Chop Block
With a generous supply of early-season snow and a record number of early openings, Halloween felt more like Christmas in mountain towns throughout the West. It's barely November and Teton Pass has been lapped, Mammoth chairs are turning, and Alta already boasts over 100 inches. Unfortunately, along with an early winter, comes the threat of early-season injuries.
On November 1, Utah skier Rob Greener's season came to a crushing end when he hit a submerged boulder on Patsy Marley, an out-of-bounds shot adjacent to Alta, and broke every bone in his right leg. Greener was shooting with Photographer Adam Clark and skiers Dave McReynolds and Bryan Barlow at the time of the injury. After summiting the ridge, Greener was making his way down to Microwave Tower, where Clark was shooting. In the crux of his second turn, he hit the boulder, breaking his femur and fibula and suffering a compound fracture to his tibia.
"It was a slow break," Greener said from his hospital room. "I was going about 15 miles per hour. If I had been moving at a higher speed, I probably would have just released out as I tipped over, but because it was slow, my leg just kind of stopped and my body kept moving."
"It was a mellow right hand powder turn," says Clark. "It was deep and light until he crossed over this ridge of rocks. It was completely covered, but once we took a look at it, it was a really weird rock—like an arm protruding up."
McReynolds patted Greener down and agreed with him that he broke his femur. After an unsuccessful 911 call, the group finally got a hold of Alta Center who dispatched a Life Flight helicopter. Clark and McReynolds put Greener in an air mattress and drug him downhill to a place the helicopter could land. They then stomped out a landing for the heli and supported Greener's leg for the two hours between the injury and the loading.
"Rob's a good friend," said Clark. "It was really hard to see him like that. But, he did really well. The last fifteen minutes he went into shock, but up until then he was conscience and just really bummed."
"I was stoked to have Adam and Dave with me," said Greener. "If it wasn't for them, I don't know what would have happened."
Greener said he grazed over a rock in his first turn, but didn't think anything of it—the group had skied more than 10 days in October and hadn't hit anything yet.
"You can normally tell when there's going to be rocks," said Barlow. "It was completely covered, but this certain aspect gets a lot of wind and it blows flat. It makes it hard to tell."
As of Friday, November 5, Greener was at Salt Lake's LDS hospital, recovering from surgery to insert a rod into his femur, refit the tibia, and screw the tib and fibula together. Doctors say he could be back on the hill this spring, but Greener is realistic. "I know I won't be one hundred percent for at least a year," he said. "When [my brother] Rick broke his tib/fib it was two years until he was really back."
Considering his situation, Greener is in high spirits (although we're not sure how much of that is attributed to the morpheme). He expects to leave LDS by Tuesday or Wednesday and should be crutching around in no time. Greener hopes to head to Mazatlan with his dad to spend some down time at the family condo, before using his injury time to rack up 18 credits spring semester in hopes of graduating in June.
"I lost my boy," said Barlow, one of Greener's best buddies. "He was like Dexter and I was T.J. I'm going to have to find a new partner this year. We'll miss him skiing. Everyone will. He's a popular kid here in Little Cottonwood.