It’s been a while! Five months since my last post where I recapped a pretty awesome and successful year but alluded to a serious injury which would likely derail and/or shake up my 2026 plans. Well.. it definitely did! So.. what happened to me?
I broke my ankle (distal fibula) and sprained my posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) in a skiing fall at Big Jay in Vermont.
On the way back to the US after Christmas with the family in Canada, I planned to ski Big Jay with Tyler, a guy I had recently started skiing with. We toured once before at Stowe earlier in December and hit it off right away. Jay Peak was sort of on the way back to Massachusetts, and was a decent spot to link up and ski again. The plan was to meet up and skin up the hiking trail which links up to the resort trails, then make our way over to Big Jay via a “trail” which was cut illegally a couple decades ago to ski a classic backcountry line.
The skin up was pretty fun, lots of deep powder and route finding. It was super exciting seeing so much snow early in the year and thinking about all the cool spots to hit later in the season. If only I knew…We stopped at the lodge at the top of Jay for a snack, drink and bathroom break before skiing down to the Big Jay trail. A little more routefinding through some tight trees but we eventually got to the point where we put the skins back on to climb up Big Jay.
The skiing down was steep. Choppy powder. I immediately felt out of my comfort zone. I had skied lots of terrain like this in the past (including the previous season off the Icefields Parkway in Banff), but was definitely rusty on the downhill this early in the season (although was my 14th day skiing, most of those days were uphill at Wachusett Mountain – my local hill, on groomed terrain, before work). It was pretty slow going for me, taking it one turn at a time. All of a sudden, I was falling. I don’t remember much about what exactly happened, but I know that I wasn’t moving very fast, maybe 10-15km/h at most. I dropped my poles, slid about 10 feet, felt a sharp pain in my right knee, and when I came to a stop, my skis were pointed in opposite directions, bindings had not released (typical for touring bindings). After releasing my boots, I began climbing up to grab my poles, and a part of me felt like something was off. After stepping back into my bindings, I immediately started feeling a bit of a grinding (crepitus) sensation in my right ankle and knew it was broken. Along with the searing pain in my knee when I tried to make a turn, it quickly became clear I’d need to side step all the way down (we were about 30% down). I knew that in addition to my ankle, I had some sort of tear in my knee.
It took what felt like an eternity to get down. I was very happy to have Tyler there making sure I got down safely. When the slope got too mellow for side stepping. I was able to glide down, mostly staying in the powder and at low speed to keep control. It was pretty painful but manageable. Eventually, we made it back to the car and we were able to get my boot off with surprisingly not much difficulty, but walking was extremely difficult and painful. After stopping by Tyler’s place in Vermont so his wife could look at my ankle (she’s a podiatrist) I made the long drive back home.
The next day I went to the doctor’s and they x-rayed both my knee and my ankle. Confirmed distal fibula fracture (ankle) and no fractures in the knee, but some swelling. Not the worst situation – was a fairly minor fracture that would heal on its own without surgery. The doctor felt around and the ligaments and connective tissues in the knee seemed fine. My PT checked as well when I went later that week and suspected a meniscus tear. Thus began a long, brutal 3 months, where I had to work from home and get groceries delivered for a few weeks, and had a ton of frustrating physiotherapy. The ankle started healing pretty well, the biggest issue was just the swelling and non existent mobility. I don’t want to hear anyone say a sprain is worse than a fracture – it definitely isn’t when it comes to the ankle! I almost certainly sprained multiple ligaments in my ankle as well as break it. 12 weeks after the injury I finally got an MRI on my knee – mild PCL sprain and bone bruises. Overall, not as bad as it could have been. But still bad enough to wipe away my entire ski season (including some big planned objectives in Alberta and the PNW), cause me to gain close to 10 pounds due to inactivity and declining metabolism, and completely ravage my fitness and strength, just over a year before I was to climb the tallest mountain in Canada, Mount Logan.
Left: Ankle x-ray; red arrow shows fracture. Right: Knee MRI; red arrow shows damage to PCL, blue arrow shows bone bruising on tibia.
