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Skier breaks leg, crawls to safety

The Local Sweden
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Skier breaks leg, crawls to safety

For a 49-year-old Swedish man a late night routine cross-country trip turned into an 18 hour ordeal after he fell and broke his leg and was forced to crawl to safety.

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"I just had to go on. There was no other alternative. If I had stopped I could have frozen to death," Börje Falk told the local Sundsvall Tidning daily.

Falk habitually exercised late on the floodlit trails in Torpshammar near Sundsvall in northern Sweden and last Sunday evening was no different.

The conditions were however a little icier than usual and when he fell at high speed on a downhill slope he felt pain in his leg.

"When I looked at the leg and the ski the whole foot was hanging in the wrong direction," he told the newspaper.

With no other skiers in sight, no mobile phone and the lights soon set to turn off, Falk decided that his only choice was to crawl to his car. He arrived five hours later and spent an uncomfortable night nursing his broken leg.

"I had no mobile phone with me and there was only the car waiting for me at home," he told the newspaper.

When morning arrived the 49-year-old resumed his struggle for survival and dragged himself on his hands and knees out to the main E14 road and managed to attract the attention of a passing vehicle.

The ambulance arrived some 30 minutes later and since Monday Falk has been recuperating from his ordeal in Sundsvall hospital.

TT/The Local/pvs

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