Georgia teen critically hurt in skiing accident
Tami Slipsager says her 18-year-old son, Ayden, was critically injured in a skiing accident on December 17
(CNN)- “No mother should ever get the call that I got.”
That’s how Tami Slipsager describes the moment her family’s life changed forever. Slipsager says her 18-year-old son, Ayden, was critically injured in a skiing accident on December 17 in Keystone. Ayden, a freshman from Georgia, had been skiing with Slipsager’s husband and a friend for two days when the accident happened.
She says she immediately flew to Colorado after learning her son had been hurt. Earlier that morning, Slipsager says she had texted her son, urging him to be careful and consider taking lessons before heading back out on the slopes.
“I literally said in the text message, ‘I don’t want you to kill yourself,’” she said.
According to Slipsager, conditions on the mountain were icy that Wednesday. Ayden went missing for nearly 40 minutes before a stranger found him unconscious and called for help.
“We don’t know what he hit,” she said. “We thought maybe trees, but they didn’t find him anywhere near trees. We don’t know if it was solid ice, a stump, a rock — we don’t know what happened.”
Ayden has spent the past two weeks hospitalized in Denver, recovering from a fractured skull, broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a broken collarbone, and multiple other injuries.
This week, Slipsager received encouraging news: Ayden has been accepted into the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, where he will begin intensive rehabilitation. She describes her son as a standout athlete and a strong student who earned a 3.9 GPA during his first semester at the University of Georgia.
“He’s got a lot of recovery ahead of him,” she said. “I just hope we can get him back to that place of independence — and that he can go back to the life he always dreamed of.”
Slipsager says the family remains focused on Ayden’s recovery and grateful for the support they’ve received as he begins the next stage of his healing journey.