It’s been slow but I’ve gradually started regaining strength and mobility in both my ankle and knee. The knee has almost definitely been the biggest issue, which is concerning. In terms of progress, I was on crutches for the first month, and after two months I was back in the gym working up to the stairmaster and incline walking on the treadmill. I’ve been cleared to start running again, and have been doing a run-walk program, getting out to the local rail trails to run outside has been amazing. Strength has been tough, but I bought an adjustable platform to work on box steps and step downs at home, which has helped a lot. I recently started going to a clinic focused on recovery for athletes to do contrast therapy (sauna <-> ice bath). I did this quite a bit in Toronto in 2025 and was happy to find a place somewhat similar in Worcester. Finally, I’ve started focusing on consistency with the basics – eating healthy, drinking lots of water (at least 3 liters per day), getting at least 7 hours of sleep a night (this…still needs work), and getting lots of steps in (aiming for 10k per day on average).
I really struggled for a while coming to terms with my injuries and trying to figure out what went wrong. While my ski bindings didn’t release (which was the main reason the fall resulted in injuries), that’s expected given the speed I was going and the softness of the fall. Ultimately, that day I was out of my comfort zone, skiing terrain that was too hard for my downhill skiing level at that time. I was kicking myself for a while for not electing to do something a bit easier that day. Maybe I was overconfident given my climb and ski of Cayambe the previous month? Who knows.
In any case, it’s clear that I need to tackle next season a bit differently, not only because I’ll be coming back from injury, but I also don’t want to jeopardize the Mount Logan expedition which will be in May-June 2027 (and requires the entire current six-man team to be present and would almost certainly put the expedition on the brink if I had to drop). I’m looking to have a huge, but safe winter and I’ve identified four main areas of focus (aside from maintaining consistency in mobility work and strength training) which are as follows:
- Spending time with ski instructors/guides to focus on technique. Bottom line is I’m a very average (probably below average) skier and I need to be way better so I have the confidence to tackle tricky backcountry terrain.
- A lot more resort skiing (will need to buy a used resort setup) to focus on technique and in terms of backcountry, only low angle, moderate difficulty terrain. However I want to get lots of elevation gain work in, so I’ll be doing a ton of resort uphill at Wachusett and other resorts.
- Lots of big, multi day weekend winter camping expeditions, possibly on skis, pulling a sled. This is more for getting used to extended time out in the cold, getting used to discomfort and building mental toughness. I just bought an expedition tent for Logan (Mountain Hardwear AC 2) and I can’t wait to break it in this winter.
- Getting better at and doing more cross country skiing! I bought a setup a while back and only got to use it once before I got injured. Good for cardio and cross training.
I still plan to bring my skis to Mount Logan, however due to my lost 2026 season, I’m less optimistic I’ll have the skill and technique to ski much of it. I’ll have to see how things proceed with rehab and getting my reps in. There is always an option to climb it on foot.
What else is planned for 2026? Not much – I plan to bank as much vacation as possible from this year for Logan (which is planned to be a 5-6 week expedition). The Logan team will be training together in the Bow Hut area in Banff National Park in early December. I’m holding out hope that Mount Columbia might be in play but there surely is a reason no one climbs it in December! Either way, should be a fun time and a valuable learning experience. Once I’m able, I plan to take advantage of weekends as much as possible to get into the mountains in New England, and hopefully tick off a few more of the Northeast 115, as well as scope out some good routes for my winter training. There are a few US state highpoints that are reasonably close (Massachusetts, Maryland, and Delaware) so I’ll look into visiting those. I’m also seriously thinking about signing up for a 50k trail race this fall. The one I’m looking at has a 9 hour cutoff, and I walk around 6-6.5km/h currently, so I think I might be able to pull it off just under the cutoff if I walk a good chunk of it. I’ll chat with my physio to get his advice next time I see him.
As a result, I don’t plan to do any other longer trips this year, which means Mount Columbia (my arch nemesis) will almost certainly have to wait until 2028. I’m also sad I won’t be spending my third straight birthday in the mountains of Central/South America (Mexico in 2024, Ecuador in 2025). I definitely want to get back to South America again but that will have to wait until 2028 most likely (shooting for Bolivia!)
That’s it for now…onwards and hopefully upwards!
Veg 'n' Alpine 