A healthy knee hits the ground

To celebrate May Day, as we arrived late afternoon in San Francisco. I didn’t have a better idea than raising my glance to admire some Victorian architectural detail on a home while we were walking one of the city’s many steep hills. I hit something with my right foot, lost my balance and fell right on my left knee. 

When this kind of fall happens, the pain is always intense. In fact falling on one’s knee can cause a serious injuries like patella fractures, ligament or meniscus tears, and severe contusions, often leading to immediate swelling, bruising, and inability to bear weight. In my case there was a bloody bruise over the knee cap, but the beast I am kept on walking up and down the hilly streets. 

I felt okay when I went to bed but woke up at midnight with some intense pain, particularly in the back of my knee. I meditated, took no drug and eventually went back to sleep. The next morning my knee was both stiff swollen, I took a pain killer and decided to participate in a rather long 8 miles walk to and through Golden Gate Park. Strong at first, the pain gradually dissipated through the day and I thought I was “saved”. 

The night was okay, but the next morning my knee’s pain and stiffness were intense. I swallowed another painkiller and followed wife and daughter on a hike over Marin County, to Mount Tamalpais known locally as “Mount Tam”, through a mountain bike trail. 

Gradually, the horrible pain disappeared and by the end of the day and 6.5 miles later, it felt okay. From that day one, there was pain in the morning that quickly went away as soon as there was activity and blood circulation. 

Had I listened to my body I would have stayed home, put an ice pack on my knee, elevated my leg and probably would have suffered much more. All this to show that when there is nothing broken, activity that promotes blood circulation is a better remedy than laying down!

4-20 Explosive turn?

Imagine that you’re skiing very, very fast. Let’s say a high speed GS type of turn, you are in the last section of the curve and your exterior foot is suddenly freed from the ski. No, I’m not talking about the binding pre-releasing, but about your very own boot exploding or better yet, disintegrating. 

I don’t have to tell you that you don’t want that to happen while you’re skiing, and this is why, a few days ago, Head USA just announced a voluntary recall of approximately 1,890 pairs of high-end ski boots across North America. 

The recall comes after reports that the boot’s shell and sole inserts can spontaneously deteriorate and break, potentially turning a smooth run down the mountain into a dangerous fall. The recall specifically impacts the fluorescent yellow materials used in the construction of the boot shell and sole. 

According to the brand, these components can become brittle and crack, compromising the structural integrity of the boot. While the thought of our boot disintegrating mid-carve is enough to give any skier pause, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) confirmed that no injuries have been reported to date. 

In my years in the boot business, we had a few warranty claims for broken boots, but from what I can remember the breakage happened during storage. Head is moving proactively to pull the remaining stock and alert owners before the "deterioration" leads to a documented accident. 

The affected boots were sold nationwide at specialized ski retailers and through various online platforms. Given that these boots have been on the market for over a decade (spanning from late 2015 through early 2026), many skiers may still have these boots. Just check yours if they happen to be Head! 

Dying doing what we love !

This is an expression I have heard several times about skiers meeting their mortality while skiing. I’m not talking about tragic accident mind you, like avalanche, collisions, slide on slick slopes, etc., but “natural death”, most often than not caused by a timely massive heart failure on the ski slopes, happening to an avid skier. 

Of course the saying “He died doing what he loved”, that’s in fact a coping mechanism, not a literal truth. It perhaps works for the victim, if the assumption is correct (which we generally failed to verify), but tragic for the widow or widower and the next of kin that end up picking the pieces in a moment that end up being a bit awkward given the circumstances. 

When someone collapses on a ski slope from a heart attack, the people around them instinctively reach for a narrative that softens the shock. Saying “he died doing what he loved” is a way to reduce the randomness of the event, give the moment a sense of dignity and reassure everyone that the person wasn’t suffering in a hospital bed. 

