Anchorage Daily News

Ben Johnson came to last weekend's world telemark free skiing championships at Alyeska Ski Resort with two goals -- to "go big" and to raise money for the disabled.

Skiing on forbidding terrain rarely open to the public, the Alaska adventurer went so big he made a bone-shattering landing following a breathtaking 70-foot cliff jump, leaving him with three broken vertebrae and a broken ankle. He cartwheeled and slid another 200 feet down the mountain before coming to a stop.

He's had two surgeries in four days, but by Tuesday his friends were optimistic Johnson's injuries won't put him among the disabled he hoped to help.

Johnson, 34, has moved his arms and legs, friends say, but he faces a potentially lengthy hospital stay followed by months of rehabilitation.

"At first, a ski patrol friend said he was not feeling anything," said Dave Magoffin of Fairbanks, a pilot for Frontier Alaska who spent the winter skiing with Johnson. "Then when they loaded him into the helicopter he bumped his elbow and he felt it.

"That turned night to day for me, because I can't imagine Ben not being able to do this stuff anymore."

Johnson, who lives in a cabin at Carlo Creek outside Denali Park, is one of Alaska's adrenaline-fueled athletes who thrive on skiing rugged backcountry slopes and rafting remote rivers.

He owned a youth hostel at Denali for several years, and since selling it has made his living guiding white-water rafting trips in Alaska in the summer and driving a shuttle bus at a Utah ski resort come winter. He had returned from his winter gig just days before his crash Saturday evening.

"He fun-hogs it with the best of them," said friend Andy Morrison, who owns Alaska Backcountry Access in Girdwood. "He was ready to do spring skiing and capture the best part of our winter."

To that end, Johnson entered the inaugural world championships, which marked just his second telemark free-skiing competition. The event also aided his fundraising efforts for Challenge Alaska, which aims to provide skiing opportunities for the disabled.

Donors pledged money for every vertical mile Johnson skied this winter, and he had raised about $1,000 before his crash, Morrison said.

Johnson was in 14th place after the first of two runs on Saturday held on Alyeska's north face in a place called the Shadows.

No chair lifts go that far up the mountain. To get there, skiers had to hike 20 minutes from High Traverse. Then they skied 1,000 vertical feet down a 45- to 50-degree slope to the finish.

For his second run, Johnson planned something spectacular.

"First run good and clean," he text-messaged Morrison between runs. "Getting ready 4 2nd run soon. Plan to go big."

In free-skiing parlance, "going big" means making a run so sweet and so daring that judges are wowed. Free-skiing competitions aren't races against the clock but rather a display of skill, style and guts that garner points from judges.

Skiers choose their own route down, often with no knowledge of the terrain other than what they can see from the bottom of the slope. Magoffin said Johnson's second run, if executed as planned, might have carried his friend to victory.

"No one did exactly what he was trying to do," said Magoffin, who was in the starting zone when Johnson made his run and due to make his run right after Johnson's.

After rock-hopping part of the way down the steep slope, Johnson veered into a chute with rock bands on both sides and a cliff at the bottom. To one side, Magoffin said, was a narrow ribbon of snow Johnson thought he could ride to the finish, building speed as he went.

"We thought it would be a cool sidewalk of snow. Once he got there and could see it, he was probably looking at a ribbon of ice where he knew he wouldn't hold an edge," Magoffin said. "The (cliff) was his backup. The sidewalk was his plan."

Over the cliff Johnson went, making the biggest jump of the day, Morrison and Magoffin said.

He double-jumped, flying about 6 feet on the first jump, landing on a small patch of snow and then soaring 60 to 100 feet on the second jump, according to various reports.

He landed on both skis, fell backward and began the rag-doll free fall that carried him another 200 feet down the mountain.

Magoffin thinks the spinal cord injury happened on impact.

"When you land something like that, the G forces are so strong just the weight of your head can hurt you," he said. "It's just a huge amount of impact."

Competition was canceled after Johnson's crash. Magoffin didn't make his second run until Sunday, and he wasn't as eager to attack the mountain as he had been a day earlier.

As he and others held vigil Saturday night at the hospital, Magoffin considered not competing at all.

"Someone said, 'Dave, if you don't ski the second day Ben will kill you,' and he would," Magoffin said. "I went out and took it easy. We could tell everyone was more relaxed the second day. No one was going huge, everyone was taking fairly conservative lines -- as conservative as you can in a free-skiing event. Later there were lots of toasts in the bar.

"Me and my buddies talk and sometimes we don't know why we do this stuff -- but we know we have to. When we do this stuff, we feel alive. For us it's a way to live. And it's gambling, but we have to do it."

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