March 25th, 2015

Airbags, good for more than just avalanches

Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, even for the pro riders. Tyler Blair found this out the hard way when he crash landed a jump and the force of the impact not only drew blood but also deployed his airbag! – MS

“It was one of the few sunny days I had guiding clients for Ride Whistler this winter, so I really wanted to show them how amazing and vast our backcountry really is. Even though I knew access was sketchy at best, I made the decision to go up the Rutherford Icecap. After about an hour and a half of rocks, stumps and open creeks (just on the road that normally has 10 feet of snow on it) we got to the alpine and started pushing as high as we could to find some soft stuff (the infamous powder).

Once above 6000ft we found some softer snow, but still a little firm being that it was early in the day still. But we had jumps on the mind, so we started looking. It wasn’t long before we found an okay windlip to get the blood moving a little. I rolled the lip once just to check the trajectory and then came around the second time. I went slow because the landing wasn’t very soft and only got more firm the farther out you went. It turns out that slow was too fast and I was still going up when I passed the soft snow on the landing!

When I hit, my right hand came off the bars and on the bounce I knew I couldn’t hang on, so I rolled off the right side of the sled and so began the “yard sale”. It was about the same as bailing on concrete. My goggles broke and my face got smashed up and cut, and I rolled so hard that it pulled my deployment handle and blew my airbag! (Which really softened up the rest of my battle roll that I had going on). A little shaken but not deterred, I gathered up my gear and wits and we continued on to find a few more jumps and had a great day of riding!”
– Tyler