Pierre-Yves Leblanc

French Canadian film star Pierre-Yves Leblanc suffered a fractuerd femur September 1st in Las Lenas, Argentina after he miscalculated an eighty foot cliff jump and landed on rock. Though le Blanc's break was clean and his rescue from the Cerro Torrecillas backcountry area of Las Lenas was executed smoothly Las Lenas patrol, PY then stepped into a twilight zone nightmare as he experienced the horror of trying to obtain competent care in Argentina.

PY was in Las Lenas to finish a segment for Pimpin´Frogs Productions' new movie "Reality". After hiking into the Cerro Torrecillas, an awe-inspiring area of ridges, spires, steeps and cliffs, "PY basically aired an eighty foot cliff to a rock outcropping," according to Colin Puskas, who was present. PY's fateful air was filmed by his girlfriend, cinemaphotographer Elise Turcott After realizing mid-air he had hit the cliff too far to one side, PY tried to land on a small patch of snow on the cliff in an attempt to make it a two story drop. "He tried to change his trajectory in the air when he saw his landing" said Puskas, "But due to his velocity and the size of the air, he hit rock, then tumbled over another twenty feet off it."

Though PY gained a reputation as a risk taker in his early years, both Puskas and Turcott emphasized that PY used sound judgement when evaluating the air, approaching it at the wrong angle from above, unable to see his landing until he was airborne. "The more chances you take skiing lines like this, the greater the chance of something going wrong," said Puskas. "People might think PY is a bit wild and over-the-top, but when skiers have 20-30 years experience at the level PY does, the action slows down in a 'Matrix' kind of way. But sometimes miscalculations occur."

Whistler local and former ski patrolman Joe Lammers, a long-time Las Lenas skier, helped with arranging PY's care. He described the appalling care the skier received once he entered the medical care system after transferring out of the Las Lenas clinic.

"We were told PY would be transferred to a private hospital in San Rafael, three hours from Las Lenas, where the medical staff spoke English," said Lammers. "I was aghast at the incompetence of the staff. No one spoke English, they didn´t even put his leg in traction and, after a cursory examination, the doctor took off to Las Lenas to go skiing."

Infuriated by their medical debacle unfolding before them, Lammers and Turcott found an orthopeodic specialist in Mendoza and arranged for PY to transfer there. However, the San Rafael hospital refused to discharge PY until his 5,000 peso bill was paid in cash. After heated negotiations with the hospital, which refused to accept credit card payment or honor PY's travellers medical insurance, Leblanc was finally transferred to Mendoza where surgery was performed. He is expected to fully recover.

"It appears PY would have languished indefinitely in the San Rafael hospital had we not fought so vigorously to get him transferred to competent medical care," says Lammers. "The message here is, if you're in a far-away land, you cannot ski with the pedal to the metal. You have to back it off bit, because when you think about what risk is, it isn´t just the probability of an accident, it's also the consequences of that accident."

-Pat Keane