There’s also a cultural element as skiing, climbing, sailing, are activities with a built‑in mythology. People who love them often talk about them as a way of life, not just a hobby. So when someone dies in that context, the narrative almost writes itself. It’s not that the sentiment is false; it’s just incomplete. I remember two people that die this way.

One was Max Marolt a ski rep for Look bindings when I came to America in 1977 and an icon of skiing and politics in Aspen who died at 67 after suffering a heart attack while skiing at Las Leñas in Argentina on July 28, 2003. The other was the French ski champion Adrien Duvillard who died while skiing on his native Megève, at Mont d'Arbois, on February 14, 2017 at age 82. 

I too would love to die that way, but I don’t think my wife would be thrilled!

Where were the sprinklers? (Part Two)

Right after learning about the Crans-Montana fire and figuring that there were no automatic sprinklers, I wondered if there would have been less victims if the night club had this kind of equipment in its ceilings? Based on fire science and decades of statistical data from organizations like the American National Fire Protection Association and the European Fire Safety Alliance, the answer is almost certainly yes. 

While no safety system is 100% foolproof, fire protection engineers generally agree that automatic sprinklers are the single most effective tool for preventing mass-casualty events in high-occupancy venues like nightclubs. Just like what happened at Le Constellation, the most lethal moment in a fire is the flashover, a point where the heat in a room becomes so intense that every combustible surface ignites simultaneously.

In that fire, the non-fire-retardant foam acted as a "solid fuel," allowing the fire to race across the ceiling. If there had been automatic sprinklers, they would have been activated at a specific temperature (usually around 155°F). 

By spraying water directly on the source early, they would have kept the room temperature below the flashover threshold, effectively "pinning" the fire to its origin point and this would have bought time, a critical element in a crowded nightclub with 300 people and limited exits, in which the difference between life and death is measured in seconds. 

In addition, sprinklers wash out the large carbon particles in smoke, which would have helped maintain visibility. Le Constellation fire’s survivors reported that the room went "pitch black" within 90 seconds due to the thick foam smoke. Finally, sprinklers would have also cooled the hot gases and smoke. In many fires, victims die from thermal lung damage (inhaling air that is several hundred degrees) before the flames ever reach them. 

Sprinklers would have kept that air survivable for much longer. The data on the effectiveness of sprinklers in public assembly spaces is overwhelming as they bring the death rate by approximately 80% to 90% lower in buildings with automatic sprinklers compared to those without. As an extra bonus, in over 95% of fires in sprinklered buildings, the fire is either completely extinguished or held in check by the operation of just one or two sprinkler heads. 

The Crans-Montana fire bears a haunting resemblance to the 2003 Station Nightclub fire in Rhode Island, near Boston. In that fire, pyrotechnics ignited foam, and 100 people died in five minutes. A computer simulation from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, later proved that if sprinklers had been present, everyone would have likely survived, as the fire would have been suppressed within 30 seconds of ignition. 

Now, you be the judge.

Where were the sprinklers? (Part One)

In the aftermath of the Swiss night-club’s deadly fire, I’ve been wondering why there weren’t mandatory fire sprinklers in such a public places at the Crans-Montana resort like they exist in Park City, Utah, where I live? The question of fire safety at the Le Constellation bar and nightclub has become a point of national debate in Switzerland following the tragic fire on January 1, 2026. 

The absence of sprinklers in that venue—and many similar public spaces across Europe—is the result of a specific regulatory philosophy and a "gap" in existing fire codes that is only now being urgently re-evaluated. In the United States and Canada, fire safety relies heavily on active suppression (sprinklers that put out the fire). In contrast, Swiss and many European fire codes traditionally prioritize passive protection. 

This includes using fire-resistant walls and doors to keep a fire contained in one room for 30–60 minutes. The exit routes are focusing on their number, width, and visibility so people can leave before the fire spreads. Also, the regulation the flammability of building materials is an extra consideration. Under current Swiss standards, sprinklers are generally only mandatory for high-risk categories like high-rise buildings, hospitals, and massive industrial sites. 

