The fall is brutal in its simplicity. I drop into a steep black run into Tignes from Val d’Isère, squinting at freeze-thaw conditions through poor light. It’s difficult to make out anything through the gloaming. Then, it happens. I collide with an ice boulder lurking in the middle of the slope.
Right ski lifts and crosses over the left. I am trapped in motion, hurtling downhill, with no way out but to try to force-eject my binding, yanking strenuously on my foot. It doesn’t release. I slam to an awkward, twisted stop, sitting on the back of my ski.
When I try to stand, a bolt of pain flashes down my leg, and instinct tells me it is serious. I am cold and fearful that I’ll catch hypothermia if I wait to be rescued, so I traverse the final few hundred metres on my good leg – with my tall ski buddy holding the opposite elbow – and order a taxi to the medical clinic.
I fail the manual manipulations that test the integrity of my knee. I cannot bend or straighten my leg so I depart wearing a thick neoprene hinged brace and on crutches. Marooned on the sofa becomes my new status quo, and I am fortunate to be residing in a catered chalet while I process and adjust. Thank heavens for good travel insurance – through Snowcard – so repatriation is smooth. In this vulnerable state, my eyes open to the world of wheelchair assistance at the airport, which I will rely on many more times thereafter.
Snow-capped mountains in Big Sky
I am a wanderer. My lifeblood is travel and adventure, and skiing powder under bluebird skies is where my heart really sings. I have always been one to make things happen, holding my own and generally keeping up with the boys – until one split second tears apart the anterior cruciate ligament in my knee and, with it, my independence. Suddenly, the freedom I take for granted is replaced with the humbling reality of needing help with the smallest tasks, and cultivating the art of patience in a world that rarely slows down.
I cannot drive for six weeks, nor walk or balance properly for almost a year. I feel like I am going mad back home, restless and unable to start physiotherapy at the hospital until I receive a formal diagnosis. I’m fast-tracked for an MRI but the results come agonisingly slowly, and I regret not going private.
I find an independent physio who gives me simple exercises to keep me sane. I turn to online ACL groups for advice and support, finding solidarity with thousands of others navigating the same injury. The scans show my ligament is hanging by a thread, so I commit to an intensive non-surgical recovery while keeping surgery as a fallback. The bones are intact but badly bruised, making even simple weight-bearing tasks agonising. For months I shuffle through daily routines on codeine and home deliveries, waiting for strength to return.
Physiotherapy gets me walking, hydrotherapy helps me balance, and I slowly trade crutches for hiking poles. Progress is steady but isolating: I skip sports and social events, frustrated by how even standing or looking at my phone is too much. Discharged to the gym with only a generic list of exercises, I feel adrift. Pain becomes my only guide, though I long for real data – something solid to tell me when I am ready to move, jump and eventually trust myself on snow again.
Big Sky skiers
My saving grace comes via a friend, who recommends to me the Isokinetic clinic in Harley Street. Best known for their work with professional footballers, they treat 16,000 patients across 10 clinics in Europe and hold an impressive dataset on male and female return to sport and ACL rehabilitation. They also use one of the most precise and bespoke data-driven methodologies I have ever seen.
During my consultation with Dr Matthew Stride, himself a keen skier, the main takeaway is that I need a carbon-fibre knee brace to get back on the slopes, and that I should work up to my own bodyweight on the leg press. The highlight is being strapped into an isokinetic dynamometer chair, which measures the strength and resistance of leg muscle groups, comparing the injured and non-injured legs as well as the quad-to-hamstring ratio. Benchmarking my results against theirs gives me the direction I crave.
On another day, I head upstairs for a neuromonitor training session in the Green Room with Filippo Piccinini, to work on biomechanical movement control and quality. I perform exercises in front of a wall-to-wall video screen, with a sensor plate underfoot and cameras positioned in front and to the side. A real-time green line on the screen shows the angle of force through my leg. I can make corrections under his guidance and re-learn best practice, reforging the mind-body connection.
