Replying to Trust your gear instincts!
I’ve got 125+ days on my boots and towards the end of this season I really started to notice how packed out the liners were. Still had good heel lock but I could feel a lot of play around my ankle bone/upper foot and it caused some pain while skiing, especially on my right ankle. I decided it was time to go buy some new boots on spring sale, which I did, but due to logistical problems I couldn’t get my bindings adjusted before this weekend. I decided one more day on the old boots couldn’t hurt, so took them out yesterday with 12” of fresh snow at Mary Jane.
Well I ended up crashing super hard and hurting my right knee and ankle. Potentially an MCL injury, but also a very badly sprained/potentially broken ankle. The knee injury likely would have happened no matter what boots I was wearing, but I’m convinced the ankle injury wouldn’t have happened if I was wearing my new boots. My doctor said it’s pretty rare to get ankle injuries in ski boots because the boots essentially act like a cast - although THall’s legendary chad’s gap crash came to mind while he was saying this… I didn’t crash quite that hard though :)
Long story short is TRUST YOUR GEAR INTUITION. I knew these boots were on their way out and causing pain, so I shouldn’t have taken them out. Or at least I shouldn’t have been skiing so hard on them. Learn from my mistakes!
Also if anyone was riding MJ yesterday and saw someone crash really hard right under pole 3 of Super Gauge, that was me. Or maybe you saw patrol come help since I was sitting under the lift for a good 30 mins.
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