Then sensation returned to him,
and he began moaning about the
pain piercing through his spine. Fitz-
patrick and Tremblay arrived on the
scene, and soon the five of them were
digging delicately around Crouch,
none of them wanting to do anything
that would leave him paralysed.
When they got the teen out, the men
gingerly straightened out his body
while Poole sprinted back to the chop-
per for a stretcher. Close to 2.40pm,
about 20 minutes after Crouch first
began to fall, the pilot flipped the pro-
pellers back on. Campos and Jackson
climbed into the aircraft along with
Crouch. Once secured, Poole lifted off
from the mountainside and pointed
towards the Whistler Medical Clinic,
some 20 kilometres away.
It wasn’t until the chopper was out
of sight, and Fitzpatrick and Trem-
blay were alone, that the emotional
weight of the event began to set in.
Fitzpatrick was the first to cry. But he
wasn’t the last.
It took almost a full week to sort
through the extent of Crouch’s inju-
ries. Besides the knocked-out teeth,
he’d torn his pancreas and fractured
three vertebrae. He was thankful to be
alive, and still is.
“I thought I was dead,” he says. “I
honestly did.”
However, at no point in the months
after the accident did he contemplate
not getting back on his snowboard.
Not everyone on the mountain that
day sees it the same way. For Cam-
pos, last year’s ski season was the most
emotionally gruelling of his career,
while Fitzpatrick has spent months
questioning why he and Crouch and
the others even fathomed putting
their lives in danger for the sake of a
thrill and a film. Poole has taken him-
self out of the heli-skiing business.
Although he says the timing is a co-
incidence, he has struggled with what
happened. “That winter affected me,”
he says. “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t.”
Last September, Stay Tuned – the
film Crouch was working on – pre-
miered in Zurich. Days after that, and
five months removed from the ordeal,
he got some good news from his
doctors. “Cleared to board,” Crouch
announced on social media, along
with the image of himself being rolled
into an MRI machine after his fall.
And now he says he longs for a
return to the very ridge where he
nearly died. “I’d like to go back and
conquer that mountain.”I Agreed to What?!
I live in fear of the things I may have agreed to while absent-
mindedly saying “uh-huh” to my kids.
@copymama58 august 2019
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