A little late, but…..

New Years in Sunriver!  My dad rents a house near his in Sunriver (not too far away, but just far enough :) for my brother’s family and my family to stay for a few nights around New Years.  It is always nice for the cousins to spend a little quality time together. 

We went skiing with Halle and Kyle while Kate and her sister Lala watched the other kids. 

It was –8 degrees on the way to the mountain.  I had never seen the thermometer go that low!  It was dern cold! 

It didn’t go as well as we had planned.  Kyle did a lot of complaining.  It was cold.  The lines were looooong.  It was impossible to get lunch because the lunch lines were looong and there was no place to sit.  Halle and I got a bit more skiing in by ourselves…

It was fun, just not as much skiing was done as was paid for.  Heath was back at the homestead with Papa Buck by then, looking cute in his snow clothes…

Halle found a very large icicle

The next day we decided to go tubing.  That is when everything took a turn for the worse.  We had never been tubing up at Mt. Bachelor before. 

Seemed innocent enough.  It was much faster and thrilling (a bit scarier I have to say!) than I thought it would be.  Here is what happened next (a little lengthy, but here goes….)

There is a cable that they attach a clip from your tube to and at the top of the run, it detaches from the tube and you get off your tube and place it at the top of the run.  While you are being dragged up the mountain on your tube, the tube strays under the cable and is only a couple inches above your head or even right next to your body to your left.  Kyle's apparently strayed even more to the left and as he approached the top where detaching occurs, there is less and less room below the cable, between the cable and the snow.  So, even though his tube detached from the cable, the cable was in contact with the top of his tube, due to the lack of space between the cable and the snow.  Therefore, it propelled him along a little more and pushed him up against the pully at the top where he was pinned, still in his tube with his head on the left side of the cable and his body on the right (Andy may have a different perspective).  The cable was still moving along his body, pinning him down and rubbing against his coat and neck.  He yelled and Andy eventually realized what was happening and started screaming "STOP!" over and over and I finally looked back and saw him (I couldn’t tell if it was Heath or Kyle) and was screaming stop and running up the hill, Halle close behind.  It was so scary and at the time it looked like the cable was going to cut him in two.  Definitely one of the scariest moments of my life.  Halle was crying, Kyle was screaming, and Heath was somewhat oblivious and calm.  Finally (seemed like minutes, but was 30 seconds maybe), they stopped the cable and Andy and someone else got him out from under the cable.  They took him by snowmobile to the ER on the mountain and started an IV, gave him some morphine, stopped the pain.

They called the ambulance and recommended he go to the hospital to make sure there was no internal damage.  By the time the ambulance got there, there had been another injury and Kyle would be sharing the ambulance with someone who crashed and was pretty serious.  They gave us the option to transport him ourselves and we did that.  After an ultrasound which revealed no damage to internal structures, he was bandaged up and went home.  They diagnosed him with second degree burns and abrasions.  He has had some discomfort alternating with pain and has obviously suffered some trauma, but will make a full recovery (with lots of TLC, Jamba Juice, and foot massages!)
Here are a couple of pics of before the accident and his neck after, don't look close if you are squeamish.  I am hoping with a few phone calls and emails, Mt. Bachelor will take a closer look at the system in place and make it more safe. 

just after incident…

The next day…

A week later…

2 weeks later

 

I haven’t taken a picture of the scar lately, but it is raised and pink.  Healed pretty nicely really, but so scary and such a close call! 

Well, on a happier not, here is a cute picture of my 3 kiddos!  Just to leave you with a nicer visual!

Happy Belated New Year!  I have some blogging to catch up on!