Upper Heavenly

So I went snowboarding up at Ski Liberty last weekend up in Pennsylvania.. had a blast. Didn't get to make as many runs down the mountain as I would have liked, but it was crazy crowded due to a majority of the trails and lifts opening up for the first time this season. They haven't had hardly any snow up there, but they've been making a ton of the man-made stuff. I went with Holden, my sister-in-laws (and their husbands, kids) and some other family. Us guys went snowboarding of course, and the kids went snow tubing.

Nate & Jason are pretty good skiers, but decided to try their hand at snowboarding (how hard could it be, they said). Our first couple of runs were pretty pathetic, we went down a green trail and each of us fell probably 20 times until we reached the bottom. Our next couple of runs got substantially better, I made it down only falling once.. and the other guys I was with were getting tired of running the same trail over and over (as was I).

So we decided to check out the backside of the mountain. We had no idea, but there were a ton of trails on the backside. All of them ranged from Blue (normal/moderately dangerous) to Double Black Diamond (I hope you have your will in order). We started our decent down the blue trail.. Upper Heavenly I believe is what it was called. It was really fairly steep and very bumpy. Nate takes off and makes good time getting pretty much out of sight, while me and Jason try not to kill ourselves right off the bat on this new trail. Jason wipes out pretty hard and I pass him.. I'm taking it easy, making big sweeping carves and just enjoying the quiet (the backside was WAAAYYY less crowded than the front). About 1 minute later Jason comes flying past me.. he's flailing his arms around looking like he's about to crash.. and does. It looks bad.. he doesn't move... I work my way down there to see if he's ok when out of nowhere I hit a big mound of snow and fall very awkwardly (and going rather fast on a steep slope) on my left arm. It twists back behind me and I feel a "pop".. sharp shooting pain down my arm and all the way to my shoulder. I'm laying on my back (still sliding down the hill.. can't stop.. too steep). Some skier stops to ask if I'm ok.. he saw me wipe out and my arm bend back).. he asks me if I'm ok.. and I tell him I'm not sure.

My arm is completely numb.. I can move it but not without pain... I'm guessing that it's dislocated. I sit there for about 2-3 minutes until I can finally get the tingelys back and I feel like I can make it down. I get going and see Jason walking down the mountain holding his board and making a grimacing face.. "I think I broke my arm" he tells me. I felt bad for him, he's vacationing from Florida and they've had a pretty shitty couple of days from the stories he's been telling me.. this is just icing on the cake at this point.

We get down to the bottom and meet up with Nate.. Jason finds a medic and gets driven to the first aid building to get it checked out. Turns out it was a shoulder dislocation.. but really that's worse news than a break. Dislocations take many more months to heal and sometimes require surgery later on down the road.

Otherwise I had a blast.. I wish we lived closer and it was cheaper to go.. I would go every weekend if I could. Funniest moment of the trip was when me and Nate were sitting about halfway down the front side marveling at the little kids that were tearing it up... I mean, some of these kids are like 8 or 9 years old look like pros out there. We see this one "kid" on his way down and I'm like "woah, check out this kid coming down" So we watch him go by... with his goatee and stubble.

I'm sorry if I offended you little person... you were kicking ass out there.