On the leg machines, the team strap electrostimulation modules to my leg and hand me the controller, so I can dial up or down the tingling impulses to build up strength. It proves entertaining to test how much intensity I can tolerate. Physio sessions in the gym start with a conversational warm-up massage and end with an ice pack, reflecting the clinic’s ethos of treating the person as well as the injury.
Being ready to return to sport is as much mental as it is physical. To prepare myself for getting back on the slopes, I turn to Chemmy Alcott, former World Cup alpine ski racer and presenter of Ski Sunday on the BBC. Having broken a multitude of bones, as well as snapping her ACL, she advises me to envision myself completing my run of doom, both from my own point of view and imagining myself filmed from afar. Otherwise, we spend so long prepping our bodies that when we finally clip into our bindings, our brain says, ‘hey, what about me?’ She also suggests a couple of hours’ training in a snowdome, since carving is almost impossible to replicate in a gym setting, even with wedges.
Big Sky resort
A few weeks later, I stand at the bottom of the mountain at Big Sky Resort in Montana. A year on from the accident, it is late-season freeze-thaw conditions again and I am terribly nervous. I wait for the slopes to soften, despite the time difference keeping me awake. Over a cappuccino on the terrace of my ski-in, ski-out hotel, I quiz my affable guide Curt Sundeen.
The runs are much quieter than at some big-name resorts, despite forming one of the largest ski terrains in America. It is less flashy too. This is a place you come to get away rather than to be seen. Just over the hill lies the Yellowstone Club, a private residential community with its own ski slopes, where Curt has taught Bill Gates’ children to ski. It is a huge employer in the area. On the opposite side of the ski map, the exceptional One&Only Moonlight Basin opens this winter, with its own cable car connection. The money is clearly pouring in and the resort is on the rise. Nevertheless, expansion here feels thoughtful, with staff accommodation central, although many still live down in Bozeman.
The chairlifts are fast and modern – a couple even have heated seats. The resort is mainly in the trees – lodgepole and white bark pine as well as fir and spruce – with the majestic Lone Peak rising above the treeline. From its summit you can gaze across Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and the national parks of Yellowstone and Grand Teton. The region is home to mountain lions, moose, bear, elk, bighorn sheep and more. Some visitors just take the Lone Peak cable car for the views, whilst the brave ski down the rocky chutes. With more than 10 metres of snow each year, the expanse suits skiers of every level.
For my first time back, we stick to the wonderful, sweeping greens and blues. Carl soothes my nerves and gently guides me down until we are flying and I am swept up in the sweet, glorious rush of wind. He remarks how well I am doing and I begin to trust the brace while finding my limits. The flats are harder than the incline and as soon as the sky clouds over and visibility worsens, my newfound confidence shrinks, and I revert to a snail’s pace. As the days pass, I settle into a rhythm, skiing from mid-morning to mid-afternoon before heading back to the Summit hotel to stretch and relax in the pool – a giant, steaming hot tub – and Himalayan salt sauna.
Dinner at Everett's 8800
I revel in keeping up a protein-rich diet – from elk tartare and wagyu beef at my hotel to a magnificent seafood platter freshly shipped in via Seattle at Everett’s 8800, and a bison, elk and venison chilli at Montana Jack. Having watched the entire Yellowstone series, I am a sucker for the sleigh ride up to Lone Mountain Ranch for an off-grid dinner with a cowboy crooning to his acoustic guitar. Little wonder rodeos here sell out in minutes each summer. I arrive too late in the season to snowmobile into Yellowstone National Park, and the roads are still shut to cars – one of many reasons to return.
I leave Montana knowing I have only just scratched the surface. I may not yet be at my fastest, but if this year has taught me anything, it is that recovery is a marathon and at my finish line is not a medal but the quiet, hard-won joy of finding my way back to the mountains, and to myself. I return home with more than a healed knee; I carry the mountain’s reminder that fragility and strength often live side by side.
