File photo. As a full-time mountain biker and part-time rock climber, whenever I chat with a diehard climber over a drink, they inevitably drop the longstanding joke, “The only time a rock climber gets injured is when they’re mountain biking.”
It’s funny because rock climbing is considered by the general public to be an insanely dangerous sport. But when you actually get into the sport and realize how robust and overbuilt the safety gear is, you learn that, with basic training, you can climb vertical cliff faces with little fear of injury.
Unfortunately, the same thing can’t be said for mountain biking. Whipping down narrow trails filled with rocks and roots at high rates of speed, often framed by a sheer drop-off on one side, is a recipe for an inevitable disaster. Even if we don’t think we’re taking unnecessary risks, freak accidents inevitably happen, dashing us to the ground.
While riders do occasionally die in crashes, mountain biking still isn’t as deadly as backcountry skiing or mountaineering. Normally, when things go wrong, you don’t die — but it’s awfully easy to get injured. Photo: Greg Heil My own injury story
Tearing my ACL was one of the worst injuries that I’ve had in my life, requiring not one but two surgeries over the course of two years to finally fix it. But that happened while downhill skiing, not mountain biking. While mountain biking, I’ve suffered numerous smaller injuries, including: Concussions, including one ambulance ride to the ER.
Back injury, causing daily […]
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