Sledder lives to tell about horrific crash

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This article was published 11/01/2011 (5389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man expects to soon be back on his feet, only days after being struck in a highway crash that shredded his snowmobile but left him, incredibly, alive.

For now, bruises, scrapes and broken bones tell the tale of the Saturday-afternoon accident near Libau, where a truck struck Daryl Gies’ snowmobile as the man attempted to cross Highway 59, 60 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

On Monday evening, surrounded by grinning friends and family in his Health Sciences Centre hospital room, Gies detailed his injuries: a broken collarbone and two broken bones in his leg. “I was lucky,” he acknowledged.

It could have been far worse.

On Saturday afternoon, Gies, his father and about nine friends were snowmobiling outside Libau, a route they know well. The group pulled up to cross the highway; Gies checked several times to look for oncoming cars. But a strong glare from the sun obscured the northbound Chevrolet Trailblazer that was bearing down on him. As Gies started to cross the highway, he heard the other snowmobilers yelling “stop!” But it was too late. Gies, 20, remembers the moment he saw the truck. “Even as the vehicle was hitting me, I never thought I was going to die,” Gies said. “It was an ‘oh, this is going to hurt’ type of situation.”

The truck struck the sled and flipped on its side, sending Gies flying as the rest of the snowmobilers — especially his father — watched in horror.

“I thought I lost my boy that day,” Bryan Gies said.

The crash flipped the truck on its side and blew Gies’ sled to smithereens; even RCMP expected a grim scene when they arrived. “I’m fairly shocked that we didn’t end up with a fatality from this collision,” RCMP Cpl. Rob Bell said on Saturday. “(The snowmobile) is completely destroyed.”

Gies never lost consciousness and knew not to move when he landed. But he realized he could feel all of his limbs and that’s when his family realized he would be all right. “He was coherent, telling me he felt everything,” Bryan Gies said.

Once in hospital, Gies called his friends to tell them the tale. At first, they thought Gies, a regular prankster, was making the story up. “I thought it was a joke when he first told me,” said Gies’ friend, Chelsea Kaufman, but when she saw the crash scene photo, she was shocked. “I can’t believe he’s still alive.”

Gies had a few words for the driver of the Chevy, who was shaken but uninjured. “I hope that he’s OK,” Gies said. “I can’t imagine (what that’s like). If I had died, it would be heavy to have that on you.”

So, does Gies plan to get out on a snowmobile anytime soon? “It’ll make me reconsider it for sure,” he said. “But it wasn’t snowmobiling that caused this accident, just more or less the situation.”

A friend lending his support in Gies’ hospital room had a different suggestion: “Next time, wear sunglasses.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca