The Resort, in partnership with MountainView Hospital and Fremont Emergency Services, is sponsoring Lids on Kids, a national program that provides free ski safety education and helmets to children.

The free program kicks off Jan. 15, from 9:30 to 11 a.m., each Saturday through Feb. 5. Residents are invited to visit a special Lids on Kids tent near the base lodge area where toddlers through preteens will be fitted for a helmet and learn about the skier and snowboarder code of safety.

“Safety, fun and learning. Those are our top priorities,” LVSSR’s director of business affairs Curt Sheffield said in a statement. “Through Lids on Kids, we’re able to help kids by providing a helmet that fits properly.”

Unlike children’s clothing and shoes, ski helmets should not be purchased with “room to grow,” Sheffield said, adding that ski helmets are not effective if they are too small or too large.

Lids on Kids coincides with the National Ski Area Association’s Safety Week, Jan. 15 to 23, 2011. The association educates skiers and snowboarders about resort and slope safety. Although head injuries account for about 15 percent of all skiing and snowboarding injuries, it’s the most frequent cause of death and severe disability, according to the association.

For more information about Lids on Kids, visit www.lidsonkids.org.

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1. Okemo Resort celebrates national safety week with free PSP passes
2. Free Lift ticket at Killington when you buy a Ski Helmet
3. Grand Geneva Resort First in Area to Offer Kids Helmets for Skiing, Snowboarding

Here is the article from Transworld Business:

2010/11 Snowboard Helmet Preview

by: mike lewis
January 25 2010

Helmets have rapidly become one of the hottest selling items for specialty retailers as high profile injuries and resort mandates push them to the forefront. But designers are doing more to take them beyond the brain buckets of yore and boosting sales by ramping up the rad factor. Here’s a look at the top hard hats for next year.

bernunlimited.com Watts: $100 Macon (Carbon/Jeremy Jones Pro Model): $199

giro.com Shiv: $90 Revolver: $70

pro-tec.net 888.691.8889 B2 Snow: $70 The Riot: $90

redprotection.com 800.367.2951 Aletta: $125 Hi-Fi: $100

sandboxland.com 604.935.1254 Classic Certified: $100 Skate Shape: $100

scottusa.com 800.292.5874 Rumble Helmet (Green Team Issue Matte): $75 Roam Solid Helmet (Black Matte): $100

smithoptics.com 208.726.4477 Allure (Aqua Muse): $100 Vantage (Gunmetal RFC): $180

triple8.com 212.475.8884 SWAT Snow Helmet: $75 Brainsaver Old School Audio Snow Helmet: $70

ridetsg.com 866.528.4130 Gravity Graphic Design Pollock: $99 Gravity Graphic Design Ribbon: $99

SOURCE: http://business.transworld.net/28871/features/201011-snowboard-helmet-preview/?pid=5552#ngtop

And each time, Nicolas shrugged off his parents’ urgings with the typical aplomb of a free-spirited teenager.

“He kept saying he couldn’t fly with the helmet on,” Angela Flores recalled. “That it wasn’t cool to wear one.”

But on Dec. 6, Nicolas, 17, was riding down an icy run at the Sipapu ski resort in northern New Mexico when his board caught an edge, sending him careening down a closed-off portion of the mountain and headlong into a tree. Nicolas sustained bruising of the brain and a collapsed lung. He was in a coma for five days.

His accident — and the fact that he was not wearing a helmet — underscores the increasing concern over the risks posed to recreational skiers and snowboarders from head injuries. It also highlights one of the bigger shifts in ski and snowboarding culture over the past half-decade: once used exclusively by professional and competitive amateur skiers or snowboarders, helmets have become far more common across the United States and are now widely considered to be a critical piece of equipment, even for novices.

“It is very obvious that helmet use has gone up, and that’s a good thing because we’re going to see less brain injuries,” said Stewart Levy, a Denver neurosurgeon who studies head injuries among skiers and snowboarders. “To the casual observer on the slopes, it looks like almost everyone is wearing one.”

