I can relate to professional snowboarder Tim Ostler in this way. Years ago, as the last skier off the chair for the last run of the day at Brian Head, Utah, a binding broke off a ski, I tumbled near the top of the run and remained there until a ski patrolman came to save me. Ostler, of Murray, Utah, found himself in similar circumstances in Park City in 2000, only after he was tossed off balance on the last run, he broke his neck. He's been confined to a wheelchair ever since. Now, thanks to a Huntington Beach company, he's boarding again.
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Go to the Signal Snowboards website or KSL TV of Utah to see and read the heartwarming story about Ostler's return to the slopes.
His savior, or saviors, were Signal Snowboards' Dave Lee and Marc Wierenga, who knew Ostler before his accident as a buyer for Backcountry.
The Surf City shop actually has a program called “Every Third Thursday”
that encourages employees to be
creative. After leaning of the accident that left Ostler paralyzed from the chest down, Lee and Wierenga decided that making a wheelchair-adaptive snowboard for the pro fit the “Every Third Thursday” bill.
Ostler couldn't be happier with what Signal Snowboards produced, and there are now plans to market the board for others.
Meanwhile, please keep checking those runs late afternoons for us stragglers, ski patrol.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.