Will Schooler, who suffered a head injury while skiing a

handrail last weekend, died Monday. The 20-year-old Edmonton, Alberta native had been enrolled in the Ski Resort Operations and Management program at Selkirk College in Nelson, British Columbia.James Frost, a close friend, said that Schooler’s fall seemed innocuous at first, and that he continued hitting the rail afterward. He left the rail session in Nelson in seemingly healthy con-dition.

The severity of Schooler’s injury be-came apparent the following morn-ing, when friends came to his home to pick him up to go ski touring and found him unconscious. He was rushed to Kootenay Lake Hospital, then airlifted to Kelowna General Hospital. He died Monday morning, the day before his 21st birthday.“[Schooler] sustained a blunt force head trauma during a skiing incident and ultimately succumbed to that,” Chico Newell, Interior Regional Cor-oner at the B.C. Coroner’s Service, told ESPN. “He was not wearing a helmet.”

Schooler’s death is thought to be the first ski fatality to result from an urban rail accident. In 2005, snowboarder Ryan Lichtenberg died at age 19 from a head injury sustained on a handrail in Breckenridge, Colo.“[Schooler] had a love for the moun-

tains. That’s what drew him out here into the Kootenay Rockies, he aspire.Schooler’s death raises awareness of the dangers of urban skiing. Skiers are well aware of the risks inherent in backcountry skiing, but urban and terrain park skiing, devoid of unpre-dictable environmental dangers such as avalanches, are generally consid-ered safer than backcountry skiing.When it comes to film and photo proj-ects, the appearance of danger factors into pro skiers’ choices of which fea-tures to hit. “The riskiness of features that aren’t designed for skiing is what makes them so interesting,” said Nate Abbott, a long-time photographer and senior editor at Freeskier. “There’s always the potential that a photo or video shot won’t be used if the spot doesn’t look radical enough.” Conse-quently, skiers try to skirt the risk of not getting published by adding risk to the stunts they do on camera, often with harrowing results.

Nick Martini on a rail that ruptured his spleen last winter. Last winter, ski-er Nick Martini was filming a hand-rail in Spokane, Wash., with Poor Boyz Productions when he caught an edge attempting a switch-up.

“I fell head-first down the stairs,” he says, “I almost cleared the end of the stair set, but I caught the very last stair in my abdominal region.” The force of the fall bruised Martini’s heart and tore his spleen into four pieces. By the time he reached the hospital, he’d already lost two pints of blood and underwent emergency surgery to stop the bleeding and remove the ruptured spleen. Days after the sur-gery, Martini returned to the hospital with chest pain and found that he had developed a pulmonary embolism. Photographers like Abbott do their best to manage risk for the athletes they shoot. “My job involves being a sounding board,” Abbott says, “to

make sure that I feel comfortable with the skill level of the athletes involved and with assessing the risks of a spe-cific location.” If he feels a setup is too dangerous, Abbott says he’ll put away the camera and pull the plug on the shoot.Taking a pass on the most ill-con-ceived features can minimize the risk in urban skiing, but it can’t eliminate it in a sport where pushing the limits is the motto. Even on comparative-ly tame rails, urban skiers perform a balancing act between the exhibition of skill and extreme peril.

Living the Dream

When I tell people what I do for a living, I usually receive incredu-lous responses related to “living the dream.” While not a day goes by that I’m not appreciative of the opportu-nities I have, I also know the behind-the-scenes efforts that go into skiing more than 200 days a year, all over the globe. It’s an extremely rewarding occupation to be sure. It also requires focus, hard work, and the ability to follow unnatural rhythms throughout the year.

The easiest way to ski 200 days a year is to work back-to-back winters in the northern and southern hemispheres. Working for reputable guiding ser-vices and/or ski schools in world-class destinations can be fairly profitable, logistically simple, and downright fun. While going back and forth be-tween Aspen, Colorado and Portillo, Chile, I was skiing more than 225 days per year, putting money in the bank, and living experiences that still create smiles and laughter when retold.

But this pattern has its pitfalls. Primar-ily, it is really tough on the body. To ski 130 days out of 150 in the north, and then 95 out of 100 in the south, leaves the body not only beaten by bumps,

crashes, post-holing through pow-der, and carrying heavy loads, it also leaves one completed lopsided. During the short off-seasons of June and October I could barely walk down hill. On one backpacking trip in October, my knees hurt so bad-ly on the descent that my girlfriend had to take most of the weight out of my pack so that I could make it back to the trailhead. It was at this moment that I realized that this life-style was not sustainable.

James Frost, a close friend, said that Schooler’s fall seemed innocuous

at first, and that he continued hitting the rail afterward. He left the rail ses-sion in Nelson in seemingly healthy condition. The severity of Schooler’s injury became apparent the following morning, when friends came to his home to pick him up to go ski tour-ing and found him unconscious. He was rushed to Kootenay Lake Hospi-tal, then airlifted to Kelowna General Hospital. He died Monday morning,

the day before his 21st birthday.“[Schooler] sustained a blunt force head trauma during a skiing incident and ultimately succumbed to that,” Chico Newell, Interior Regional Cor-oner at the B.C. Coroner’s Service, told ESPN. “He was not wearing a helmet.”

Schooler’s death is thought to be the first ski fatality to result from an urban rail accident. In 2005, snowboarder Ryan Lichtenberg died at age 19 from

a head injury sustained on a handrail in Breckenridge, Colo.“[Schooler] had a love for the moun-tains. That’s what drew him out here into the Kootenay Rockies, he aspire.Schooler’s death raises awareness of the dangers of urban skiing. Skiers are well aware of the risks inherent in backcountry skiing, but urban and terrain park skiing, devoid of unpre-dictable environmental dangers such as avalanches, are generally consid-ered safer than backcountry skiing.

When it comes to film and photo proj-ects, the appearance of danger factors into pro skiers’ choices of which fea-tures to hit. “The riskiness of features that aren’t designed for skiing is what makes them so interesting,” said Nate Abbott, a long-time photographer and senior editor at Freeskier. “There’s always the potential that a photo or video shot won’t be used if the spot doesn’t look radical enough.” Conse-quently, skiers try to skirt the risk of not getting published by adding risk to the stunts they do on camera, often with harrowing results.

Nick Martini on a rail that ruptured his spleen last winter. Last winter, ski-er Nick Martini was filming a hand-rail in Spokane, Wash., with Poor Boyz Productions when he caught an edge attempting a switch-up.

“I fell head-first down the stairs,” he says, “I almost cleared the end of the stair set, but I caught the very last stair in my abdominal region.” The force of the fall bruised Martini’s heart and tore his spleen into four pieces. By the time he reached the hospital, he’d already lost two pints of blood and underwent emergency surgery to stop the bleeding and remove the ruptured spleen. Days after the sur-gery, Martini returned to the hospital with chest pain and found that he had developed a pulmonary embolism. Photographers like Abbott do their best to manage risk for the athletes they shoot. “My job involves being a sounding board,” Abbott says, “to make sure that I feel comfortable with the skill level of the athletes involved and with assessing the risks of a spe-cific location.” If he feels a setup is too dangerous, Abbott says he’ll put away the camera and pull the plug on the shoot.Taking a pass on the most ill-con-ceived features can minimize the risk in urban skiing, its a sport pushing.