Smaller public venues like Le Constellation often met legal requirements by simply having enough fire extinguishers and marked exits. In many Swiss cantons, a venue must reach a very high capacity (often over 1,000–2,000 people) before automatic suppression becomes a legal requirement. Le Constellation could accommodate approximately 300 people. Because it fell below this high threshold, the law allowed it to operate with manual safety measures (extinguishers) rather than a multi-million-franc sprinkler system. 

The Canton of Valais (where Crans-Montana is located) has historically been noted by fire safety experts for having pretty lax interpretations of these rules compared to stricter cantons like Zurich or Bern. Then, there’s the "Grandfathering" of older buildings in Alpine resorts with their older, traditional wooden structures or stone basements. It’s clear that installing a modern sprinkler system in an old building requires some expensive infrastructure judged too high for small business owners. 

That certainly applies to old mining towns turned into ski resorts like Park City, Aspen or Telluride, but there’s no exception there, fire sprinklers have to be installed regardless of their cost. More recently, in 2014, we built a new home in Park City that required the installation of fire sprinklers. Our town was an early adopter of residential fire safety standards. A 2002 local ordinance began requiring sprinklers in all new residential construction, including single family homes. 

Tomorrow we’ll explore if automatic sprinklers would have saved lives at the Constellation…

The day I almost died

Last Friday as we were walking and were already engaged to go through the pedestrian crossing at a four-point stop road crossing, a Ford Mustang EV almost turned me into a flattened, dead rabbit. 

Reflexively, I instantly jumped back, the driver hit the brakes, but had I not dodged it, I wouldn’t have written this blog, instead my wife would have composed my obituary. 

The guy looked at me like a deer caught in the headlights, didn’t roll down his window, grimaced some words that remained inaudible to me and sped away. 

I pulled up my phone and was barely able to snap two pictures of the offending car. I’m sure I know what I will do with them, but I made out its Utah plate as G51 1YU.

What’s certain is that I’m grateful to be alive and well, so I’ll try to remember it next time, as a handy tool for self-preservation!

Aftermath of a fall (continued...)

With a slightly hurting right bum, but after a good lunch, I didn’t join my female companions for their afternoon stroll, but choose instead to do some “housecleaning” on my computer. 

For more than 10 years now, I use a standing desk and unusually, this time, had to alternate frequent breaks and bursts of pain between standing and sitting in my office chair, to the point that I grew badly nauseated and became immobile and totally disabled. 

When my wife and daughter returned I couldn’t talk any more and had no strength left, looking about to die. 

They called 911, the ambulance came, ran a quick EKG that perhaps left to be desired as to its accuracy and drove me to one of the main cardiology centers in Salt Lake City were I was admitted in their ICU. 

There, after spending the night and about 16 hours, following repeated testing imaging of all sorts, they couldn’t find any severe problem with my heart, except some calcification around my aortic valve that’s just a marker of old age. 

So after disentangling myself from all the wires they had put on me and following a night without sleep I returned home to enjoy the last day of the year, with the doctors best wish for a happy 2025, no direct intervention and no prescription! 

Since the doctors I saw at the ICU couldn’t figure out what had happened to me, I did some research back at home, I concluded that I had suffered a vasovagal response, which occurs when the vagus nerve is stimulated. It’s the vagus nerve that controls the heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and other bodily functions. 

When it's triggered, the heart slows and blood vessels dilate, which can cause blood to pool in the legs and deprive the brain of oxygen. This can lead to fainting, or vasovagal syncope which is what happened to me that day. To treat it the right way, I should have lied down and lifted my legs up in the air to restore blood flow to the brain and help them regain consciousness. 

These feelings of nausea weren’t new to me and are clearly like to an overly long standing posture at my desk, so next time, I’ll take a break, sit more often and stand a little bit less and life should go on nicely in 2025!

