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It is an experience Betsy Meredith will not soon forget. 

As skiers and riders loaded onto lifts at Keystone Resort, Meredith stared up at the mountain and shook with anxiety. Categorizing herself as an experienced skier, Meredith was not scared about her ability to ski down the green trail she had planned to go down, but was rather scared to return to the snow after suffering a significant injury the previous season.

Nearly a year prior on Jan. 25, 2024, Meredith was out at Keystone enjoying a morning of skiing. Wanting to complete a warm-up lap, Meredith — who splits her time between Denver and Summit County —ventured down the Last Alamo trail located on Keystone’s North Peak.

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Meredith started skiing down the blue-level trail that features some bumps before getting turned around on her skis. However, before Meredith could correct herself, the seasoned skier went over the side of the trail and into a ravine.

Not in control of her movements or trajectory, Meredith crashed rib cage first into a stump in the middle of a pile of snow, halting her progress further down the mountain. 

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“I broke eight ribs in 21 places and punctured a lung — I didn’t know it at the time,” Meredith said. “I should have lost consciousness, but I was able to get myself off the stump and get to my cell phone.”

Shadowed by Dercum Mountain and the other peaks that make up Keystone, Meredith knew it was going to be a long shot if she was actually going to have service to make a call for help or not. As she laid helplessly in the snow and the pain began to settle in, Meredith looked at the glow of her cell phone to see one bar — just enough to make an emergency call for help.

“I never have cell phone service on that mountain,” Meredith said. “I was able to call through and then I remembered what run I was on. I didn’t know how to do the coordinate thing. I just remember telling dispatch that I was somewhere in the treeline on the right-hand side of Lost Alamo.”

Not long after connecting with dispatch, Keystone ski patrollers Isaac Roy, Thomas Nagel, Alex Buchanan and Stephen Scherr banded together to launch an emergency response to find Meredith. Roy specifically remembers thinking that it was pretty early in the day for an injury call to come in.

“A phone call came in to dispatch with a female reportedly in the woods, having difficulty breathing and at points saying that she can’t breathe,” Roy said. “Keystone has really good dispatchers, so they kept her on the phone because they wanted to monitor her.”

As the patrollers started to make their way to the site of the accident from the top of North Peak, Meredith remained positive about her current situation. 

“I formed this saying, that I have to trust myself first, I have to trust God and I have to trust people,” Meredith said. “I first had to trust myself and that I knew how to keep myself calm. … I trusted that I can use my own intuition to know what to do.”

When Roy and the other ski patrollers found Meredith off the side of the ski run, she was lying upside down in very deep, unconsolidated powder. Seeing that she was continuing to have issues breathing, Keystone ski patrol treated Meredith with care.

Despite saying she was at a level 10 out of 10 on the pain scale, Roy says that Meredith’s spirits were fairly high.

“She was incredibly tough and there were even moments, if I am remembering correctly, that she may have cracked a single joke or two,” Roy said.

The ski patrollers eventually turned Meredith right side up so she could breathe better, loaded her onto the sled and began taking her down the mountain. Once off the steep ski run, ski patrollers worked to give Meredith an IV, resulting in her cherished ski gear being cut apart in order to easily access a vein.

“I still to this day owe Betsy an apology,” Roy said. “When we got to the base, we went for an IV and I had to cut her favorite jacket. I don’t care how long I have been doing it, as a gear head it always kind of stinks when you have to cut someone’s favorite jacket.”

Meredith was then transported to St. Anthony Summit Hospital in Frisco where she spent several days in the intensive care unit and underwent a couple surgeries. Most notably, Meredith’s fractured ribs were strengthened with plates while a chest tube was put in place in order to help her breathe with a punctured lung.

12 days after suffering her injury at Keystone, Meredith was released from the hospital. Although Meredith says she has always held first responders in high regard, the degree of care she witnessed from the ski patrollers, nurses and surgeons is something Meredith will be thankful for the rest of her life. 

“I have told all those ski patrollers and first responders that they are never going to go hungry on my watch,” Meredith said. “They have a friend for life. How do you quantify the value of people that stood with me and literally carried me in the worst moment of my life?”

After spending numerous months immobile while navigating the recovery process, Meredith capped the 2023-24 ski season by returning to the snow on her own terms. With the support of her partner and her friends, Meredith did one lap at Keystone on closing day with Nagel and Parker Etsy — a nurse technician from the hospital.

The moment, although scary and traumatic, was special for Meredith as it proved to her that she has the capability and inner strength to return to an activity that caused so much harm. The following season, Meredith took it one step further, venturing back out on the mountain and seeing the place where she crashed.

“I am a pretty tough gal and this was the most challenging thing I have ever been through in my life,” Meredith said. “Making the choice to get the skis back on and go back to see where I crashed, I shook the whole time on the lift. Our bodies process trauma so differently. It was so traumatic.”

Knowing that she can’t be alone in the scary process of returning back to the snow after a major injury, Meredith started an online Facebook support group — . Since starting the group on Dec. 13, the group has ballooned to include 425 people. Members post multiple times a day to share their struggles, concerns and success stories.

The growth of the group has been special for Meredith to witness, as it shows that there is indeed a need for injury support in the snowsports industry.

“I feel like the group has taken off because there is that unmet need of people saying, ‘Yeah, I get it, it hurts’,” Meredith said. 

While many of the discussions between members have been over the internet, others have decided to meet for coffee — and some have returned back to the mountain together.

Roy — who now works as a firefighter in Vail and volunteers at the Keystone Adaptive Center in his spare time — can not think of a better way for formerly injured people to be seen and heard.

“You have three really important programs that can help anyone have the confidence and ability to get back on the mountain,” Roy said. “The first is Keystone ߣÏÈÉú Patrol, the second is the Keystone Adaptive Center and if you don’t need a program like the adaptive center at Keystone, you have a community group in Betsy that is helping people bridge the gap and maybe get back to the confidence they had before their injuries.”

Close to a year removed from her ski accident, Meredith could not be more pleased with her decision to not only push past her fears and start skiing again, but to also form an injury support group.

“I think the hardest part honestly, and what eventually led me to starting this group, is that I thought the pain was never going to end,” Meredith said. “… I kept telling myself that I was going to get back on the mountain, I was going to start law school and I was going to be successful.”

To join the Facebook group, visit

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