http://arstechnica.com/staff/2015/02/the-ars-man-and-the-ski/ 
Seriously @Lee_Ars? I wish you a full and speedy recovery.
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Yikes! @Lee_Ars, where in California did you manage to find a place with enough snow on it to ski? Take care of yourself and get well soon.
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What they said.
Thanks, guys 
We’re at Northstar (Lake Tahoe). Plenty of snow actually on the runs and the mountain is about 80% open!
Too many people breaking too many things (or getting hurt worse!) around me the past 18 months. Be careful out there.
Get well soon, Lee. (And I loved the article, that was an excellent piece of writing.)
I agree. It’s an excellent piece of one-handed writing while most likely under the influence of some strong pain medication. 
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It works best as spoken word beat poetry I found.
Yeah, sorry to hear about the accident… hope things go well on the recovery.
But that writeup on Ars was a blast! You must have been on pain meds by then, no? 
That looks painful.
Get well soon. 
As a matter of fact I was under the influence for most of that, but I wasn’t delirious or anything. And it also went through a couple of edit cycles before publication, so it wasn’t raw unfiltered HIGH or anything
Sticking with ibuprofen during the day and rationing the norco for the evenings; I’m a side-sleeper, so a couple of pills an hour before bedtime has proven to be the best way to get to sleep. I still wake myself up at least once or twice a night when I roll over onto that side and it hurts, so that sucks, but according to my ortho visit I am healing well.
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Well done. I second the Ars commenter suggestion to take enough of some martial art to learn how to fall without killing yourself. Not that I myself have taken this advice, but it’s on my list.
Knowing how to fall most likely saved me a hospital stay when I had my motorcycle accident all those years ago. Totally worth it!
I second the learn how to fall advice. Or third or fourth it. I no longer stab my arms out and think that I’ll just arrest my fall and everything will be ok. I may still get hurt, but I think I’m less likely to snap my arms like twigs.
Skiing is a little funky. You don’t want to fall backward if you can help it. You also almost certainly don’t want to fling your arms out to try to absorb impact as you are holding two metal poles that can do unpredictable things (or hurt someone else). If you have the time, you want to try to fall on your side like I did.
But, yeah, practice makes perfect!
A lot of learning how to fall is knowing when and how to relax when you hit.
You guys have made me google a few things about falling when skiing. Lots of sites have pointers on the best things to do after you’ve fallen—like, orient yourself so your legs are downhill and slide to a stop, but not if your skis are still attached because then you’ll break your legs off—but there’s a surprising lack of agreement on how exactly to take the fall in the first place.
Huh. I shall have to read more.
That’s not really surprising, since how to take the fall depends on how you’re falling. I’d been doing martial arts training for about three years (about nine or ten hours a week) when I had my motorcycle accident. There was no thought, just muscle memory.
Tuck your chin is always a good start. But yeah, I’m with Nabiki, I only took Judo for a year and a half or so, but I fell thousands of times in that time period. On crash mats, on practice mats, on a really old practice mat that kind of hurt. We’d start our warmups with laps of the dojo of judo rolls, which are controlled falls. I always thought of Arthur Dent when I was doing those, but I never managed to miss the ground, and it really felt like I was throwing myself at the ground.
I guess the constants would be tuck your chin and relax. And don’t brace.