At this point in the day, the ski sickness was an afterthought. It was onward and upward. Photo: Joe Madden
Evidently there’s a name for that dizzying sensation while skiing in a ping pong ball: ski sickness.
The weather report read something like this: bluebird. With some parenting to take care of in town, I didn’t begin skinning until roughly noon. No problem: there was no reading between the lines on this forecast. About 300-400 feet below the ski line’s start, and I swear, it was seemingly out of nowhere—the weather shut down. Lickety-split. Graupel blew sideways. Visibility went from hi-def mountainscape to vertigo-inducing ping-pong ball. The light flat-lined. I pivoted.
While mostly sideslipping with a few intermittent turns for good measure to switch direction, my inability to sense up from down and vice versa was the first sign the shit was hitting the fan. As I moved onto a broader snow panel, feeling disoriented and dizzy with a hint of nausea, I decelerated to stop. Bending over to peer at the snow, which I couldn’t discern while upright (but knew was near my feet), I realized I was still moving with ample speed across the slope.
The repeat trip began at roughly 8 AM the following day. This time, I was with Joe—super reliable, younger, and rational—he’s a smoke jumper who sews his parachutes, after all.
The weather was a semi-known quantity; clear and cold until it wasn’t going to be clear, but snowy. NOAA forecast the shift in weather for a firm 4 PM. We boogied to the wilderness boundary on skins and made good time up a ridge to my previous day’s high point. The weather window remained wide open. We eventually topped out in a comfy and protected alcove and transitioned. And just like déja vû all over again, as Joe tapped the snow below us with his ski pole to get a sense of the wind-deposited snow, with a finger snap from the weather gods, it was curtains on the day: flat light and low vis.
After waiting an hour and a half for better lighting that never materialized, we convinced ourselves that sideslipping the line was doable. Vertigo be damned. I threw a small pebble on the slope’s entrance to gain some definition and know we weren’t simply sliding into a void. Despite trying to convince ourselves otherwise, rationality eventually won—we popped bindings, put the sharps back on, and retraced our steps. The weather report was pretty spot on. Snow blew around 4 PM. Sadly, the ping pong ball bounced in a few hours before. And I wanted no repeat of my dizzying sensations on this steeper run.
Having never experienced the unsettling “I’m going to hurl” type of motion sickness while skiing until this weekend, I needed to know more.
Joe Madden moments away from clicking into bindings and having the weather shut down.
Ski Sickness—It’s a Thing
For something as routine as skiing in flat light and feeling unbalanced to the point of mild or even real concern, I’m surprised that a medical diagnosis for “ski sickness” wasn’t made until 1994. That’s a full 94 years after the first ping pong ball was developed: for certain, some Swiss ski mountaineer found themselves blurting “ich bin skifahren im tischtennisball”* long ago as the meadows below the Matterhorn disappeared in mist and their digesting muesli went sour.
Rudolph Häusler, a Swiss ear, nose, and throat scientist, is credited with first describing/naming “ski sickness,” a form of motion sickness.
From his bluntly titled paper “Ski Sickness,” Häusler’s abstract describes the symptoms as “dizziness with illusionary rotatory or pendular sensations and disequilibrium accompanied by nausea and occasionally by vomiting may appear during down-hill skiing.”
He continues, “Ski sickness seems to represent a special form of motion sickness produced by unusual and contradictory sensory information between the visual, vestibular** and somato-sensory system***. The pathophysiology seems to be related to vestibular overstimulation from winding turns on uneven ground, insufficient visual control, especially on foggy days with reduced visibility (on so called ‘white days’), often in connection with minor ophthalmologic problems such as myopia or astigmatism and altered somato-sensory input due to the wearing of ski boots and skis. Psychological factors such as fear of heights, fear of mountains, high speed and falling may contribute to the atmospheric pressure changes in the ear when descending rapidly from high to low altitude.”
Methods to relieve symptoms of ski sickness include (but are not limited to) taking off one’s skis and/or using motion sickness meds. Certainly, one can also avoid this ailment by only touring on days when you are 100% certain, not 85%-95% certain, as I was, that the mountain gods will be smiling down on you with rays of sunshine. Instead, this weekend, while I missed the weather I was hoping for, I had two excellent tours with supremely deplorable turns and an opportunity to learn about Häusler’s Disease, otherwise known as….ski sickness.
*“I’m skiing in a ping pong ball”
**relating to a vestibule, particularly that of the inner ear, or more generally to the sense of balance.
***According to Websters: “The somatosensory system registers sensations detected by the muscles, joints, skin and the body tissues that connect them, called the fascia.”
While I have never been victim of ski sickness, I have found myself in a ping pong ball with skis on my feet. The worst situation was during the descent of a volcano in South America. We were above tree line and with no rock outcrops to provide contrast, it was white in all directions. The guide we were with tied a 15-20 feet long cordelette to the basket of his ski pole and flung it down the fall line. This was helpful to orient the fall line and we were able to descent through the cloud a couple of turns at a time.
Ski Sickness is also an amazing blog by one of my WA steep skiing heroes! https://skisickness.com/
I had the opposite experience. Skiing along happily at snowbird on a flatish traverse in the ping pong ball: eventually pole planted and realized I was standing completely still. God only knows how long I was just standing there.
Aviators have a well-developed vocabulary surrounding somatogyral illusions that is well worth a read.
https://skybrary.aero/articles/vestibular-system-and-illusions-oghfa-bn#:~:text=successful%20motion%20synchronization.-,Spatial%20disorientation,well%2Ddescribed%20in%20the%20literature.
After taking a look at that vocabulary, skiing in a ping pong ball seems rather tame: is there a skier’s equivalent of the pilot’s “Graveyard Spin?” Thanks for sharing that link.