Helmet use has increased rapidly over the past few years, in large part because of the attention brought by a rash of high-profile accidents involving celebrities. Michael Kennedy, Sonny Bono and Natasha Richardson were all killed in ski accidents, and none of them were wearing helmets.

These days, the National Ski Areas Association says, nearly half of all skiers and snowboarders in the United States wear helmets, up from 25 percent in the 2002-3 ski season. Helmets are selling at a record pace this season, according to SnowSports Industries America, a trade association. And helmets, once viewed as clunky and awkward looking, are starting to be seen as hip.

“Helmet styles and fitting options have come a long way in the last five seasons, particularly for children,” said Troy Hawks, a spokesman for the ski areas association, which recommends that all skiers and snowboarders wear them. “You can look more like a professional athlete.”

Interestingly, experts say two groups have resisted the trend: old-time skiers who refuse to change longtime habits and infrequent skiers who travel to resorts from out of state. Although no state has passed legislation mandating helmet use, some resorts are starting to take a more regulatory approach.

This year, for the first time, Vail Resorts, which includes five major ski areas in Colorado, California and Nevada, began requiring all of its employees, including instructors and lift attendants, to wear helmets while skiing and snowboarding on the job.

“More and more of our guests were actually asking why our employees weren’t required to wear them,” said John Garnsey, co-president of the resort’s mountain division. “We felt it was the right thing to do.”

Garnsey said Vail handed out 6,400 helmets to employees this season. It also requires children 12 and younger to wear helmets if they are participating in ski and snowboard schools. Aspen Skiing Company, another major mountain resort group, has had a similar requirement since 2002 after a series of deaths, including an incident in which a 5-year-old Florida girl died after skiing into a tree during a private lesson.

Levy, the Denver neurosurgeon, said that wearing a helmet could reduce the chance of sustaining a brain injury by 50 to 80 percent (although other experts believe the number is lower). Richardson, for example, died last year of a brain hemorrhage after what initially appeared to be a minor fall on a beginner’s slope at Mont Tremblant in Canada. Levy said he believed she would be alive had she been wearing a helmet.

“It is one of the most preventable types of injuries when you’re wearing a helmet,” he said.

Still, Levy warned that wearing a helmet could give skiers and snowboarders the dangerous impression that they could take more risks. While increased helmet use has caused a marked reduction in head injuries, particularly minor ones, helmet use has not made any difference in fatal accidents, said Jasper Shealy, a professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology, who has studied head injuries among skiers for 30 years.

More than 90 percent of deaths on the slopes involve a person striking a fixed object at a high speed, with head injuries being the most common cause of death, Shealy said. But when a skier is flying down a mountain at 27 miles an hour or more — the average maximum speed adult skiers and snowboarders travel down a blue run — a helmet will not matter, his research shows.

“At that speed, if you suffer a direct impact with a fixed object, then death is a likely outcome,” he said. “Under those circumstances, it is likely that you will need more than a helmet to make a difference.”

Deaths on the slopes are still relatively rare, and the number fluctuates each year for no readily apparent reason, according to data from the ski areas association. Last season 39 people were killed, down from 53 in 2007 but up from 22 in the 2006 season. Of the 39 deaths last year, 20 of the skiers and snowboarders were wearing helmets.

“The public needs to know this, and not get oversold on a helmet,” said Shealy, who is not entirely convinced a helmet would have made a difference in Richardson’s death, particularly if there were other complicating factors at play. Though emphasizing that he had not been granted access to Richardson’s death certificate, Shealy said that an unhelmeted head actually has more time and distance to decelerate when the snow is soft — as was the case in Ms. Richardson’s fall — and the fall is slow, because it will penetrate further into the snow than a helmeted head.

“It is not a panacea, it is an effective means of reducing some head injuries, but it has significant limitations,” he said while emphasizing that he still believed skiers should wear them.

There are also the yet unknown effects of repeated concussions while skiing and snowboarding, even with a helmet. This winter the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club, in partnership with Aspen Orthopaedic Associates, began a study to take on that question. Lindsay Harris, an orthopedic surgeon, and Zach Stutzman, a sports trainer, have rigged the helmets of more than 300 young skiers and snowboarders with wireless equipment to measure the number and force of any head injuries sustained on the slopes.

The researchers also hope to measure the severity of those head injuries against ones sustained in other sports, like football, which has recently come under scrutiny because of the damaging long-term effects head injuries have had on N.F.L. players.

“Each year, the kids are watching the X Games,” Harris said. “The bar gets raised a little higher. The jumps get a little bigger. It’s scary big air on some of these things.”

In New Mexico, Nicolas Flores’s parents expect him to be released from a Santa Fe hospital this week. They say he has a lengthy recovery ahead of him. Knowing their son, they imagine he will want to get back on a snowboard.

“This whole thing has been a nightmare,” his father said. “He is going to wear a helmet next time, or he won’t go.”

By DAN FROSCH

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/sports/othersports/02ski.html?pagewanted=all

Six-year-old Julia Griggs of Mahtomedi, Minnesota broke her nose and her leg in the accident, but a dent in her helmet appears to indicate it saved her from more serious head trauma.

“The helmet is probably the thing that saved her from truly serious injury,” said Dr. Michael McGonigal, head of trauma services at the hospital which treated the girl.

He said it’s a risk faced by all skiers, especially amateurs. And he said he hoped Julia’s accident would offer an example to parents about the difference a helmet can make for their kids.

“You’ve got to make them believe it,” McGonigal said. “You’ve got to get them tuned in with the people that are doing it, and probably one of the most important things is to get them involved in wearing those things at a very young age, so it’s just a natural thing.”

SOURCE: http://www.skirebel.com/magazine/archives/5350

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1. Ski Helmet Saves Young Girls Life

The untimely death of a 14-year-old skier at Breckenridge so early in the season reminds us of the inherent dangers of one of Colorado’s favorite pastimes.

Last Friday, Haley Rose Gans of Colorado Springs hit a tree while skiing fast. A coroner’s report indicated she died of blunt force trauma to the chest.

The young skier had taken the laudable and intelligent precaution of wearing a helmet, but in this case, standard protection wasn’t enough.

Still, that shouldn’t dissuade skiers and riders from using helmets. Rather, the accident should remind us that nothing serves you better on the mountain than riding in control.

Vail Resorts this year for the first time is requiring its employees to wear helmets as a part of their uniform. We think that sends a strong message to call skiers. Helmets also are now required for ski-and-ride lessons for children, and for rental packages for children — unless parents sign a waiver.

The new rules by a major resort operator also go a long way toward settling the long debate over whether helmets are necessary.

As the death of actress Natasha Richardson on a bunny slope in Quebec last spring showed, helmets can be a life-saver. Medical officials later said that if Richardson had been wearing one, she may not have died due to the blunt impact to her head.

We advocate helmets, wear them when we ride or ski and make sure our children do as well. They cost relatively little, come in fun designs and offer plenty of worthwhile features.

So please be safe, wear a helmet and ride with the goal of returning to the slopes year after year.

The Denver Post
Posted: 11/25/2009 01:00:00 AM MST
Source: http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_13860367

Three designs will be chosen, followed by a fan vote before Vonn makes the final choice. Any ideas, Lindsey?

“I’m pretty much open to anything,” she said.

Lindsey Vonn wants to see your designs for a gold medal-worthy ski helmet

As the best Alpine skier in the world over the past two seasons, America’s Lindsey Vonn has big plans for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver – and they could include you!

Lindsey invites you to enter for a chance to contribute your original artwork for the customized helmet she will wear on the slopes in Vancouver. Whether you are an aspiring professional graphic designer or just like to doodle all day, this is your chance to inspire her, amaze her, and convince her that your design will be the one she wants for her Olympic helmet.

The contest opens on Monday, November 23, 2009 and submissions must be uploaded by Monday, December 21, 2009.

