Wow!! Scottish ski areas have just enjoyed that unusual combination of perfect powder snow, light winds, good weather and school holidays! The snowfall was truly amazing; 2-3 feet of beautiful powder falling at a time giving the ski resorts fantastic conditions. Unfortunately, in some ways the snow was too good as resort and road infrastructures struggled to cope at times. From a ski patrol point of view, although we were seeing 2500-4000 skiers per day on the slopes, the overall number of injuries was quite low - mainly because a lot of falls were into soft, fluffy, forgiving snow. I am sure that we are also seeing the benefit locally of all snowboarders taking hire gear from the ski area being offered free use of Flexmeter wrist guards. To date, we haven't seen anything like the number of wrist injuries from snowboarding that we would normally expect - I will have to wait until the end of the season to assess this statistically, but I am sure that we will see a marked benefit.
Our health centre is now electronically linked to the x-ray system of our local hospital (indeed the whole of Scotland) and this makes it so much easier for me to follow up those casualties who are sent straight to hospital in Inverness. A good example was a wee lass of 14 who the patrol thought had injured her femur - I was able to look up her x-rays and yes, indeed she did sustain a supracondylar fracture of her femur. This sort of feedback is essential for the ski patrol team so they can see if their reasoning was correct and they implemented the correct treatment proctocols.
Now the snow has begun to melt, I am off for a week's holiday to the Canaries with my family for some much needed R+R. I hope that we come back to another great dump of snow and some more fantastic skiiing. Scotland has so mcuh to offer and I hope that wherever you are planning to ski, the conditions are excellent too. Above all though, stay safe on snow.
Mike
Our health centre is now electronically linked to the x-ray system of our local hospital (indeed the whole of Scotland) and this makes it so much easier for me to follow up those casualties who are sent straight to hospital in Inverness. A good example was a wee lass of 14 who the patrol thought had injured her femur - I was able to look up her x-rays and yes, indeed she did sustain a supracondylar fracture of her femur. This sort of feedback is essential for the ski patrol team so they can see if their reasoning was correct and they implemented the correct treatment proctocols.
Now the snow has begun to melt, I am off for a week's holiday to the Canaries with my family for some much needed R+R. I hope that we come back to another great dump of snow and some more fantastic skiiing. Scotland has so mcuh to offer and I hope that wherever you are planning to ski, the conditions are excellent too. Above all though, stay safe on snow.
Mike
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