Ira Riklis – My Skiing Notes

Ira Riklis discusses the seemingly lost art of courtesy on the ski slopes

When you consider the number of skiers and snowboarders on the slope at the same time, many traveling at high speed (myself included), it’s remarkable that people aren’t constantly crashing into one another. Especially if you consider the significant damage that can be inflicted on one skier by another, it becomes obvious that there needs to be both “rules of the road” and a high degree of courtesy and caution on the part of all involved. I have been crashed into several times by out of control skiers and each time I have suffered moderate injuries which necessitated taking days off from skiing. While this is a drag on my vacation time, it is much more so preferable to suffering serious injury.

One occurrence sticks out in my mind. I was in the back bowls of Vail on a beautiful sunny day coming into a funnel shaped section at the bottom of a large run. Funnels are particularly dangerous as skiers of all skill level and speed are forced into a small chute. Perhaps the most important rule of the road in skiing is that the downhill skier has the right of way. The reason for this should be obvious. While skiing, it is quite difficult to look behind you and therefore to see the uphill traffic coming your way. Conversely, the uphill skier easily surveys all the downhill traffic below and in front of them. Therefore it is the responsibility of the uphill skier to avoid the downhill skiers that he/she sees below. (To be continued…)

Continuing with the saga of Ira Riklis’ broken leg:

Once I got home, taken to NYU Medical, and placed comfortably in a bed with my leg elevated, I was told that my leg was not healing well and they would have to operate again. The next day I was taken again to surgery to have the cast removed, the leg effectively rebroken, and then reset.

I was told that it was good that they did so for two reasons. First, if left in the French cast my leg would have had a serious curvature (it does still have a slight curvature) and I would have been lame. Some people have told me that I’m lame anyway, but I don’t think they are referring to my right leg. Second, the cast was pressing down on my ankle and would have left a serious pressure sore. To this day you can still see a slight discoloration of the skin at the point where the sore had been.

It is scary to think that in a major ski area such as Courcheval or Megeve that the quality of medical care was so sketchy. I don’t know if it has improved, but the quality of medical care I received in forty years ago is a major reason why I have never wanted to ski in Europe again. Vail has a world renown medical facility and even people who do not ski come to Vail for treatment, in particular of sports related injuries.

Today, while I still revel in the thrill of speed while skiing, I am very careful. For one thing, I started wearing a helmet several years ago. I also rarely fall and I’m careful to stop skiing when I’m tired. It’s one thing to suffer a skiing injury when fifteen, completely another when nearing the end of fifty-five.

Continuing with the saga of Ira Riklis’ broken leg:

Getting home was quite a trick too.

My father made some wonderful arrangements, but it still managed to go awry. I was taken by ambulance (very comfortably) down to Geneva where we were met by a private jet owned by a friend of my father. I was stretched out on a couch with my leg elevated and traveled (very comfortably) to London.

Now comes the problem. The flight on TWA was fully booked, so I wouldn’t be able to position myself across two seats. Also, because of swelling, my leg had to be elevated. So I had the first row of First Class with no seat in front of me, where my father put a hard sided piece of luggage to support my leg in an elevated position.

If the flight had been smooth, this probably would have worked. However, in 1970, jets used to cruise at about 25,000 feet. At that altitude, if there is any weather disturbance, you are right in the middle of it. Modern jetliners cruise at much higher altitudes today, usually 45,000 to 50,000 feet, comfortably above the weather. And of course we flew straight into a storm.

My leg, which the bones had not yet knitted, was bouncing up and slamming back down on this hard piece of luggage constantly. I was in tremendous pain for many hours.

This is Courchevel at 1,550 meters

Another look at Courchevel. Photo courtesy Ira Riklis.

This is the Courcheval Summit at 2,700 meters

A spot that, as Ira found out, if you have to break your leg, is a beautiful place to do it.

Ira Riklis‘ skiing accident story continues:

Going to the hospital in Megeve was quite an experience for a young American that didn’t speak much French.

While I waited in the hospital hallway, on a gurney, to be taken to surgery, my sister had to hold my toe so that my foot would not flop to the left or right thereby causing me excruciating pain.

I don’t know if this was a church run hospital or not, but I wouldn’t exactly call the nurses there sisters of mercy. In fact, they displayed the usual unpleasant Gallic temperament and disdain for Americans. This made for some very interesting and unpleasant occurrences. The most interesting was when the nurse gave me a strange looking, rather waxy, bullet shaped “pill”. My sister and I had no idea what this was for or how it was to be administered. Remember, we were only fifteen and nineteen years old and hadn’t spent much time in American hospitals, much less European hospitals.

