The day started on a random Tuesday with me going out on my own at 9am catching an early lift before anybody else had gotten out of bed. I had my earphones in playing tunes whilst rising up over the mountain on my own chair. I started off with the run all the way from the top of aguille rouge down into brev on perfect corduroy, my legs were burning but the weather was beautiful and the snow was fresh. As I was going back up again I saw that La Sache was officially open for the first time all winter and now was the perfect opportiunity. I headed over and skied off down it, the snow was new but already by the time I got there the steeper bits had already been churned up a bit. I took my time and once I got to the second half I was met with the mouth watering sight of snow that had been groomed the night before, perfectly smooth and just how I like it.
This is me going down La Sache.

At the end of the run my legs were properly tired by now so I sat down for a minute to catch my breath after the 1200m descent. When I was waiting I saw someone I was working with so ran over and joined him in the lift to go and ski for a bit before he had to go back to work. He was much better than me but I liked it because it pushed my limits. We did a couple laps in a quiet area with some nice untouched snow. At one point on one of the runs there was a small drop that he wanted to try, I chickened out and said I would film and he did it but the compression was too much on his legs and he fell back. He was fine, but on the next lift we were talking about how that is one of the worst positions you can be in and that it's a sure fire way to tear your acl. If only I'd have listened.

On the way back I showed him this feature that I'd seen some other people do a previous day and he seemed pretty confident to do it so I said I would film again and skied down to get a better angle. I missed half the clip because he went early but he made it look easy and I thought "wow I could easily do that..."

I then met up with my other friends who had finally gotten out of bed and continued with a regular day of skiing. In total that day; I was out for 7 and a half hours, skiied 24 runs, 9762m vertical and 55.5km distance.

By 5 o'clock I was feeling exhausted but confident and ready for a cheeky bit of apres ski. For one last bit of adrenaline I thought, 'why not try that feature'. I convinced a couple friends to come along and we headed down to where this whole journey begins.

It was about 2 to 3 meters of vertical drop before a steep slow that gradually transitioned into a flatter runout. Looking down from the top was pretty scary but I mustered up the courage to drop in. I didn't have the greatest body position however the first actual steep bit went fine, the problem came came when I got to the flat bit, because it wasn't actually flat, it had a slight U shape to it. I was already slightly backseated because the snow was quite heavy and I didn't want to get a ski stuck under it and there was quite a bit of compression from the steep part onto the flat meaning my legs were at their limit. So when the ground went up again, my skis shot forward and my legs gave out pushing me down into the position we had talked about being so bad earlier. I tried to balance and stand back up but with the ground being so uneven and my legs being so tired I couldn't do it quick enough. I then caught an edge or something, somewhat like a car having a snap oversteer, and flicked back then rolled over. I felt one ski dig into the ground and I think that was the point it broke but I'm not sure. The snow was so heavy and solid at this point in the day. Both skis did come off by the time I stopped, but if they had come off too late or not, I don't know.

Straight away I knew something was wrong. I clutched my knee, wincing in pain, the inside and front of the knee hurt the most but I thought I'll just give it a minute and it will be fine. My friends quickly came down to me, their laughter turning to concern as the reaslied the pain I was in. I slowly tried bending it and straightening it before trying to stand up to see if I could ski the rest of the way down. As I put my boot into the snow and tried to put weight on it, the pain shot through my leg and I fell back to the ground. It was at this point I realised my ski season was over. My friend tried to convince me that I would be fine but I knew at this moment that this was it.

As I was sitting in the snow my music died telling me my phone had run out of battery. Luckily, as I was with two friends, one of which could speak French, she called the ski patrol for me and within 5 minutes my ride had arrived. I had to straighten my leg and put it into a special splint that the ski patrol pumped up to harden, he then strapped me into the sled, covered me over and off we went.

I don't remember being in much pain on the sled, it was quite fun, and I had always wondered what it was like to be in one. The worst thing was the spray that was going down my neck. It was a weird feeling going down one of the steepest runs in the resort headfirst on your back. But before I knew it was getting transferred into an ambulance at the bottom of the slopes. Even though I had been driving around Tignes for 4 month by now, laying in the back of the ambulance I had absolutely no idea where I was going, but 5 minutes later we made it to the medical centre and I was unloaded onto another bed. My phone was dead and I didn't have my vie val dis card so I couldn't give any of the information I needed to over to the ambulance, I have no clue how it worked out in the end.

As I was sat in the medical center waiting for my xray, I decided to lift up my trousers to have a look at the situation. The situation was dire. My right knee was about 2x the size of my left knee and there was no defenition or shape left at all, it was just a big round puffy mass.

I was finally trollied into the xray room they took some pictures. I lay there for a minute whilst the staff looked and the images before one came over and gave me the news.

I had fractured my knee. I lay my head back and realised that my worst thoughts were true, this was the end of my season.

She asked me if I felt any pain on the outside where the fracture was and even when she touched it, it didn't feel too bad. However this may have been masked by the intense pain on the inside which I still don't know what it was. I was then taken into another room and given a straight leg brace and left alone with no phone. I finally caught someone's attention and managed to ask them to get my friend to come in. She wasn't very impressed when I told her what I had done and she was even less impressed when I asked her to go to the pharmacy and spend €180 on a new brace for the hospital and crutches for me. I asked the receptionist if they had a usb C charger and of course they only had iphones but luckily for some random reason I had a cable in my bag and I was able to plug my phone in so I could pay for the xray and give my details.