Snowboard Injuries You Wouldn't Know Happened

I've been experiencing a bit of pain around my right knee since I miscalculated the speed off of a feature at Copper and landed F-L-A-T as fuck... PLOP! The only reason I haven't been to a doctor yet is I have had such a hard time identifying and describing the problem, until a couple of nights ago. I finally found a website which attributed my legs feeling of instability to an ACL tear, a dreaded injury for any athlete, but particularly a winter athlete who battles Mother Nature and cannot afford to lay out for sustained periods of time (or at least doesn't want to). The thing is, ACL tears usually occur as the direct result of a jerking, twisting motion to the knee and I had only taken an abrupt impact no nastier than other flat landings I have endured in the past:

I'm starting to suspect my hamstring, which is notorious for injury caused by impact, as the contributing factor since I can pivot and twist my knee far too well--and pain free--so that's awesome, but the whole thing had me wondering: Is it possible to tear the ACL when there is no twisting motion present at the time of injury? A quick search revealed the answer...

"Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries in snowboarders are rare. However, in expert boarders landing big jumps, ACL injuries are occurring more frequently.

We identified 35 snowboarders with an identical injury mechanism. All these patients were landing from a jump. All described a flat landing on a flexed knee with significant knee compression. In 31 of 35 boarders, it was the front knee that was injured. Only two riders felt there was any twisting component to their injury.

We postulate that the ACL rupture is due to maximal eccentric quadriceps contraction, as the boarder resists a compressive landing. Internal tibial rotation of the front knee in the snowboarding stance results in preloading of the ACL predisposing to injury."

-- Source: http://www.springerlink.com/content/p7210j58108m2662/

This is another example of just how elusive an injury in snowboarding can be. The human body is comparable to an intricate machine built of synchronized gears and gizmos; in order for each component to function several gears and gizmos must be put into motion simultaneously. Thus, you can damage an entire array of smaller pieces to the human puzzle without even realizing.

Another awesome example of a snowboard injury you wouldn't even know happened was described by Nurse Greg, camp doc at High Cascade. Snowboarding deals with such enormous forces; most of the time when we land a textbook trick or see a pro huck a huge booter to a perfect landing we don't pay attention to the hundreds of pounds of force these actions exert on our bodies.

Nurse Greg's story: It is not entirely impossible to throw a perfect trick with the softest, cleanest landing possible and end up completely shattering your back. If the force of the landing translates in just the right way it could transfer up your body into your spine and...game over. This is highly unlikely, but it's one injury that makes you realize just how unavoidable injuries in our sport really are.

I'm definitely not an encyclopedia of injuries and the medical history of snowboarding, so I was wondering if any readers had similar injuries worth mentioning? I'm sure there are all sorts of ways to mangle things you didn't think you could mangle, so by all means post those up and I am going to just make sure once and for all that my knee is perfecto.