A bad day on the mountain

It does not always matter in life how many good deeds you have done or how much volunteer work you have accomplished. If you're in the right place, at the wrong time, bad things can - and do - happen to good people.

For John Judy, Ski and Snowboard School Director at Hoodoo Mountain Resort, February 20 was just another Friday as a volunteer teaching the Camp Sherman Black Butte School students. The Black Butte School has six groups, totaling 19 students. Every Friday the students gather, divided into groups based on age and skill level, to learn from Judy. Ski instructor Rick Geraths was also there.

On this particular afternoon Judy was teaching the fifth and sixth grade girls.

"They're all dedicated students," he says, "They earn their way from one skill level to the next."

Friday they were skiing near the bottom of the hill learning a carve turn. Judy was leading and the five students were behind him in a line.

"As a skier," Judy explained, "you are constantly balancing. Usually if you are going to be off balance you can feel it coming and take action."

For Judy that day there was no sense that he was about to be out of balance. No advance warning, no chance to recover, he was just instantly down.

Rick Geraths, who was taking pictures of Judy in action from the bottom of the hill, said he was in the center of the lens one second, and in the next second he was gone.

Judy had been hit by another skier and tumbled half a dozen times down the hill before landing on a ski, face down in the snow. He was hit so hard and so fast he didn't feel the impact. The shock prevented him from immediately feeling the pain of eight broken ribs, front and back, both sides and a punctured lung.

Hoodoo's Ski Patrol came on the scene to place Judy on a toboggan pulled by a snow mobile and take him to Hoodoo's first aid room, where he waited for the ambulance. His pain was so severe, Sisters Ambulance staff administered painkillers before driving him to the hospital.

The teenager who hit him was gone. He simply left the scene immediately after the impact. No sorrys, no good-byes. He was just gone.

"Nowadays kids enjoy the speed and don't have a sense of the forces involved," Judy later commented. "Kids don't consider the ramifications of what they are doing. A person should have enough supervision and basic instruction to understand the danger you can get yourself into skiing. It's really all about bad judgment. With skiing you don't have seat belts or a roll cage.

"It's ironic," added Judy, "I spent a great deal of my adult life teaching others how to ski responsibly. Then along comes this."

Subsequent hours were a blur of x-rays, cat scans and surgery to insert a breathing tube into his lung, which even with anesthetic was painful. Followed by six days in St. Charles Medical Center. After three days at home, blood clots put him back in the hospital for another five days. More pain, and more treatment.

Judy is home once again. Camp Shermanites have been paying attention to Judy and helping him with meals, house cleaning, and all the necessary chores. All the things, Judy says, that make the Camp Sherman community special.