A sophisticated but dangerous “walker”

Evolution is everywhere around us and has existed since the beginning of time. 

Let’s take walkers as an example (I’m talking about the mobility aid that helps people maintain balance and stability while walking). This device began very humbly as a basic support for folks that had difficulty walking due to age-related mobility issues, such as arthritis, leg weakness, or balance problems, or even for convalescents after surgery of a broken bone in the foot or leg.

Just in case you were wondering, I don’t use the basic style of “walker”, but use the two pictured on the right of the illustration, namely a lawn mower and a snow blower, that could be interpreted as some modern, motorized walker versions. 

I still am pretty good with them and on my 77th birthday, just a few days ago, as I was removing snow from my driveway, I turned around my “motorized walker” on the main road, my foot slipped on the very sleek roadway and I fell on my right buttock. 

There was some initial pain that rapidly disappeared and after I was finished with my snow-clearing job, I joined my wife and daughter for our morning walk. Some 15 minutes later I felt an excruciating pain developing around the spot where I landed, to the point that I had to cut my outing short and go home to swallow some pain-killer. 

Later that afternoon, as I was still pondering what I had, I called the family clinic that was full with ski injured patients and asked me to call them again the next day. Tomorrow, you’ll learn the rest of this story...

(To be continued...)

A ten-days goiter?

For those of you who don’t know it, a goiter is an adaptive reaction of the cells in the thyroid gland to any process that blocks its hormone production. While the most common cause of goiter is iodine deficiency, other conditions can cause it. 

I just got one after being stung by a wasp just below the chin, into my neck area. Unbeknownst to me, being stung in that area so close to the larynx and the trachea may swell rapidly, potentially obstructing the airway and causing difficulty breathing. 

All this might lead to shortness of breath or even respiratory failure. To make matters worse, if one is allergic to wasp venom, there might be a severe allergic reaction called anaphylaxis that can be life-threatening. In addition to breathing difficulties anaphylaxis can include swelling of the face and throat, hives, and a rapid heartbeat. 

The morning following my being stung, as I brushed my teeth I was stunned to see a massive mass of flesh dangling back and forth in my neck area. My wrinkled neck was now smooth and well-rounded! I immediately realized that, by stinging me, the wasp had done some major damage to my usually good looks. I don’t know if the sting hit the thyroid gland but it created a massive swelling, similar to the goiter pictured here.

This incident will have some lasting effects, some ten days of swelling I’m told. Hopefully, I’ll soon recover my wrinkled neck and return to being my true self!

Park City’s view of fire danger

On Tuesday, we had the visit of Cherie Wellmon. She is the Park City Fire Marshal and as such, is responsible for the administration and inspections of the Park City Wildland Urban Interface Code, Operational Fire Permits, and Main Street annual fire inspections. 

I wrote previously that I’d keep you posted about her visit. She took a look at our neighbors’ properties, then walked around our house and said that all was fine and we were okay in terms of fire security. What we learned from her is that our City doesn’t want to intrude too much into its residents’ freedom of doing little or nothing about clear and present fire danger. 

To get to that point, we ought to get the City Council to change its municipal code, so for the time being, we’ll need to keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best. As always, things may evolve when we have a catastrophe. 

We also learned that our local fire fighters will triage the houses or buildings that are worth saving based on their quality and surroundings which was a reassuring comment towards our own home that is both recent and well maintained. That wasn’t exactly what we wanted to hear, but again, "You can’t always get what you want" as the famous Rolling Stones’ song goes...

Ready for the wildfire season?

Utah is famous for its beautiful summers, its bone-dry air and with that, fire danger is never far away. 

The other day, we received a brochure from our municipality asking us to prepare ourselves against a looming fire season. It’s true that our block is saturated with trees, of which too many of them are sap saturated evergreens, some of them “standing dead”, a clear and present fire danger. 

