Injuries/Scars from Mountain Adventures

[kurisu78]

Jones Mountain is the only one to leave a lasting mark on me so far - and that was purely my own fault for not pulling out traction and ice axe when I should have. I have an inch and a half reminder on my left arm of how that poor decision led to an uncontrolled slide that ended soon after my arm hit a rock that flipped me over.

That's funny: I have a nice scar on my knee from this past summer heading up to the saddle between American and Jones (from the Burns Gulch side) because -- like a good boy -- I was heading up in the pre-dawn hours and managed to get seriously off route in that basin. Like, 40-degree-slope-on-slidy-dinner-plates-and-cursing-my-stupidity sort of off route.

[seano]

Where to begin? How about my shins...

- the vertical scar from hitting a bulge climbing ice in Ouray. Taped it shut and moved on with my life.
- the v-shaped one from a rock rolling onto one near Mont Blanc. Flapper requiring stitches that then became infected.
- the other v-shaped one from ice skating. Another flapper requiring stitches.

Then there are the ones whose origins I forget. My shins are mostly scar tissue.

Moving on, there's the heel-bone bruise from a failed Tarzan maneuver in the Palisades, which mostly doesn't bother me. And the ankle currently reminding me of Kyrgyzstan. Matching boxer's fractures on each hand from the Black Divide in the Sierra, and Access Creek in the Cascades. A faint scar on one forearm from glissading on Mount Adams in a t-shirt; I didn't feel it until after I got back to the trailhead.

That's all that comes to mind at the moment.

[MidsizeAl]

June of 2023 I was doing some easy scrambling on a formation north of Greyrock called "The Crest" (outside of Fort Collins). The rock was wet from a rainstorm the night before, and it was super humid. I was stepping down a ~4-5ft drop and slipped on some of the wet rock. I put my arms out to catch myself as I dropped, but the force caused my left shoulder to dislocate. I knew right away that something didn't feel right, and I crawled onto a flat portion of rock, carefully slid my pack off, and lied on my back, trying to breathe through the pain. It was awful, and I nearly passed out.

My wife had chosen to not follow me up this section, and was waiting for me down below, so I was up there solo, and knew I had to scramble back down ~50 vertical feet to get back to easy trail. Some primal part of my brain took over, and I took a deep breath and carefully lifted my left arm above my head with my right arm, and felt my shoulder slide back into the socket. I'll never forget the noise it made. It immediately felt better, but I was still in an enormous amount of pain.

I called down to my wife to let her know what had happened, and she obviously started to panic. She wanted to call SAR, but I was (stupidly) insistent on trying to get myself down, both because I was embarrassed, and because I did not want to be up there any longer than I had to and was surging with adrenaline. I managed to carefully crawl back down to her and was able to hike back out. By the time I got back to the car, I actually felt pretty good, but still went in to urgent care to get an x-ray. They told me it was back in it's socket correctly, and told me to take it easy for a while to let it recover. It took a few weeks to be able to sleep on that side again, but I was back out on class 3 terrain before long.

Then, in December, I was snowshoeing up E. Glacier Knob in RMNP, when I postholed on a steeper section and came down a bit hard on my left trekking pole, and my shoulder popped right back out again. I once again managed to get it back in and hike back out, but from that point on, my shoulder was incredibly unstable. Simple household tasks would cause it to dislocate, and I knew I was going to probably need surgery. I got an MRI and CT scan and learned I had torn my labrum, and, due to the repeated dislocations, had put a dent in the top of my humeral head from impacting my glenoid (Hills Sachs Lesion):

Image20241202171712.png (270.88 KiB) Viewed 3467 times

Long story short, I was able to have everything repaired arthroscopically about 10 months ago. It was a very frustrating and painful recovery with lots of PT, but I was back out on the 14ers after a few months and scrambling without issue. I still am a little cautious with it, but I even joined a climbing gym in September and haven't had any problems.