‘The day I died.’ Submerged snowboarder, rescuer recall jump gone wrong at Dodge Ridge
With no exaggeration, Twain Harte resident Justin Calbert refers to Thursday as “the day I died.” It’s even the wording he entered into his phone contacts to call up those who helped rescue and revive him after a jump gone wrong while he was snowboarding at the Dodge Ridge resort in Pinecrest.
Calbert, 38, has no recollection of Thursday morning’s incident or the day after, as he lay in an induced coma at Doctors Medical Center in Modesto. He was intubated, sedated and medically paralyzed to keep him from moving as his condition was evaluated, he said by phone Tuesday while resting back home. He’d just been to again see a doctor, who gave him a clean bill of health. No traumatic brain injury, no neurological damage.
What he knows, such as that his legs were kicking as he tried to free himself — a struggle that grew visibly weaker and weaker as he lost consciousness — he’s been told from others who have the sight etched into their brains.
Among them is Jerad Heinrich, a Modesto Fire Department engineer who was off duty and skiing with his brother-in-law and a couple of friends and witnessed Calbert’s awful fall.
It was shortly after the start of operations Thursday at the resort when Heinrich and his brother-in-law, Brock DeJong, were riding Chair 3 to take their first run down the Face. Below them, skiers and boarders who’d been ahead of them in line were making their way down the slope, which had a deep layer of fresh powder.
‘We hear his board scrape the edge of the rock’
In detail, Heinrich described over the phone Tuesday morning what he and DeJong saw happen to Calbert. The chair lift was paused at this point, and “we’re watching this boarder because he’s heading straight to that cliff rock on the Face run. It’s about a 20-foot rock, possibly. On a powder day, you can go off of it and land in soft snow. ...
“He’s enjoying himself, we can hear he’s doing some whoops and stuff. He launches off this rock, and as he does, we hear his board scrape the edge of the rock.”
Calbert was right beneath the men, and they could see he immediately looked unbalanced. He became inverted and “augered” headfirst into the deep snow that had piled up against the rock, Heinrich said.
All they could see was the board sticking up from the snow, and they knew Calbert’s head was possibly six feet beneath the surface.
Heinrich and DeJong began “making a racket” to get the attention of skiers they could see approaching the area. They called to them that a boarder was buried down slope of the cliff rock. “It looked like they started to go that direction. About that time, the lift started to spin again,” Heinrich said. “We continued up, and it was kind of a helpless feeling right there.”
At the top of Chair 3, Heinrich alerted a ski patrol member, who said he’d just received word of the boarder in trouble. Determined to reach Calbert as quickly as possible, Heinrich, DeJong and their friends made their way down a route that wasn’t officially open yet.
“I was halfway expecting him to be out” by the time they reached him, Heinrich said.
No such luck.
Deep-powder rescue wasn’t easy
A 16-year-old skier, Ben Ronneburg, had reached Calbert and was trying to dig him out. Heinrich took off his skis to position himself to join in, but immediately found himself chest deep in snow. He told his brother-in-law and a friend that he was going to use their skis as a bridge, so began “army crawling” over them.
Heinrich uncovered Calbert’s face and saw he wasn’t breathing. “He was turning cyanotic blue.” Heinrich, Ben and at least one other skier kept digging, uncovered Calbert’s shoulders and were able to pull him to the snow’s surface.
Heinrich began to do chest compressions — “the hardest CPR I ever did,” he said. “I did CPR for I don’t know how long. And then I knew I needed to look at his airway at that point.”
He had Ben take over compressions — “he did a fantastic job” — while he lifted Calbert’s chin and opened his airway, which fortunately had no snow in it. The compressions were allowing air to get in and out, and within about 30 seconds, Calbert “began to agonal breathe. That’s just a couple breaths a minute, which is not sufficient. It’s just your body trying to survive at that point.”
Within another minute, they began to see some color return to Calbert’s face. “We knew we were doing something.”
About that time, ski patrol members arrived with oxygen and medical supplies. They assumed CPR and Calbert soon began to breathe at a normal rate. “We checked his carotid and he had a pulse,” Heinrich recalled. “And that was a little bit of an emotional time. All three or four of us that were there, we basically high-fived real quick.”
Calbert was put on a ski patrol sled and taken down the hill. He was taken by air ambulance to DMC in Modesto.
“It wasn’t Justin’s time” to die, Heinrich said, reflecting on that morning. People were in a position to see what happened, get involved and make a difference, he said. “It was a complete team effort on the whole thing.”
Calbert and Heinrich spoke by phone Monday night, and the hydroelectric power plant operator for the Strawberry-based Tri-Dam Project said he’s hoping to meet in person the firefighter, young Ben and others who helped him. Saturday, the Dodge Ridge ski patrol gathers to recap the week’s events, Calbert said, and he’s planning to attend to thank the rescuers on that team.
Don’t go it alone
Calbert posted on Instagram the key message he wants to share about what happened to him: “If I can say anything about my experience, it’s to always ski with a buddy.” Your life might depend on it.
That day, he was with his wife, Casey, who’s a nurse. But she was having some equipment trouble, so he made a first run alone while she was at the ski shop.
“I’ve jumped that rock a thousand times,” said the veteran snowboarder, who used to compete on the pro circuit and won a couple of collegiate championships. “So it’s just a testament that an accident like that can happen to anyone, and it’s something that I want to reiterate, the importance of skiing with a buddy.”
