"Come back safely" - that's what we wish for from friends and family members who say goodbye to their skiing holiday. Because everyone knows that skiing is associated with dangers. Although the accident risk on the slopes has fallen in recent years - thanks to modern safety bindings, protectors and helmets. But at the same time accident surgeons report serious injuries that did not exist in this form before. Blame are too high speeds and artificial snow.
The German Ski Federation (DSV) assumes that 4.2 million Germans regularly ski. Extrapolated in the season 2015/2016 about 42,000 winter athletes injured so much that they needed a medical treatment. The number of those who landed in the hospital increased by around 600 to 7300 compared to the previous year's season. Especially the head, neck and chest are affected more frequently than before.
Andreas Imhoff from the Munich University Hospital Rechts der Isar has been observing for many years with which injuries skiers come to the clinic every winter. In the first half of the Christmas holidays, he and his colleagues had to operate a particularly large number of severe fractures, torn ligaments and dislocated joints. Not because fresh powder lured, but precisely because it had not snowed until the turn of the year. "Artificial snow is a problem," says the chief physician of the Department of Sports Orthopedics.
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Most injuries affect the knee, shoulder and head.
The slopes would be flattened than before, without hills and humps, so that the ever-shorter snow lasts longer. Especially the track of machine snow is rather hard and fast, almost like the downhill of the pros. It was by no means only experts on the way.
"The injured are rather worse skiers and beginners who fall more easily," says Imhoff. "Speed is a major factor in the accident." Many went completely untrained on the slopes. "I'm surprised that people do not prepare."
Narrow snowbands between brown slopes
In addition, warm winter skiers increasingly force on narrow snow bands between brown ridges. These hold their own dangers - for example, for collisions due to the limited space.
It is also particularly dangerous when winter athletes lose control of skis or snowboards on the narrow streets. "The skiers shoot out over the piste and land in the area," says Thomas Bucher from the German Alpine Club (DAV). There threaten collisions with stumps and rocks without soft snow cover.
The injuries sometimes look like after a motorcycle accident, reports Ulrich Steiner, who works as a rescue ambulance in Austrian ski resorts. There are traumatic brain injuries, vertebral fractures and internal injuries. "If you look at the last winters, when you've been traveling a lot on artificial snow, you can see that the accidents are often very heavy."
Carving about your own circumstances
Last year, for example, Steiner's team took a helicopter to a 50-year-old skier who had fallen down an embankment at the edge of a ten-meter wide artificial snow slope. Diagnosis: concussion, vertebral fracture, multiple rib fractures, pulmonary collapse and lung contraction. With similar injuries Steiner brought a snowboarder to the hospital, who had died on artificial snow on a tree stump. "These are not the usual ski accidents like they used to be."
Even Steiner sees high-speed hazards on full pistes. "With waisted skis, a bad skier is traveling much faster with a false sense of security, and you can often see that someone with bad skills goes beyond their means."
Injuries often without external influence
Basically at least the number of injured persons has decreased in relation to the number of skiers. "Today we have 50 percent fewer injuries than in 1980," says Andreas König, security expert at the German Ski Association (DSV). This is also the conclusion of the Evaluation Center for Ski Accidents of ARAG Sportversicherung, which has been recording injuries to German skiers for more than 30 years.
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The accident risk tends to decline for years - the all-clear can be no question.
An Austria-wide analysis of 7000 ski and snowboard accidents even goes one step further: According to this, the number of ski accidents on Austria's slopes halved in ten years. While in 2002/2003 an average of 1.3 injured per 1,000 ski days were recorded in 2002/2003, in 2012/2013 the researchers averaged 0.6 injuries per 1000 days people were on skis.
The experts of the University of Innsbruck and the Austrian Ski Federation explain the result with fewer falls, improved ski equipment with shorter skis, but also more regular checks of the bindings and better groomed slopes.
However, the analysis also confirms that most injuries occurred at high speed. Other risk factors include steep slopes, soft snow and poor visibility - all factors that make skiing more strenuous.
Skiers should prepare for winter holidays, the authors of the study advise. It was important to strengthen the leg muscles in advance. The good: Winter sports enthusiasts have a large part of their health in their own hands, according to the study from Austria. Far more than 80 percent of the injured crashed without external influences. Only seven (men) and eight (women) percent had a collision with another person.