“Look before you leap”, It’s a sign plastered everywhere on ski resorts, but is often overlooked. The thrill and rush of adrenaline can take over someone’s mind, making poor decision making one of the biggest causes of accidents involved with snowboarding. This was exactly the case on February 15th 2019, a day that could have drastically changed my friend Ben Pearse’s life forever. Ben and I were at Mt. Seymour in Vancouver B.C. Canada for a provincial slope-style contest. Waking up on the first day to the news of 20 cm of fresh snow overnight had everyone scrambling to get up to the hill for the first run of the day.
After getting up to the hill on the first chairlift ride up I recall Ben saying “i’m going off that cliff to the right” everything seemed fine with that, it was a small drop and he is a very experienced snowboarder. When Ben went off that cliff after unloading from the chairlift all we heard was the crackling of branches snapping off of trees, a moment of silence which felt like hours, followed by a desperate call for help. When I went to investigate I realized that Ben had misjudged where the cliff was and hurled himself off an 85 foot cliff.
On his plummet down he bounced off of trees eventually landing and triggering a small avalanche from all of the fresh snow overnight. Far down at the base of the cliff all we could see was the top of his head. I immediately found a way down around the cliff to help. One of the first things Ben said was there was a shooting pain down his back. This was instantly a warning sign to not move him at all because broken bones in the back can cause severe spinal cord damage leading to paralysis or worse. I called the ski patrol and when they finally arrived, we knew it would immediately be more difficult than we originally presumed to get Ben off the mountain.
Working on the side of a steep hill with tons of fresh snow made it a group effort of more than 5 people just to get him onto a spine board. When Ben was finally on the spine board it had been more than an hour and a half of Ben sitting covered in snow in freezing temperatures; a new problem was arising, Ben was getting hypothermia. We tried our best to keep him warm but ultimately we decided our efforts would be better spent getting him down the mountain.
After the grueling task of getting Ben down the mountain to the ski patrol building he was immediately loaded into an ambulance waiting for him in the parking lot. I was Ben’s main form of communication so I went with him in the ambulance. As we sped with all the ambulance lights and sirens on I couldn’t help but think of all the things that could’ve changed if we simply took things slower. Ben ended up miraculously only breaking one vertebrae in his back and eventually made a full recovery. So many things that day could have been changed if we simply took the phrase “look before you leap” more seriously. Always be more cautious with everything, it could end up saving your life.