Snowmobiler Codey St Martin took a nasty hit while dropping a massive 60 foot cliff drop on his snowmobile. He explains that a higher freezing level than expected creating wet, heavy and packy snow made the landing a lot harder than expected. He also apparently extended early on the landing, adding to the hard impact.
Codey was evacuated from the backcountry via helicopter and brought to the hospital where he learned, fortunately, that his back was not broken. He was still very busted up after the wipeout though.
We’re glad you’re somewhat okay Codey, and we hope the recovery is quick and easy.
Codey’s Explanation of the Event:
Well here’s a realistic situation no group wants to encounter. Yesterday while filming I setup for a fair sized cliff measuring at 60’. I did my due diligence, inspect landing, make a good run in trail, align myself with sticks. As I stood over the edge throwing sticks to the landing zone and snowballs to check speed, I was heavily over confident.
Not 1 doubt was going through my mind, we had been doing pretty big sends the last few days and I was running on a high. What I failed to take into account, was the freezing level raised well above our riding elevation causing the snow the become very wet heavy and packy. It seems while we strive for greatness we tend to overlook what seem to be small issues.
As I setup for the drop I called out dropping in 10, walked back to sled, fired it up and off I went. While trying to really stretch out the distance of this one it seems I must have lost sight of landing past my sticks (used for depth of landing) and extended early on landing. This causing me to get slammed into seat unbraced, and not ready for a very very hard impact (due to the snowpack).
Immediately after landing I got an extreme pain through my back and let go , and rolled off sled. I struggled to get rolled around and get up. The adrenaline got me down the landing to sit with the boys and discuss. At this point I slowly could barely walk due to shooting pain. With this in place the group made the call we needed a medevac and SAR to come and rescue me. The boys did a fantastic job of getting coordinated with Sar, choppers, friends and family. While others made a big first and got me warm and comfortable.
