the NRCS – Snow Survey Office helping to maintain and install SNOTEL data sites, a group of mountain weather stations designed to measure snowpack and assist in water supply forecasting. His hobbies include writing, playing music, snowboarding, and biking.