Taylor LaMarre thought he could handle an unfamiliar feature on one of the mountain bike trails at Pidherny Recreation Site but his daring act came with disastrous consequences when his wheel popped off the wooden structure and he was launched forward head-first.
His head hit a tree, the impact cracking his helmet and he landed on a pile of logs. The 34-year-old Prince George man was left with a broken back.
“We’d been up that trail (Papa Woods) before and it was a lot of fun riding it before and decided to hit one of the features we hadn’t ridden tried previously and we scoped it out lots and checked it out but luck was not on my side going over it,” said LaMarre.
“It has 10-foot planks that have about a foot-and-a-half drop and there’s six of them in a row. You just progressively go off one and then the other, and I don’t know if I wasn’t going fast enough but I freaked out and got a little scared and lost control on the second-to-last one and went off to the side and my front wheel went off the edge and I flew over the handlebars.”
LaMarre knew he was hurt and his first reaction was to try to get back on his feet. When he realized he couldn’t move his head or get off his back, he and his four riding buddies knew it was time to call 9-1-1.
One of the riders is a nurse, who stabilized LaMarre. Not long after the crash, two off-duty RCMP officers rode upon the scene, one a former paramedic who took control of the scene and used a GPS pin to mark their exact location on an online map. Prince George firefighters were dispatched and arrived with a ”big wheel” stretcher clamshell to immobilize LaMarre and haul him to an access road, where he was loaded into a side-by-side ATV that took him to a waiting ambulance in Pidherny’s upper parking lot.
“The response was phenomenal,” LaMarre said.
When they called his wife Danielle to tell her of the accident, one of the police officers, Sebastian, handed the phone to Lamarre.
“He said, ‘He needs to be the one to call her,’ and I’m like, ‘don’t be mad but I’ve had a bad accident.’
They have two young sons, Felix and Milo. Lamarre had planned to pick them up from school that day and go out for dinner to celebrate Milo’s sixth birthday that day.
An x-ray at University Hospital of Northern B.C. determined he’d fractured his T-12 vertebra. He was flown to Vancouver General Hospital, where he underwent six hours of surgery on Sunday to have two rods and six screws implanted in his lower spine.
“Before the surgery I had some strong emotions about not being able to walk after, I was quite worried,” said Lamarre, after an occupational therapy session at VGH. “They took really good care of me here.”
He hopes to be coming back to Prince George sometime this weekend.
Lamarre works for CN Rail as a yardmaster and figures he will be off work for six to eight weeks. He could have permanent stiffness in his back but suffered no paralysis and he eventually wants to get back to riding his bike. But he won’t be tackling any black diamond runs any time soon.
“I told him maybe he should stick to the green trails,” said Danielle.
Lamarre’s sister-in-law, Celynne LaMarre-Bellanger, started a Go Fund Me page trying to raise money to help cover the family’s travel expenses to Vancouver. The goal was to raise $7,500 and by Thursday the total had reached $8,174.
“I’m blown away by the support I’ve been getting from everybody the community, not only friends but people I don’t know donating. It's such a good community we live in,” Lamarre said.
