Jeff Davis wrote:
I dislocated my shoulder on the lower saddle snow field of the Grand Teton
a few years ago. I was retreating in front of a nasty severe thunderstorm.
I was positioning myself for a glisade and slipped, (due to approach shoes,
not boots). I thought I'd just catch myself with my ice axe. Instead,
my shoulder dislocated, and I was left to rotate my body around in glisade
position and ride it out with the ball of my humorous in my arm pit.

I was screaming off the saddle and caught air. I tried to dig my heels in
to slow down and only succeded in spraying snow all over my Smith's. Then
I was blind and screaming down the snow field glisading with a dislocated
shoulder and bracing my ice axe with that arm.

There is a lot of rock at the bottom. The Middle Teton Glacier terminates
down there and there's a mine field of large granite that rolled to a stop.
I figured if I kept my feet together I could save my nuts. I expected
compression fractures of both legs any second.

I started to slow down. I crancked on my ice axe. It pulled me to the
side. I missed a nasty rock and came to a stop. It took me a few minutes
to reduce the luxation, (pop my shoulder back in,). I walked off the
hill and went home. I ate some Ibuprophen when I got back to the van in
the Lupine Meadows lot.
That sounds a bit more exciting than my experience. On the first day
of a week at JH my wife and I were skiing Tower Three Chute before she
was going to go in for lunch. On my third turn, the tip of my downhill
ski hit a rock under the foot of fresh snow. Ski stopped, I didn't. I
landed on my left elbow and my arm stuck in the soft snow and my
shoulder dislocated as I rolled downhill. Nothing like sliding
headfirst on a double-diamond run knowing there are trees, rocks, and
cliffs below you and your shoulder is in the middle of your chest. We
don't have anything like that here in Texas. Took all I could do to
get spun around and to get stopped, although it took me almost all of
the run. Came to a stop right at the crux where the two cliffs
bordering the chute close in. The patroller offered to try to pop it
back in, but after watching him slide 20 feet as soon as he took off
his skis I figured that wasn't the place for it. Took three ski
patrollers to haul my butt out of there. Thought briefly (very
briefly) about skiing out on my own, but my shoulder was still quite
dislocated and wasn't going back in without help. Took the doc and two
nurses about ten minutes of tug-of-war to get it reduced at the clinic.

For the rest of the week, anytime I thought about getting back out on
skis I'd slip on some ice, get bumped into, or just plain move the
wrong way and it would feel like someone jamming an ice pick into my
shoulder. I spent most of my free time drinking Moose Drool at the
Mangy Moose or scamming internet access at the Snake River Lodge lobby.
On the plus side, I finally got around to visiting Yellowstone NP via
a snowcoach tour. On previous trips to Jackson Hole I wasn't willing
to skip a day of skiing.