Baquiera & a Botched Freeride World Tour Debut
The existential backlash of tumbling down a mountain with no control of your body is very real, and I’m very much experiencing it.
A few weeks ago, I dropped into my first Freeride World Tour event in Baqueira, Spain. The whole journey leading up to it was a hectic whirlwind. I had to change my travel plans last minute because the tour reached out and told us we’d most likely be dropping before the official weather window. So I hopped on an earlier flight from San Francisco to Barcelona and basked in my lingering anxious energy.
My travels were a shitshow as per usual. Flights were delayed, layovers were missed, sleep was not had.. but alas, I made it intact. After passing out for the night into the abyss of jetlag, I met Taylor in the morning to drive to Baqueira.
The Pyrennees have a different energy than any other mountain range that I’ve known. They’re jagged & vast & dry. The snow levels were low and conditions were pretty much as hardpack as it gets. We had an athlete meeting the night we arrived where they told us there were no viable venues at Baqueira, so they had to get creative. They ventured into said vastness and found the one mountain in the Pyrenees with semi skiable conditions. To get there, it was a 45 minute drive into the middle of nowhere, followed by a 10 minute helicopter into the vertex to get to the bottom of the venue, followed by a second helicopter ride to get to the top of the venue.
Bino pic from the top of the venue in Spain (La Bamba)
On inspection day, we took the heli up to the venue and didn’t even bring our skis with us. We just got dropped in the middle of this massive mountain range, stared at some rocks for a while, then flew away. It was kind of an otherworldly experience to be so far up there without the vessel I usually rely on to get down. I realized that when I don’t have my skis connected to my feet, my confidence in the mountains significantly declines. I feel more vulnerable to the extremities & consequences that come with playing in such powerful landforms. Looking back, some of those nerves I felt were perhaps a bit intuitive, maybe some foreshadowing for what the next day would bring. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned this year, it’s that if my gut tells me somethings a little off, something is usually a little off.
I drew first in the bib draw, but wasn’t too stressed on it because I was feeling confident on my line and one of my goals this year was to try and not to get too caught up in what other skiers were doing. Going first would allow me to ski for myself and let go of any sort of comparison. The morning of the comp was nerve wracking but I was feeling fairly zen considering. Once I got to the top and heard the sound of bulletproof snow screeching as the last of the ski men dropped in, I started feeling slightly less zen. I watched the last 4 out of 5 men take hard falls right at the top of the venue. I tried my best to block it out, but if I’m being completely honest, I was shaken up before I even dropped in.
I stomped my first air and was hauling out of it when I hit this huge ice slab. It fully caught me off guard and wasn’t edgeable in the slightest. I went down hard onto my left arm and immediately dislocated my shoulder upon the first impact. I started sliding head-first on my back with zero control over my body. The conditions were so icy and steep, I was falling at a pretty rapid pace and my left ski wouldn’t pop off. I couldn’t self-arrest with my arms because my shoulder was out, and I didn’t want to risk self arresting with my legs because I didn’t want to blow out my knees. I knew that there was an 80 foot cliff to the right of me, and for a while, I couldn’t tell if I was heading straight towards it or not. Eventually, I realized I was in the shoot I intended on skiing and that I was in a relatively safe zone (in regards to tumbling over rocks). So I rode the rest of the fall out until I kind of stopped naturally. By the time I had stopped, my fall had been a minute and 5 seconds long.
POV of part of my fall (slight trigger warning)
Once the fall was over, the realization that my shoulder was out of its socket set in hard, then the rest was a bit of a blur. I waited a while to get my skis brought to me, all whilst fighting the urge to throw up and pass out. They asked if I wanted a sled, and I said absolutely fucking not, and I skied down the rest of the venue. I got to the bottom and the Spanish mountain medic of my dreams did what had to be done, and popped everything back in place. It was quite the relief for about 3 minutes- then I got slapped in the face (emotionally) with what that fall and this injury would mean for the rest of my season. I immediately started asking everyone if I would be good to compete in Val Thorens, to which the responses were, “Britta calm down, it's been 3 minutes.”
I ended up taking a helicopter straight to urgent care. There was a snowboarder who had a pretty bad concussion on the heli with me. She was slurring her words and as I later found out, has no recollection of the ride or my being there. At the end of the comp, there were 3 riders who ended up in the ER- & I think there’s something major to be said about that. The conditions were right on the line of being safe to ride, and they decided to drop us anyway. I understand that decision was more complex than I probably know, but I think it’s fairly undeniable to say that safety was not the top priority that day. I have a lot more to say about the general topic of athlete safety vs media aspirations (and best bet I will say it), but for now, I’m just focusing on where I’m at because that’s all I can control.
Jumbled emotions flooded the next couple days. I was getting mixed advice from every person around me. The doctor at the ER told me I couldn’t ski for 6 weeks (which I scoffed at /fully disregarded). A lot of people were saying the smart move would be to call it for the comp season and try to get an injury wildcard next year. Some people were saying “fuck it, ski like you ski and don’t fall.” But in the situation I was in for the first week after my injury, I simply couldn’t make a decision until I had a few days to heal & process. I had no choice but to take it day by day, be in the moment, and listen to my body. So that’s what I did.