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1. Vonn picks winning ski helmet design for Olympics

Saying he could identify with Brett Favre’s inability to walk away from football, Bode Miller today announced he is rejoining the U.S. Ski Team after a two-year separation, 20 weeks before the Vancouver Olympics.

“I can relate,” Miller said of Favre at a Los Angeles press conference. “You enjoy your sport, you dedicate your life to it, you can see how it would be nice to walk away and try something new. Then you walk away, there’s a big hole left where that sport was. Especially in my case — it’s my main form of expression.

“It was pretty obvious I still had some more to give. It was just a matter of seeing if there was an opportunity to make that happen.”

Miller’s decision to return followed meetings with U.S. Ski Team chief executive Bill Marolt and U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Larry Probst.

Miller described the ski team as “super-supportive,” but no one has forgotten Miller’s antics at the 2006 Turin Olympics, where he confessed to partying “at an Olympic level” and failed to win a medal.

“Everyone can look back on any area of their life in hindsight and make judgment calls,” Miller said. “I don’t feel like this is an arena for me to apologize about stuff. That stuff will come out as it does. I think my actions are going to speak much more loudly than any apology can.”

A two-time World Cup overall winner, the controversial Miller considered retiring after last season, when he failed to win a race for the first time since 2002. Miller is the all-time winningest American on the World Cup tour with 31 victories, but Vail’s Lindsey Vonn is closing fast with 22 career victories, nine of them last season.

Having spent much of the offseason unsure if he would return, Miller conceded he is behind in his conditioning and expects to skip the first World Cup of the season, a giant slalom Oct. 24, in Soelden, Austria.

“It’s better to be fully prepared when I start racing, and I think it’s probably unrealistic to be fully prepared for Soelden,” Miller said. “I’m not in bad shape. I have an active lifestyle and I keep myself in good shape, but it’s a far cry from being in race shape. You can’t skip the training, there’s no short-cutting it. I’ve taken a lot of pride over the years in being the most well-conditioned athlete on World Cup.”

Adding that he is “getting old,” Miller said age was another reason he needs to be fully fit before racing. He turns 32 next month.

“Injury prevention is really important,” Miller said. “I don’t want to start without being in the condition I feel is necessary to race at my highest level and be safe about it.”

The men’s World Cup comes to Beaver Creek Dec. 4-6 for downhill, super combined and giant slalom.

John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com

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1. Bode Miller Auctions Off Helmet For Ski Tech With Cancer

Skiing with the Kennedy's

Away from Capitol Hill, Kennedy’s family life often involved vacations at ski areas in places such as Stowe, Vt. and Aspen, Colo. The sport took on special significance for Kennedy in the aftermath of the cancer battle for his young son, Ted Jr. In 1973 at the age of 12, Ted Jr. had his right leg surgically amputated in response to the cancer.

Following the operation, the family traveled to Vail during the spring of 1974 for a ski vacation. According to an article in People Magazine at the time, Ted Jr. worked with instructor Blair Ammons, who specialized in amputee skiers. Ted Jr. went on to compete in adaptive skiing.

While skiing provided a triumphant recovery out of a tragic situation for Ted Jr., the sport later touched the Kennedy family in a purely tragic way. Michael Kennedy, Ted Kennedy’s nephew, was killed in a Dec. 31, 1997, skiing accident on Aspen Mountain. Michael had managed his uncle’s 1994 Senate re-election campaign.

Source: Examiner.com

Proper conditioning before skiing or snowboarding is important. Start your exercises months ahead. You should work with a trainer to develop a strengthening program focusing on the muscles to the knees, hips, ankles, back and abdominals. Combine your conditioning with aerobic training to build endurance and stability and balance exercises.

Once you have progressed with strengthening, start plyometric exercises. These exercises are more demanding, but will increase your power and reaction times. While they are important, if you start them before you have enough strength, you are more likely to become injured. Once you are on the slopes, recognize when you are tired and stop before an injury occurs.

