How common are ski pole stabbing injuries?

Sorry to sound negative here, the person that passed you is at fault and it is ashame that you got injuried and not the other skier.  Next time avoid the soft hit (likely that you get injuried), hit hard to avoid self injury, let the idiot who made the mistake take the impact. 

 

All said, hopefully this doesn't sideline your skiing for the season or cause any other long term problems.

 

Best wishes and good luck,

I once gave a couple of very large band-aids to a guy who stabbed himself in the upper thigh with his own pole.  (The oversized 6-inch kind.) He dropped trou and one of his friends made temporary repairs.  Fortunately the wound was not in the "upper upper thigh" -- an euphemsim coined at my work when one of the guys did something really dumb cutting cardboard with an exacto knife.

I don't remember exactly when it was, but a few years ago I read an article about something similar.  Three friends were backcountry skiing somewhere in what I seem to recall was Utah.  One of them hit a buried rut or some other obstruction and took what appeared to be an inconsequential spill.  Sadly, one of his ski poles punctured his thigh and sliced through his femoral artery.  He bled out and died before his two friends could get him help.  It's been awhile, and my memory of it is a little fuzzy, but I think the gist of the article was something about how even the most freakish and unlikely of accidents can prove tragic to even the most accomplished of skiers.

 

I don't know how common such injuries might be, but it's the primary reason I don't use the straps on my ski poles.  I just don't want to be impaled by a ski pole flailing around me in a fall, or more likely, causing a fall by hooking a tree limb or brush.  I prefer to just hike back to retrieve it on the very few occasions when that's even proven necessary.

Sorry Rick,

 

Hate hearing injuries that keep you out.  Went through something different with an inside lower leg at speed impact hematoma, staff infection, lance, packing cavity, no stiches, this winter.  Just make sure you follow their cleaning instructions and if it feels like they're not having you do enough each day to keep it clean and dressed, see another doctor to be sure.  I went through bottles of sterile water and tons of guauze, bandages, ace wraps, but with no more infection.  Got back on snow as soon as it closed and wore a pad over it.  Good luck man, take it easy for  minute or two.

once saw a pole dropped from a lift stick solidly into the boiler plate directly between a fellow's skis. Split second difference = dead guy. I've always timed my turns if I'm skiing under the lifts since.  
 

 

You've got all the primary details correct except the location.  It was on Teton Pass here in Jackson Hole.

 

It was a really, really freakish tragedy.

I suppose pole injuries were far more common when they were made out of bamboo.  I wonder which is safer now - carbon or aluminum?

Remember when they were solid aluminum with a single, pointed spike at the bottom?   I think I still have some Barrecrafters ones around.

 

That's why park rats use those little short poles these days.  They don't stab as deeply when you crash.

I've never heard of a ski pole stabbing injury.  I've heard of people getting hit by their own poles, poked by their pole handles as they've fallen, and of course getting thumbs hyper-extended on ski poles.

 

I wonder if the "sharpness" of the pole has any bearing on injury potential?  My downhill poles are rather blunt, while my cross country poles are pointed.  

I would say fault depends on how far past you the other skier stopped after buzzing you.  Had the collision happened as they passed it would most likely be their fault.  If they were well past you before stopping and you skied in to them that probably falls on you (no pun intended).  If they were still in the act of stopping after buzzing by you as you hit them that might be their fault as they didn't pass you in a safe manner and the unsuccessful pass would have been what caused the collision.  Again, it depends on whether or not they were well clear of you before stopping.  Regardless, buzzing you was a dumb assed move on their part .

Ski pole stabbing injuries are uncommon, probably the least common type of ski injury, I reckon.

Glad you're going to be OK.

When I was a teenager there was a very memorable ski accident that this thread brought back to my memory.  Clint Walker, the star of 1960's US television western Cheyenne stabbed himself accidentally in the heart with his ski pole while skiing at Mammoth in 1973.  He fell on his sword, so to speak. 

 

I think this link will get you to a short newpaper report on the accident:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1948&dat=19710526&id=2NUwAAAAIBAJ&sjid=aeAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2103,2830718

Don't you just miss those days?

 

Ski pole stabbing saved the world from the Nazis!  Think I'm joking?  Go to 9:20 in this video and believe!

 

Was the injury caused by your pole or the other guys?

Wasn't 007 that you crashed in to by chance was it?  His poles are loaded.

 

2 things: how frequent and is it preventable?

 

1) I am sure those incident are most of the time under reported so the extent of the problem is not really known. I stumble upon a site while looking for true injury stats for the U.S. and they seems skeptical at the method used to report death and injury in California. You can look for yourself. http://www.calskisafety.org/national-ski-statistics.html

 

2) I don't know if any sport wear can prevent puncture injuries but there is a company that makes hockey socks that seems to protect from laceration from hockey blades. It would be easy enough to incorporate this material into ski wear and racing suits to prevent laceration of at least most critical area like thorax and femoral artery.

I recall Othmar Schneider, former Austrian Olympian, sticking a ski pole through his leg. Happened while he was being pulled behind a snowmobile at Boyne Mountain in Michigan, where he was ski school director after Stein Eriksen departed. That was the only pole puncture wound I'd heard of before this thread. I've seen/heard of (and even experienced) ski edge cuts.

Considering the behavior of most snowboarders, not common enough.

Anyone remember tipless ski poles?

 

*suspects prickly of a secret agenda of shifting the conversation to poles with balls on the bottom*

No, it's driving me nuts that I can't find a photo anywhere. Pretty sure it was Scott, totally idiotic design, instead of a rubber or plastic basket it was a small steel one, with no point. You couldn't stand it up in the snow, though. 

 

Ah.  I do remember the ones with the little balls though. 

Were they like these rubber tips for trekking poles?

 

No, the ones prickly is talking about had like no projection below the basket at all.