When we built our home (blue dot on the photo below) over ten years ago, we only had to plant two trees in the front (that were both eaten up last year by the deer), the rest was already planted, alongside our adjacent neighbors’ properties, encroaching upon ours in many instances. 

Over the years, landscaping companies have been selling far too many trees in too many species (many not adapted to our climate) and planted them far too densely and close to homes, forgetting - no probably ignoring - that trees eventually grow big and tall and here we are, three decades later. in the middle of an urban forest which has become a tinderbox! 

In fact our main problem is not our home, it’s the neighbors’ trees that are choking us, and this is why we requested an assessment of our fire danger by an official from the City who will have to look outside of our own property for effective solutions! We’ll let you know what comes out of that visit...

Another weird experience of mine…

Last Friday, I went skiing with my grandson Finn. It was cold, snowy and blowing, but the snow was fabulous. After lunch, I went to the bathrooms and since I wear a long, thirty-five years old, Descente coat when the weather is too harsh, I needed to see myself in the mirror to be able to correctly close some of the many garment snaps located right under my chin. 

My skiing companion was waiting for me outside where we had left our skis. I placed my gloves on the basket over the sink, but when I laid my helmet upside down on the counter it wasn’t stable and kept on rolling in all directions, so I decided to secure it by placing it momentarily inside the sink. 

Suddenly, to my horror, I saw the faucet gushing water into my helmet. I took it out as fast as I could, but its interior was entirely soaking wet. These are photo-cell-activated faucets that turn on when the hands or anything foreign gets tin the way between the cell and the inside of the sink. 

I shook up my helmet, tried to dry it the best I could with paper towels and facial tissues and had no choice but put it back on my head and resume skiing in spite of the horrible wetness and freezing cold that day. Thank god, I’m a tough cookie! 

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about the meaning of that incident...

Advancing through aging and accidents

On Friday, I stepped into my skis again, following a long hiatus since the accident that left me badly battered on December 18. 

My upper body still hurts, especially when I get off the bed in the morning and when I rotate laterally, but during the day hours and especially when I’m standing, I don’t feel a thing anymore. Returning to the slopes, created a fear of seeing my advancing age and another ski accident take another bit out of my ski proficiency. 

It also amplified the awareness of the remnant of my injury, particularly when I had to put on and take off my horribly stiff ski boots, carry my skis on my shoulder and do awkward movements that we end up doing when we ski, but nothing too bad or alarming happened.

I skied my usual ski slopes and found that their conditions had not improved a bit over my eleven days absence, I should say they had worsened some more and the December afternoon shade didn’t help either nor did the deteriorating conditions of my “rock ski”. 

That said, I made it safely back home and am now ready for much. I just need to remember “quality over quantity...”

A providential break?

After my fall and slide out of control just over a week ago, I haven’t been back on my skis yet. Instead, today, I’m still in southern Utah, right in the middle of the desert, nursing an upper body that can’t seem to keep up with my vivacious limbs. 

This is the first time in many years that I haven’t experienced a white Christmas in the mountains, but it couldn’t be more propitious as I needed the break to rest, plus heal my body, and keep it away from any temptation to go skiing before all is back in shape.

So, it’s been a blessing in disguise, in spite of the fact that my recovery is limping a bit and taking more time than I had thought it would. Did I mention the fact that skiing sucks at the moment? This said, I remain stoic as well as patient and remain confident that someday, when the time is right, I’ll be back on the skis, so nothing is irremediably lost!

Vail Resorts ignores its forest

A few days ago, Park City Mountain (PCM) was fined $2,500 for having violated safety standards in an accident where a tree fell on a ski lift line, on the morning of January 2 of this year killing Christian Helger a 29 year old employee that under the violence of the impact was thrown from the chair lift and fell about 50 feet into deep snow. 

 The accident happened after 48 inches of snow fell on Park City over two days. The day before the accident, a tree also fell on Short Cut, employees told an investigator. The lift was stopped while staff removed that tree. 

