Commit: Personal Velocity. An Arc’Teryx Original

"I actually knew - the second before the crash that set me out of play for almost a year - that it would happen. Spring skiing in Norway, a season ender with friends after a long and intense winter. I could have stopped, I didn’t need to clear the cliff band; didn’t need to prove anything to anyone, at least not myself. But even so I went for it, knowing I lacked enough speed and the result was as expected. I didn’t clear the cliff band, crashed on the landing, and had a tumble on wet spring snow. A risk I was willing to take, just because it felt easier to go with it instead of thinking too much and stopping for a second look. This recklessness cost me a torn ACL and a year not being able to ski like I wanted.

I’ve come to terms with the reason for not stopping for that second look. I thought that my body would endure it. The winter leading up to my mistake had been filled with new accomplishments resulting in sky-high confidence in myself and my skiing. I guess you could say that I had become overconfident.

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When I got the results from the MRI one of my first thoughts was that this was an inevitability. I had been pushing my limits too far. You can’t be overconfident when your stage is a mountain and your are preconditioned to put on a good show on earthly elements hand in hand with gravity and velocity. You have to know what you’re doing. Using the mountains as your stage you ought to know when to step back, take a pause, or reflect on how you ski." –Pia Nic Gundersen

Read Pia's full story about returning from a knee injury to full-speed big mountain riding from peaks to the sea over at Arc'Teryx.