Unnatural Noises

So it came to pass that as I was making a rather scrappy left turn my ankle made a very audible (and unwelcome) popping noise.

The day had begun rather well (if a little late due to the previous nights exuberance). Rich and I left the snow boarders behind and explored the slopes of El Tarter which my instructor had showed me the day before. I was taking the opportunity to practice what I?d been taught the day before and was quite pleased I was getting nice "in the groove" turns. We did a couple of blue-into-red runs and generally had some very nice ski-ing.

After lunch back down at Slim Jim?s we headed back to the same region to try some of the other reds down. The first one we came to was a bit steeper than the previous red and my early morning form temporally vanished. It was as I was making a rather hasty correction to bleed off some speed my ankle decided to make its presence felt. As soon as it went I knew right turns where out of the question and I was a little concerned the only thing holding my ankle together was the sturdy boot. After attempting to slid down most of the incline I decided that common sense was the better approach and signalled Rich to go an fetch help.

After about 30 minutes sitting on the side of the mountain (and the occasional query to my well being) the montain side medical assist turned up. The ride down in the stretcher was less scary than I had been anticipating. This is partly due to the very secure way in which you are strapped into the thing (I assume so you don?t attempt to throw the skiers balance) and also by the fact that pretty much all you can see is a rotating skyscape (although not rotating that much - I think the route was more or less straight down). After what seemed like an eternity of bumbling and face fulls of snow spray I arrived at the El Tarter medical centre where the part I was most dreading, the removal of the boot, was to occur. Luckily where as I spend a good 5 minutes squeezing my feet into these boots every day the medical staff are considerably more experiences at removing them without moving the foot too much. The Doctor was very good, insisting I should relax as I?m on holiday. A quick X-Ray later to confirm nothing was broken I hobbled out of the medical centre with a ankle covered in tubi-grip. End result mountain 1 - alex 0 and I will be spending tomorrow in the health spa getting a pampered for my last day.