Whether you are just beginning, or ready to start aerial tricks, get instruction from trained teachers. You also need to recognize your abilities, and ski or snowboard accordingly since many serious injuries are from engaging in risky behavior before you are ready.

Despite improvements to equipment and bindings, ACL knee injuries have become more common. Most ACL injuries come from awkward falls or landings from jumps. If you’re headed for a fall, assume a position to reduce your risk. Avoid being off balanced to the rear. Keep your skis together with every joint moderately bent. Your hands and arms should be forward. Sometimes it is better to just fall when you are off balance (many injuries occur during an off balanced recovery) and try to come to a complete stop before getting back up. Details can be found at www.vermontskisafety.com.

Be aware of the terrain. Much like driving a car, you should have a safety zone around you. Understand your stopping/sliding distance and ensure there are no obstacles. Remember the faster you go or the steeper the slope, the more space you need. Also note that changes in the terrain from groomed to non-groomed or icy slopes are more likely to cause accidents.

Finally, wear the protective equipment such as helmets, wrist guards, and properly adjusted bindings. The helmets should be certified, such as the Snell RS98 certification or the more stringent S98 standard. The bindings should be adjusted at least once a year by a ski shop that tests the bindings, not just go by the scale on the bindings.

Snowboarders should consider mid-stiffness or hybrid boots to reduce the risk of ankle and foot injuries. To prevent hand injuries, do not put your hands in the straps on your poles. Or consider using newer straps that separate from the pole in case of a fall. Get into the habit of letting go of the pole when you are falling. It is important for snowboarders to consider wrist guards, since wrist fractures are very common.

With proper conditioning, training, and equipment, skiing and snowboarding can be sports that you can enjoy for years without serious injuries.

Dr. Bill Klein is a sports medicine and family practice physician with Health First Physicians. For more information, call Klein’s office at 618-5530.

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1. Snowboarders can avoid injury by getting in shape

Simply by photographing a greater number of helmeted skiers in its ski coverage, Central Maine Newspapers would be, in a subtle way, contributing to skier safety awareness. Other publications have been doing that for years. Saddleback Mountain’s trail map, for example, contains photographs of seven skiers (children and adults). Guess what? They are all wearing helmets.

“Wachusett’s advice is consider wearing a helmet…but ski or snowboard as though you don’t have a helmet on,” Crowley said.

Many parents make their children wear helmets, and kids like them because many of the new ones are light, comfortable and wired with earphones for listening to music, said Andy Hastings, an employee at the Ski and Golf Outlet in Westborough.
Both the Westborough and Framingham stores are nearly sold out of helmets after a holiday season rush on the items, which cost anywhere from $60 to $200. Caldwell said the advent of half pipes and big jumps have spurred many people, especially snowboarders, to buy helmets. The increase in helmets’ popularity does not seem to be slowing down, Hastings said.
“It’s still on the way up. You used to not see anybody. Now you see about half of the people wearing them,” he said.
Industrywide, nearly 60 percent of kids ages 14 and under wear helmets, but adults use them less frequently, Crowley said.
State Rep. Robert Spellane, D-Worcester, filed legislation to require helmets for skiers and snowboarders age 16 or younger, but the proposal does not specify any penalties for not wearing helmets.
Spellane could not be reached for comment yesterday. Wachusett’s Crowley said a law targeting only certain age groups would be difficult to enforce.
“Let’s say we’ve got a ticket checker out there. How do we know how old the kid is?” he said.
Nationwide, a greater use of helmets by skiers and snowboarders might prevent 11 deaths per year, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Corby Caldwell, a skier and snowboarder who is manager of Ski Market on Rte. 9 in Framingham, said he supports requiring helmets for kids.
“I think it’s a great idea (to) get kids used to wearing helmets. The expenditure of a helmet is far cheaper than any emergency room deductible you’re going to pay,” Caldwell said.

In 1997, skiers suffered an estimated 12,700 head injuries that required emergency room treatment, and there were 5,200 head injuries among snowboarders, according to the CPSC.