We asked the nurse what this was for and how I was supposed to take it. She yelled at us in French, we don’t know what, and stormed out. After consulting, we decided that, unpleasant as it obviously would be, I should attempt to swallow this “pill”. As it was in my hand and my sister handed me a glass of water, the nurse reentered the room, surmised what I was about to do, screamed something unintelligible at us in French, grabbed the “pill” from me, pushed me on my side, and proceeded to push the “pill” none to gently up that portion of your body where the sun don’t shine.

This was my introduction to suppositories. I had never seen a suppository before, but I will never forget that one.

The saga continues …

When I broke my leg, I was skiing for the first time, and the last time, in Europe.

Courcheval was, and I presume still is, a marvelously beautiful setting with a charming town and a magnificent glacier based ski resort. It was particularly thrilling to me to be skiing in the home stomping grounds of my skiing hero, Jean Claude Killy.

In addition to lovely, small hotels, the food was of the finest French caliber of cooking. It had been a simply wonderful trip and I was taking, yes, you guessed it, the last run of the last day before we were to pack to leave. I was just enjoying the ride down, letting my skis remain in an extended unweighted (evenly balanced without any edging) position to skid along the slope. While in this unweighted position, I hit a patch of powder which grabbed my edges and sent me flying forward.

It was immediately clear that I had suffered a serious break, not the least of which reasons being that my skis and legs were arranged in a manner that is not possible if all your bones are still attached. The right ski was still attached to my leg, just my leg wasn’t exactly still attached to me.

We have been, over the last year, interviewing Ira Riklis on his love of skiing, his involvement with Vail, Colorado, and other matters. This is the latest installment:

It should come as no surprise to anyone that skiing is an intrinsically dangerous sport. I myself have suffered numerous injuries, the most serious of which was, as mentioned above, that I broke both my tibia and fibula on my right leg just above the ski boot.

To be truthful, most of the responsibility for the broken leg belongs with me.

I had just bought a new pair of skis and bindings. I didn’t like the safety strap that came with the new bindings, they were just too much work to put on and you usually had to remove your gloves to do so, and I used the safety straps from the old binding.

This was not a very good idea.

The old binding had a much lower profile than the new binding and didn’t need as long a stretch of strap between the binding and where it attached on the boot than did the new binding. Using a strap that was too short for the binding meant that if I fell directly forward over my skis, there would not be enough “play” in the strap to allow the boot to pull forward and snap directly upward out of the binding. However, being fifteen years old, indestructible, and not knowing any better, I opted for what seemed a clever exchange of safety straps.

Care to guess at how I fell when I broke my leg? Of course I fell directly forward over my skis and the binding was unable to release. I broke both bones and only the skin, muscles and sinew were left to hold my foot to my leg.

Continuing with Ira Riklis‘ interview on Vail and the skiing scene:

There is one last trick to this method, where you do your skiing.

The method we use is to take the VistaBahn out of Vail Village to the Mid-Vail area. We yo-yo the runs around Chairs 2, 3 and 4 back to Mid-Vail while they are pristine and empty. As other skiers begin to work their way up the mountain, we will start moving on back into the bowls. If my legs are up to it, we will work our way out to Blue Sky Basin for some of the most exciting skiing on the mountain.

But Blue Sky Basin is really rather far out there. It takes a great deal of skiing to get there and a great deal of skiing to get back from there; so don’t start out for Blue Sky Basin unless you feel you have the energy for it.

I would also recommend against it if the weather is particularly cold or miserable as you could find yourself effectively stuck out in the cold working your way back to civilization, a toasty fire and a warm cup of hot chocolate.

Again, once our idyll is disturbed by other skiers who are working their way to the back bowls, we start moving in the opposite direction of traffic. We now work our way back to the front of the mountain and back to Vail Village. We take advantage opportunistically of the runs we find still in good condition and with relatively few skiers. In fact, around 11:00 am, you can ski the front face of the mountain, terminating at Vail Village and still find that the conditions are relatively unspoiled. That’s because most people ski quickly past these areas in the rush to catch up with Mike and myself and get into the back bowls.

Now anyone reading this blog knows mine and Mike’s secret for getting the most out of every ski day. More to come …

Continuing:

We start our day at 8:00 am putting on our equipment at the lifts. We are on the first chairs at 8:15 am, sometimes the actual first chair of skiers for the day (but we are never very far behind those first people). Depending on the level of my physical conditioning (remember, I’m a fat, sedentary, city dweller), we can get in 15 to 20 runs by Noon.

We stop at Noon, have a lovely and unhurried lunch at a one of the wonderful restaurants in Vail Village, and then spend the afternoon in some other activity. Mike usually goes after lunch to check on business at the stores and I usually spend the afternoon with my wife, getting a massage, going shopping, etc.

I consider this a much better use of my day. I effectively get a full ski day as measured by the number of runs and then have the afternoon to spend in another way.