Travis Heggie, a Bowling Green State University professor who studies injuries and deaths in the outdoors industries, said that Helger’s death was completely avoidable, saying: “They don't train their employees,” Heggie said of PCM Resort. “The ski lift operators don't have the training like the ski patrol has, they don't have the training to look for ski hazards when they do that first run in the morning.” 

For this fatality, Park City Mountain is likely to be penalized by only $2,500 for failing to keep its workplace free from dangers by the Utah Occupational Safety and Health (UOSH). This decision, that could be appealed by PCM seems like a slight on the wrist and is the result of the resort’s total neglect and devil-may-care attitude when it comes to tree and vegetation management on its slopes. 

This is something I’ve been said all along. Vail Resorts, the parent of PCM is only interested by its profit performance on Wall Street. Mr. Heggie seemed to concur with me when he said “I think it needs to be about $2.5 million,” and he added: “At $2,500, nobody's going to change their practices.” 

At the end Vail Resorts will have to pay that small fine, but this will be followed by a huge civil lawsuit that will end up into a multi-million dollars settlement or judgment that hopefully will finally change the way the company looks at trees and bushes!

Anatomy of a ski collision

Usually, I try to ski fast to get ahead of the pack and to prevent being rear-ended. 

A few days ago, I was skiing under a lift that I particularly enjoy when the weather is cold and foggy, but that intersects with a highly trafficked ski run at its bottom. 

So here I was, doing laps and on my way, skiing fairly fast, but in total control at my used speed, moving to catch the chairlift when I see a large-frame male skier on my right catching up with me and skiing in parallel towards the same direction. 

Ahead of us and in the space separating us was a female snowboarder moving seemingly across the slope in the path of the fast skier on my left. I fraction of second latter, I saw that man hit the snowboarder on its right, making her bounce violently towards my path. 

She was now in my way and there was no way I could correct to avoid contact. In less than a fraction of second I thought to myself “I’m going to kill that person”. Then I found myself on the ground at the level of the lady now stopped with both of my ski bindings release and an excruciating pain on the corner of my left shoulder. 

The runaway skier who provoked the chain reaction was long gone. I remembered he wore a pale yellow jacket but that’s about it. Thankfully the snowboarder got up and was okay. Immediately, skiers and even a ski patrol stopped to inquire if we needed help. 

For the sake of me, I couldn’t provide a precise description of the guilty skier except for the color of his parka. My pain was awful, but I was under an adrenaline rush, so I put on my skis back on and decided to take another run to exorcise the incident. I skied okay but the pain was unrelenting. 

I had a horrible time getting out my ski boots that were very cold (it was 22 degrees out) and I manage to drive home without too much difficulty. Now that the adrenaline flow was used up I was really hurting. I took a pain killer and tried to reconstruct the incident.

From what I could draw from the scene that stayed in my mind (yet, I’m not saying I’m totally right in my interpretation), the fast skier must have gone over the board, impacting the snowboarder on it right binding, made her bounce like a ball on billiard towards me at an extremely high rate of speed and energy.

Instantly, the tip of her board must have hit the side of my right boot causing my binding to release why I flew in the air and fell on my left shoulder. 

A lucky chain-reaction that prevented a direct and potentially lethal hit between me and the snowboarder. Now this open the question as to faced with hit and run skiers? 

How do you find them after the collision? I’ll soon have a few ideas to share...

Never too careful…

Dangers of all kinds are lurking from everywhere… 

On Tuesday afternoon as it was snowing hard, I went out to get the mail, so on my way to the mailbox, I took my snow shovel and moved the snow in front of my path.

At some point, there was so much snow in the shovel that it literally stopped me in my tracks and since I had put on sneakers with a dangerously smooth sole, I slid back and fell head first on the handle of my snow removing tool.

My forehead clearly showed the mark. I could have died, but as they say “It wasn’t my time yet…”