3 Days in the Snow with T1D

• Hitting the slopes with ski's strapped to your feet,
• Darting left and right as you slide trying to reach the balance between speed and stability,
• Watching for pot holes, rocks, and even people is sometimes just the fun of it all.
• Doing  this between 9am and 4pm can be seen as extensive but doing it for 3 days straight gets your heart racing and your muscles working overtime.
• Pushing yourself to go on the runs that take you out of the comfort zone is also a part of the joy.

All of the above plus I am sure a lot more are the components that run through the heads of probably everyone going to the snow to ski or board now what if exercise has a major effect on your blood sugar control and how do you cope with T1D.

Thinking too much about it and thinking it could be scary is easy to do but in practise I found it to be amazingly simple.

One of the gray things about ski jackets is that there are a lot of pockets. I say this because we all know we always carry a lot of stuff each and every day.

• I start the day the same as everyone checking my BSL and having a decent breakfast.
• I then head to get set for the day. In my pockets I pack a pack of quick acting glucose, my tester, wallet, glucagon, phone and keys. Yes there are that many pockets.
• I then make sure my CGM sensor is still reaching the pump under the layers of the ski clothes and that all of my tubing is nice and tucked into my clothes so that I don't run the risk of it freezing in the sub zero temperatures I am about to go into.
• I then collect my gear and head for the beautifully groomed snow fields in Queensrown, New Zealand.
• After going through the standard awkwardness of putting my ski boots on I step onto the snow and place my skii's down getting ready to head straight to the top of the mountain.
• Before I do however I take my pump out from its warm and protected home and check my BGL on the CGM. 
• I am currently sitting at around 9.0 BGL keeping in mind I have just had breakfast and insulin is still on board. At this point I also start a temporary basal of 50%. So in simple terms I am only going to be having half of what I usually do because of the strenuous excercise that I will be doing.
• I then tuck the pump safely away and step into my ski's and push off to the lifts.

My day then went as anyone else's would, fast skiing, dodging and pushing myself to an uncomfortable level. Through my 3 days of following this process I did not have a simple hypo. I would start at the beginning of the session and terminate the temp rate as soon as I finished and was leaving the mountain for the day. Each of the days, depending on how hard I pushed my BGL stayed between 9.5 and 5.4. Even after each of the sessions and making sure I had wholesome meals and making sure the CGM and Smartguard was active I didn't even have any susequent hypo's.

To me this also proves that this was a successful trip and also shows that with the technology we have there is no reason why anything is out of reach if you just manage the best ways possible.