I finally got myself up to Mount sima this weekend with a pair of skis – only to discover that it was about -30 C with the wind chill.

Where I'm from, if it goes below about -15 C, we stay at the lodge after one chilly run for a beer or two.

I was up to cover the Arctic Winter Games snowboarding and alpine skiing trials, so I got to see some of Whitehorse's talent on the slopes. It was a fun little event to cover, especially because I got to ski there.

It was my first time on skis this year, obviously. I was a little shaky off the start as per usual. I was also on a new set of rentals that I wasn't used to, so needless to say I wasn't in top form. But the one run I did get in before I high-tailed it to a warmer environment was great. There was tons of snow and plenty of much braver people on the hill.

I'm making plenty of excuses for my one run, but the bottom line is Whitehorse, your skiers are much more hardcore than I.

Early on in my skiing career, my confidence on the hill was shattered when I slipped down a steep and icy run, tearing something in my knee. I can't remember what it was, but I remember it hurt. A lot. When I fell I managed to plant my foot on an edge, and swing my upper body around, twisting my knee. It was not fun, and the trip down the hill on one of those first-aid toboggans behind an absolutely insane ski patroller wasn't either.

That was the only real injury I've sustained skiing, but it has really slowed me down. Perhaps its time to take some lessons here.

I've had a few bumps and bruises before. One time I was being an idiot, showing off for a friend who couldn't ski. I hit an edge on a flat stretch of the run and my pole smashed me in the mouth. I got a bloody and fat lip from that one.

I remember she skied by shaking her head. I never showed off again, because I really was nothing to brag about.

The most triumphant injury of my lifetime though, took place off the hill. Everyone loves this story, although I am slightly embarrassed. I'll share it only because I would if it had happened to anyone else but me.

In grade 10, my high school tried out a girls rugby team. We had an awesome boys team that usually did pretty well every year, and they wanted to see if there was enough interest.

So a bunch of us mismatched girls who didn't fit onto the volleyball or basketball teams came out. We learned how to tackle and started to working on getting in shape.

In one of our first practices, our coach lined the girls up with the boys across from us. He used me as a demonstration. Across from me was the biggest boy on the team. He was actually a few years out of high school, but he came by to help out the coach for practices, and to even out the numbers sometimes. His name was Russ.

My coach pointed to Russ and said, "Annalee, I want you to tackle Russ.”

Now Russ was a big boy. He must have been at least five inches taller than me and was probably double my size.

With a deer-caught-in-headlights look on my face, I began running at Russ, although some spectators would later say it was more of a half-walk combined with a hobble, and about 20 feet out, a deafening snap came from my leg and I fell to the ground.

It was a spectacular bail – that was later revealed to be a very broken leg.

My coach came up to me as I was lying on the ground and told me to get up and walk it off.

If you've ever broken a leg, you probably know that you can't exactly walk that injury off, but my coach was convinced it was just a sprain.

I baffled a team of doctors at our local clinic, who were also convinced it couldn't have been a break. I was only about 15 and drank a lot of milk, and teenager's limbs don't just snap.

I spent an agonizing night castless with my "sprained ankle” until the X-ray clinic opened the next day at the hospital.

I baffled more doctors there who refused to X-ray my leg, convinced still that my ankle was badly sprained.

After two or three X-rays that produced no results on my ankle, my parents and I dared the doctor to move up a few inches.

I'll never forget the look on that doctor's face when he had to come out and tell us I had a break in my fibula about three inches long.

It was a glorious "I told you so” moment, until he informed me that I would be spending the next six weeks in a hilarious moon-boot cast. They gave me pain killers and sent me on my way.

The worst thing about breaking your leg is that you are no longer mobile. When you're 15, it is important that you be mobile for all the activities people of that age enjoy. Because I was the cripple of my group of friends I was left very much abandoned as I waited for my leg to heal.

I do remember one night, when my friends were out doing something, they stopped by my house with a little red wagon and off we went. They got bored though, as teenagers often do, and I ended up pushing myself with my good leg.

So I was forever known as the girl who broke her leg running. I was the single reason why the girls rugby team was a failure, because after I left there weren't enough people to run the team.

But truth be told, the embarrassment of snapping my leg in front of twenty boys and a few girls, was much less than that I would have suffered had I actually gotten to unsuccessfully tackle Russ. I picture myself running into him and falling down in a rather cartoonish and comical fashion.