If you are a mature skier who enjoys the camaraderie of friends and communing with nature while you ski, these rules are not for you.

If you are a partying boarder who is enthralled with après-ski activities and spends the evening dancing and chugging beers only to awake the next morning needing several infusions of coffee before meandering out to the slopes slightly before noon, these rules are not for you.

If you are, instead, an unsophisticated, immature skier or boarder who’s too old or too young or too dedicated to party at night and likes to spend time actually on the mountains maximizing downhill activity, here are some tips on how to do it.

1. Ski early, when the groomed trails are a perfection of smooth corduroy. The crowds seldom arrive before 10, and you’ll have the mountain to yourself with no lift lines. If there is fresh powder, the locals will be out, but you can still get in a few ”first tracks” if you know the area. On powder days, real nuts get in line a half-hour early.

2. Ski without stopping on the runs. Besides wasting time, stopping is positively dangerous. Stopping is when incompetent skiers run into you and break your bones. If your legs are burning and you must rest, stop behind a tree. The only time I’ve been hurt was when my son and I both decided, simultaneously, to stop behind the same tree.

3. Carry a sandwich. Going inside to have lunch not only takes time away from skiing but also turns off the body’s motor. When you come back out, you have to get the muscles moving all over again. I carry a super-healthy natural peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread reinforced with wheat germ and raisins. I eat it on the lifts. Yes, my sons laugh at me, and other skiers, while occasionally asking for a bite, mostly try to look away politely. The laugh’s on them: I’m still skiing while they are getting all sweaty waiting in a lunch line. If you do have to stop for lunch, do it well before noon or after 2 to avoid the crowds.

4. Carry water. You can’t ski all day without it. Get an insulated hydration backpack, like a Camelbak, and wear it inside your jacket. If the temperature falls below 15 degrees, blow into the mouthpiece after each drink and the tube won’t ice up.

5. There are no ”too-cold days,” only underdressed skiers. Polypropylene and layering are fine, but the most important innovation in recent years is to wear a vapor-block layer next to your skin. Marmot and Mountain Hardware make a garment I call a ”fuzzy.” It’s loose-fitting and has some wicking stuff inside a wind-blocking shell. This garment captures a layer of air next to your body. Other than a vacuum, air is the absolute best insulating material. With some additional layers topped with a warm jacket, you can stay out in any weather. For cold hands, use those little packet hand warmers that give off heat once you open them. Buy them at the mountain and they cost $3; buy them at a local discount store for under a buck. For cold feet, use the packet toe warmers.

6. Wear a helmet. A few years ago, an adult in a helmet was a rare sighting. That’s not the case anymore. Everyone wears them. They won’t necessarily save your life if you hit a tree at 20 miles per hour, but if you ski through trees, they stop branches from whacking your head or picking off your hat and goggles. Most important, when other skiers bring the safety bar down too quickly as they sit on a chairlift, helmets prevent you from getting hurt when the bar slams into your head.

7. Know the mountain so you can avoid lift lines. Every mountain has some underutilized lift, which is unpopular for one reason or another (it’s too far from the lodge or provides access to only intermediate trails). Besides having no lines, this lift usually leads to less crowded terrain. When skiing at a new area, the best way to find this lift is ask someone who works there.

8. Use the ”singles” lines. If the lifts are crowded, you can generally save time this way, since singles lines often move faster. Even if you’re skiing with a friend, if you both use the singles line and don’t mind not being in the same chair together, you’ll probably arrive at the top at about the same time anyway.

You can keep track of your runs and altitude by wearing a Suunto or Avocet wristwatch calculator. Enthrall fellow skiers by telling them how much you’ve skied.

Following these eight rules, you can accumulate 30,000 to 60,000 vertical feet each day, though you’ll probably ski mostly by yourself.

“This is a cause close to my heart because my son, Marc, was brain-injured in a car accident when he was a senior in college in 1987,” said Karen Cummings, an associate director of media relations for the Jimmy Fund. “He is permanently disabled with cognitive memory problems as a result.”

