VAIL —The mountains don’t care how you got hurt. But they can still heal.
As a diverse group of wounded soldiers gather at Vail ski area this week, they will find solace in the sunshine and reprieve in the powder. They will bond over their unexpected journeys launched by bullets and bombs.
“I love to watch when we get some of our older vets meeting some of our younger people and it’s like they’ve known each other their whole life, and they’ve never met,” says Cheryl Jensen, who 21 years ago started bringing injured soldiers to Vail for a week on snow.
More than 4,700 wounded U.S. soldiers have visited Vail for skiing or summer recreation through the Vail Veterans Program, which Jensen formed in 2004 to help the injured returning from the Gulf War. The program has evolved to include summer visits and care from doctors at the Steadman Clinic and physical therapists at Howard Head Sports Medicine at Vail Health Hospital.
This week the Vail program hosted wounded soldiers with the Israeli Defense Force. It’s the third time the Vail Veterans Program has hosted Israeli soldiers with the Brothers for Life group. The latest visit includes, for the first time, soldiers injured in the war with Hamas.
The connection between the U.S. soldiers and the injured fighters from Israel is a “mutual understanding of common experiences,” says Greg Gadson, a retired Army colonel who lost his legs in an improvised explosive device attack in Iraq in 2007.
“We all have taken oaths to serve our nation … and in some ways, we paid a sacrifice. We don’t even have to look for anything else in common. It’s the commonality of overcoming. It’s the commonality of resiliency. It’s an honor to keep living,” Gadson says. “There are men and women who are not so fortunate as us. We have to live our lives every day to honor their sacrifice so that it’s worth it. So we got to keep living.”
The battalion commander and former West Point football player who was injured when he was 41 learned to ski with the Vail Veterans Program shortly after his injury. He’s a motivational speaker who has written a book recounting his healing journey — “Finding Waypoints: A Warrior’s Journey Toward Peace and Purpose” — that has inspired countless readers.
He’s 59 now and can really carve his sit ski, throwing sheets of snow with each deep, high-speed arc. The Virginia native says the annual trips to Vail give him the energy to help more injured soldiers.
“It’s so great to show some of the younger kids how skiing can fill their cup,” he says. “Out here, once we start going down the slope, I’m just the same as everyone else. It doesn’t matter whether I have legs. I’m as free as you.”
One Israeli soldier was injured by an explosive device on Dec. 16, 2023. His doctors told him he could not fall, so the instructors with the Vail Veterans Program put him on a ski bike.
He spent several days lapping the beginner’s hill before he was ready to venture to the top of the Vail ski area. Looking out across the craggy Gore Range, the soldier — a father of three — marveled at the surge of adrenaline he had not felt for more than a year; a heart-thrumming moment he feared was gone for good after a bomb tore into him.
Turning to the founder of the program that put him on the snow, the soldier marveled at his journey. He’d spent 10 months fighting for his life in a military hospital.
“I can’t believe I made it up here,” he told Jensen this week. “And I realize I’ve won.”
“I was just bawling,” Jensen says. “That quote says so much. They’ve all had this hard fight and they are finding victories.”
These victories are increasingly elusive in the polarizing Israel – Hamas war, which began Oct. 7, 2023 with an attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,200 Israeli citizens. The ongoing war has devastated Palestinian communities and leveled most of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian authorities said Israel’s ground and air campaigns have killed more than 47,500 people, with about half identified as women, children or older people. More than 111,000 Palestinians have been injured. The number of fatalities for Israel is around 1,200 soldiers.
And the number of Israeli soldiers with life-altering injuries is climbing. Since 1948, Israel has mandated that citizens over the age of 18 serve at least two years and eight months in the Israeli Defense Force.
Divr Shenkman was two days away from the end of his mandatory military service when he suffered injuries to his head and knees on Oct. 7, 2023. He had tickets to Thailand and was planning to go to France to learn to snowboard.
“But plans changed,” says the 23-year-old, his snowboard dangling off a Vail chairlift.
He’s one of the 10 injured soldiers visiting Colorado with Brothers for Life, a U.S. nonprofit that supports Israeli combat veterans. He’s had three surgeries to rebuild his knees. On Monday, he visited with doctors at the Steadman Clinic and learned, he says, “maybe I can get some specific treatments without having more surgeries.”
Before his injury, Shenkman “was sure I could do anything I wanted.” This week, he learned to snowboard.
“Now, I take it slow and understand that even though I can still do everything, I cannot do everything right now and it will take time,” he says. “And look at me, in four days, I am snowboarding and we are going to the top of the mountain.”