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My Alpine Survival Story

The Summary

In 2006, Dan was a vibrant and energetic Australian pro snowboarder. He spent 14 years chasing snow and surf weather patterns around the globe, until his life abruptly changed forever. An almost lethal backcountry snowmobile accident in Whistler left him with major injuries and a severe spinal erosion, which set Dan on a decade long journey to recovery. Dan’s new challenge of regaining a full functioning, pain free body seemed like an impossible, pipe dream.

Dan’s story begins in Whistler, Canada, one of the world’s most renowned mountain towns. He is out enjoying the winter backcountry, climbing a steep mountain face on his snowmobile. When almost at the top, the sled flips upside down. Suddenly, his glove gets caught by his snowmobile track. His arm is swallowed into and then around the drivetrain, all the way up to his bicep. Attached to his snowmobile only by his crushed and mutilated arm, Dan is then ruthlessly cartwheeled down a steep 300ft mountain face while fully conscious.
His journey to survival starts by figuring out how to stay alive. His condition is rapidly deteriorating, as his arm and body is brutally crushed by the snowmobile, which is teetering on an intimidating alpine face at an elevation of 7000ft. He is 20km away from people that possess the skills needed for a rescue of this degree. With no landmarks around, Dan’s thoughts revolve around dying from either blood loss, organ failure or hypothermia.


It quickly becomes apparent that Dan’s situation is far too complex for the two under equipped rescuers to handle.

Hours after Dan helplessly makes numerous phone calls, his eyes light up as he sees two guys jump out of a helicopter. As nightfall is fast approaching, the stress level is following suit. With his arm still tangled up in his snowmobile, Dan is experiencing agonizing pain. Dan’s accident is unlike anything the rescuers have ever encountered, so they contact rescue operations at base. Whistler hospital devises a plan, which includes sending over a nurse and firefighter. When the duo arrives, the nurse is tasked with sedating Dan just enough so he is still conscious, using narcotics otherwise not permitted in the backcountry. The firefighter puts the engine in reverse, as the other rescuers guide his mangled fingers and arm back out the way it came in. The team successfully frees Dan, just in time for the helicopter to land at the last light of dusk to pull him out of the alpine.

Dan spends 5 years as an inpatient in the amputee ward of Westmead Hospital, back at home in Sydney, Australia. Back to back surgeries (ten in total) and fulltime rehabilitation soon become his new reality. Given Dan’s circumstances, regaining full functional range in the joints throughout his hand, fingers and arm is deemed an impossible feat by orthopaedic surgeons. Unwilling to accept that fact, Dan applies the knowledge he gained in his engineering studies to design some of his own surgeries and create splints custom to his needs.

Dan’s pain and body awareness is an understatement at this point. He breaks records by reaching new benchmarks, such as achieving full functionality in his crushed and broken joints, with a high degree of motor skills.


Over the course of Dan’s 5 years spent in rehabilitation, his spine begins to erode from a rare condition that causes paraplegia. For the following 4 years, all Dan can do is lay on the ground, due to the excruciating pain caused by the spinal erosion. He describes the intensity of the pain as “… worse than [his] 5 year arm rehabilitation pain”. As the pain worsens and becomes increasingly unbearable, he seeks help from countless medical professionals from all fields, ranging from stem cell doctors to musculoskeletal therapists.

Dan’s family and friends fear that Dan will remain in this state forever, stripping him of his ability to surf, snowboard or even walk, ever again.

After seeing countless heath practitioners, an appointment was made with an esteemed physiotherapist, Barbara Hungerford, who is globally renowned for developing the pelvis leg test that physiotherapist’s are trained in globally to measure alignment of a persons hips and legs.

Hungerford introduced Dan to Professor Lorimer Moseley who was the first person to discover how the chronic pain system works. She has since opened a Pain Institution, where she trains medical professionals in using neuroplasticity techniques to treat chronic pain.

A combination of Hungerford and Moseley’s techniques made Dan’s spinal recovery possible. An athlete and engineer by discipline, Dan applies himself to study the neuroplasticity techniques used by Moseley. Using his anatomical skillset from his chiropractic degree and the knowledge he gained while working alongside Olympic level sports rehabilitation therapists, Dan develops a method that bridges the gap between the missing elements in Moseley’s neuroplasticity technique. He integrates his own myofascial techniques—involving stationary and active functional movement—with cognitive training into his custom rehabilitation schedule.

neuroplasticity-lorimer


Within 9 months of being introduced to Hungerford and Moseley, Dan is able to snowboard again. Whilst continuing his customized neuro-treatment, Dan becomes 100% pain free from any muscle spasms or pain, halfway through his first winter season back on the mountain. Despite his vertebrae still having the same erosion holes, he is able to safely participate in high impact sports such as mountain biking, snowmobiling, and snowboarding, completely pain free.

As Dan’s condition continues to improve, during the last stages of his rehabilitation journey he starts treating friends suffering from chronic pain, in the Whistler and Vancouver area. And so, Dan’s passion for helping professional athletes suffering from chronic and acute pain was born. Having visited countless health practitioners without the answers to heal his pain, Dan resonates with individuals in similar situations. As a result, he strives to apply his knowledge to help these people achieve the seemingly unattainable goal of a life free from pain.


Dan’s survival accident, and the lengthy and painful journey to recovery also presents an unexpected side effect: he gained the ability to read people’s energy on a deeper level. To understand what this new sense (and curse) was, Dan embarks on a 10 year journey of education and training with skilled practitioners in this art to master it. This allows him to turn what he previously considered a curse, into a gift.

During Dan’s quest to understand how this energy works, he comes across various medically backed scientific studies and research papers, which explain how this phenomenon of energy awareness works. Western medicine refers to this discipline as “energy medicine”, and it is presently being used across Western hospitals as a treatment solution. Unexpectedly, Dan uncovers scientific journals that bridge the gap between medical and spiritual sciences.


Dan now uses cutting edge neuroplasticity science and techniques to treat people with chronic pain or acute injuries, in the Whistler and Vancouver area in Canada. When he is not healing people, Dan is in the mountains seeking out the biggest mountains and cliffs he can find. Not a day passes where Dan does not feel extreme gratitude towards being pain free. Dan bought another snowmobile on February 5, 2020 and has been enjoying it since.