Whump vs Thwack!! A Crash Analysis

A perfect french snowflake!!

"Did we mention the words "Pea Soup?"

It's snowing again!! In contrast to the last snow dump, it's deep, light and fluffy! But unfortunately, it's Sunday and the first day of the French School Holidays. We have been warned - a dire combination!

The french stagger the winter school holidays throughout a month long period. At the moment, kids from the Lyon region (which includes our area) are on holidays for the next 2 weeks. Next week, they are overlapped with the Parisians and British school holidays. Rick and Liz continually tell us that they don't even bother putting their skis on during this period as it is totally crazy. So rather than stay and observe the madness, Graeme and I will be departing for Slovakia at the end of the week.

But this morning, we arose at "crack-o-dawn", dug out the car, (there'd been about 30cm of fresh overnight) put the chains on and were waiting for the telecabine to open. We got the second telecabine. A septogenerian "powder hound" pushed past us to snatch the last spot in the first cabin! Hmmm, next time ....!!

While the snow was amazing the visibility was less so. Good thing that both of us have trained at the Skiing for the Visially Impaired Academy (aka as Mt Buller on a good day and/ or the TC Saddle Basin -Winter 2008)! We have really started to know our way around our little ski area, and heading to all our favourite haunts we whooped it up in the knee deep powder! (Cold crotch syndrome again I'm ashamed to report!!).

And then..... we thought we'd be a little clever and head off down a new beckoning patch of untracked field. The result a nasty crash for Andy!

A word about Crashes - the "Whump" vs the "Thwack!!

I am always surprised when I fall. I am generally very relaxed, humming along to the music playing softly on my headphones. I'm not thinking about what I am doing at all. Thanks to my intrepid father, I was brought up skiing off the "beaten track". I seem to remember most of my early skiing days were spent rolling down ungroomed slopes or dodging trees in tight gullies. Dad himself would often provide spectacular demonstrations of how to crash in deep and heavy snow without hurting yourself. My father always treated any fall as an occasion for great hilarity. As a result there are very few times even now that I don't start giggling while I'm flying through the air and I know that a "Whump" into the deep snow is imminent.

The only exception to this relaxed demeanour is when I am skiing on -piste or the snow is really icy off-piste. Then I'm tense. I don't want to fall. I ski tentatively and try to ensure that I am not going to hit or be hit by someone or that I will end up doing a "slide for life" on some icy off-piste. On the rare occasion that that I have crashed on-piste - it's a Thwack! And it hurts!

As capturing crashes on film is hard to do, you will forgive me for me using some old footage to demonstrate the distinction between "Whump" & "Thwack" crashes!!

The happy "Whump Fall" Note: soft snow and smile on face!!

Brother-in-law, Cam, demonstrating the aftermath of a "Thwacker".

Note: hard snow and blood!!

So today was a bit of a shock to the system. I anticipated a Whump when instead I received a Thwack. As I hurtled down the new off-piste field in the poor visibility I did not see that a groomed trail had been cut across the slope. The drop was about a metre onto a flat and hard packed snow road. I had been quite relaxed, after all I was skiing powder what could happen? So even when I ejected from both skis I was anticipating a graceful flop into a snow feather bed. To my surprise I ploughed head first into the hard road, driving my goggles onto the bridge of my nose. Ooowww! I saw stars! Thank goodness I was wearing a helmut! It took the full brunt of the impact.

The good news is that of course I was completely OK. After a quick check of the all the fingers and toes, I retired from slopes for a restorative hot chocolate and was able to continue skiing for the rest of the day! It is afterall a powder day and more snow is predicted overnight!