CODY SHIMIZU

A look into my life, a journal to look back on, a blog for others to see.

After randomly running into Steven at Castle Mountain HI the day before we decided to go for some chill laps at Bow Summit since Steven didn’t have anything planned for the day. In the morning Evelyn and I drove to Canmore to make it to Gear Up for opening to rent some backcountry skis for her. Then we drove back to HI Castle Mountain to grab Steven and Jason. Since my car was already packed Steven drove his own car out as well. We drove down the Icefields Parkway to just below Peyto Lake lookout parking lot. We quickly layered up and started skinning our way up to the alpine to get in some laps.

When we were going up Evelyn’s old knee injury was giving her some grief so her and I decided to stay low for a lap while Jason and Steven went up for a lap on the shoulder of Bow Summit (Known as Mount Jimmy Simpson). I was feeling kinda tired anyways so we rolled down to the bowl below Flower Couloir, we did a really short lap off of a small ridge into the bowl to test out her knees. Then we met back up with Jason and Steven after their lap. We decided to go do a lap on the North facing aspect of the bowl, Jason and I had done a few laps on it 2 days earlier, with good snow conditions and easy turns we decided to go up again. We made our way up the skin track and trended climbers left to avoid some of the area that was already tracked out and find some fresh snow.

The snow felt really good up there without much of a crust from the rain/snow a few days earlier. I dropped in first, during the run with the first few turns didn’t have any issues running into any rock. At the bottom of the run it got a little flat where we had to traverse back to the main path out of the bowl where Evelyn was just waiting for us. There was a few big rocks sticking through but they were obvious enough for me to avoid. Unfortunately, Steven who dropped in a few seconds after me managed to find a medium sized rock that was just covered enough to not see but at the same time not enough snow to scrape over. He managed to run right into it and he went down.

I didn’t see the crash itself but immediately I could tell his screams aren’t of the joyous kind. But with muffled screams I couldn’t quite tell. We had radios on us so I radioed him to confirm and some profanities were screamed to confirm the worst. He could immediately tell that his leg was broken. Evelyn immediately started skinning up, thankfully he wasn’t too far away. She was up there with in 2 minutes and Jason got to him first since he was the last to drop in. I immediately activated my inReach mini, put my skins on and got up to him. He was sitting up holding his left leg when I got to him. We quickly put a backpack under him to get him off of the snow and since I didn’t get an immediate response from my inReach I decided to send Evelyn down to my car and have her drive out to Lake Louise to call it in just to make sure we got the info out. It was right around 2:45-3:00Pm when this incident occurred and I wanted to get moving quick before it got dark.

While Evelyn was making her way down to the car Jason and I quickly checked over Steven it was a tib fib fracture boot top. We had no idea how long we would be out here so we decided to keep the boot on since he was still able to wiggle his toes and had no signs of bleeding out of the top of the boot. We used ski poles and titan straps (from MEC) to splint his lower leg. It worked out nice since we were able to adjust the tightness of the straps to adjust for comfort.

From there we wrapped Steven in every extra layer we had and made a little back rest for him using our boards and skis to keep him comfortable. By that point we were getting a response back on my inReach and we were sending them some info. We kept him warm and comfortable while monitoring his vitals as we waited for the helicopter. I was really worried that he might go into shock with the pain and the cold, but he had some mild pain killers with him that he took himself. Also he had a really cool head which really helped sorting him out as well. While we were waiting for the helicopter a party of 2 was going by and they generously lent us their space blanket and down jackets to us, but there wasn’t much else we could do so they headed down. Around 5:00Pm we could hear the sound of helicopter blades soaring through the air.

It was really relieving to hear the helicopters approaching knowing that help was on the way and we would be getting Steven out right away. The extremely talented helicopter pilot touched the nose of the helicopter on a gentle slope 10 feet from us as 2 rescuers were dropped off. They had a vacuum splint and bag with him and we got Steven packed up within 15 min and they long lined him out of the bowl. It was incredibly cool to see them at work right in front of me. Since we had Steven’s car to drive home and Jason and I we had to ski out of there. It was extremely awkward to try and snowboard with Steven’s skis A framed onto my backpack. By the time we got to the road back to Steven’s car we it was pitch dark.

We had gotten out of there just in time! Thankfully Steven made it out with no major complications and he stayed in Banff Hospital for the night and had surgery the day after.

All in all I think everything went as smooth as possible with enough people with layers and equipment, having lots of titan straps to splint, a garmin inreach, radios to communicate within the group and a bit with the helicopter pilot, an extremely competent SAR team in the parks.

Hoping Steven the best in his recovery and looking forward to seeing him out in the mountains soon enough!!