Though the Jimmy Fund is not involved in this event, Cummings and her son will be part of one of the four-person teams in the Vertical Challenge, in which teams compete on skis or snowboards to amass the most runs throughout the day.

A donation of at least $350 per team will get participants lift tickets, lunch, and admission to the Redhook-sponsored apres-ski party. Prizes will include Threedom season passes, good at Cranmore, Loon, and Waterville Valley.

But a day of snowy fun aside, to Cummings, the importance of the cause lies in the hidden nature of brain injuries, which can occur as a result of skiing and snowboarding accidents, among other causes.

The Vertical Challenge is named after 1984 Olympic downhill champion Bill Johnson, who suffered a brain injury in a 2001 skiing accident. Johnson, still afflicted but again able to ski, will be at Cranmore for the event.

“Brain injury is called the silent epidemic,” said Cummings, “because the people that it happens to disappear from society as a result of their disabilities. [Of the] 1.5 million Americans who sustain a traumatic brain injury each year, 50,000 die and 80,000 are left with long-term disabilities.”

Because of the risks they take, young males (18 to 25) compose the majority of brain damage victims. “It’s just the way they live their lives at that age,” Cummings said.

Marc Cummings, who recovered from his accident physically, says being able to ski both Alpine and cross-country has added immeasurable pleasure to his life. He began skiing at age 9, but after the accident, some doctors predicted that he might not walk again.

“I just fought my way to get in shape,” said Cummings, who skis twice a week with partner/trainer Gardiner Perry. “I had a great desire to walk again. But to be able to ski with outdoor partners is something I really enjoy.”

In his fund-raising to old friends from high school and college, Cummings writes of brain injury as “worse than terrible” and, in mentioning Johnson, said, “I hope to ski with him.”

Though brain injuries vary widely, Cummings’s loss of short-term memory was similar to Johnson’s. For weeks after the Olympic champion’s crash, Johnson, who probably would not have survived had he not worn a helmet, was in a coma at the Providence Portland Medical Center in Oregon.

Lending his support to the Hartford Ski Spectacular last year, Johnson told The Olympian, “I am here to help people focus on their abilities, not their disabilities. I don’t feel sad.” He even had a quip for the press, reminiscent of the smart-aleck style of his youth. Asked whether he now recommends helmets, Johnson said: “Yes, especially if there are snowboarders around.”

His triumphant 1984 Olympic downhill came after a week of steady snowfall in Sarajevo that postponed the race several times. But Johnson taunted the Austrians by predicting that he would win the race — an unheard of feat for an American, since the US never had won a downhill at the Olympics. The month before, Johnson had become the first American to win a World Cup downhill when he prevailed at Wengen after nearly skiing off the course. So when he started swaggering around the Sarajevo course, his trash talk got plenty of attention, especially from the favored Austrians, including Franz Klammer, the 1976 Olympic gold medalist.

And like Joe Namath guaranteeing victory in the Super Bowl, Johnson, riding his Atomic “red sleds,” skied into history, the result so stunning, the Austrian downhillers packed and left Sarajevo before they could be interviewed by the press.

“I told them,” said Johnson after the race with his familiar smirk. “They should have listened to me.”

For more information about the Bill Johnson Vertical Challenge, call the Brain Injury Association of New Hampshire at 603-225-8400 or the Cranmore Mountain Resort at 1-800-SUN-N-SKI. E-mails may be directed to mail@bianh.org.

Several ski resorts in Central New York are seeing more snowboarders buying and wearing helmets. Instructors say, novice snow boarders typically protect their heads. But now, more than ever, experienced snow boarders are also putting on helmets.

“It actually helps the snowboarder to have more confidence because you’re not thinking, ‘oh, I may hit my head, I’m going to die.’ You’re more like, ‘ok, I’m going to do this, I’m going to hit this jump and there’s no way I can crack my head open because I have a helmet on,” said Lauren Stevens.

Only one ski resort we spoke with, Greek Peak, said they haven’t seen an increase in helmet use.