Local ski hill reminds users of risks

(Batawa, ON. 17/01/12) Neal Allen, 29, wears a helmet for the safety. Photo by Steph Crosier

By Steph Crosier

Following the death of professional skier Sarah Burke, officials at Batawa Ski Hill says there are always risks to skiing and snowboarding.

“In her type of an injury, those things do happen,” said Darren Lobb, General Manager of Batawa Ski Hill. “As industry is concerned there’s an element of risk. When you’re obviously doing things like super pipe or riding a rail in the terrain park or hitting a jump.”

Though there is a natural risk to the sport, Lobb said Batawa does its best to reduce injuries as much as possible.

“For example in a pipe you will see the walls are painted or have different degrees so they can actually see where the wall goes from straight up and down to where it starts curving out,” said Lobb. “So when someone is doing an invert they have a perspective of where they need to land and do it safely.”

Not everyone is a professional skier like Burke and there are other ways to get injured on the hill. Batawa has padding and fencing around light posts, sheds, and hydrants. Stephanie Adams, administration supervisor at Batawa Ski Hill, said the typical injury with a skier or snowboarder is wrist injuries when falling either frontwards or backwards.

“Bruises, sprains, the occasional whiplash if you fall back to quickly or something like that,” said Adams. “We see them quite often. But nothing to the extent of the Sarah Burke accident or anything like that.”

Though Batawa hasn’t had any ambulance visits this year, Lobb said the biggest injuries on the hill are collisions with other skiers. To prevent this, Batawa, along with other ski hills, uses slow zones when trails merge together.

“That is something we are very concerned about,” said Lobb. “That’s where some significant injuries can come out.”

To prevent injuries on the runs, Adams said to always follow the alpine reasonability code.

“They’re just 10 rules to know while you are on the hill,” said Adams. “Who’s got the right-of-way, how to merge, it’s just like driving.”

Another big way to prevent serious injury is to wear a helmet, said Adams.  In Batawa’s terrain park and for school groups helmets are mandatory. To promote wearing helmets on the hill, Batawa includes a helmet in their rental packages.  With that, Adams said, the helmet is becoming a fashion statement.

“To wear a helmet nowadays is considered cool whereas even five years ago it wasn’t,” said Adams. “We still see a lot of older adults who still don’t wear helmets because they never skied with a helmet growing up. But you’ll definitely see kids wearing them these days… it matches their outfit.”

Austin Watts, a heavy equipment operator and visitor to Batawa Ski Hill, said he wears a helmet to protect his head and because it’s comfortable.

“It just helps to protect the melon,” said Watts. “The helmet, to be honest, is exceedingly comfortable.”

An experienced, the reason why Watts started to wear a helmet was to lead by example 10 years ago.

“When my kids started to get in the sport was when I started to wear my helmet,” said Watts. “I figured I should lead by example.”

Recently the Canadian Institute for Health Information released a document stating that skiing and snowboarding injuries are more than twice as frequent as hockey injuries. The report said that there were over 2,300 skiers and snowboarders admitted to hospitals compared to the more than 1,100 hockey-related hospitalizations in the 2010-2011 year.