BRETTON WOODS, N.H. – They kidded each other mercilessly.

“A “residual limb?”‘ fumed Ray Gilbert, a retired Army infantry sergeant, tromping on his prosthetic foot toward the ski slopes of the Mount Washington Resort. “At least I call a stump a “stump.”‘

Old soldiers never die. They just fire away.

On a pristine, snowy peak near Bretton Woods, a handful of veterans gathered recently to challenge not just a mountain but themselves. They came for an adaptive ski weekend, a chance to put aside physical limitations and slide down a hillside on wooden slats.

“Maybe they’re in a chair or they’re on crutches, and maybe they don’t have that sense of speed, of freedom, any longer,” said Sandy Olney, who runs the Mount Washington Resort’s adaptive ski program. “When you see them get out on snow and start feeling that sense of independence, it’s always inspiring.”

For wounded and disabled veterans, even some bound to wheelchairs, ski weekends have become an unlikely rite of winter. Private and public groups seek new recreation for the more than 30,000 service men and wom en who have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many have turned to skiing, a sport that combines elements of freedom and risk, as a way to break out of the doldrums.

Groups from Central New York have traveled to New Hampshire since 2004 with James Sheets, an outreach specialist for the Veterans Affairs Department.

A former infantry sergeant, Sheets retired from the Army in 2004 to take on a new mission: spreading the word to Iraq and Afghanistan vets about the services available to them. He drove his region, handing out literature and often speaking about post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, the most common problem for young veterans.

Sheets would tell spouses and families how to identify PTSD symptoms and how to tactfully guide loved ones into the programs that can help. He would emphasize that seeking assistance is a sign of strength, not weakness. He found the key for most suffering vets was just persuading them to take a chance.

“I learned that getting these veterans out of the home, out of the house, is a big step,” Sheets said. “When we go skiing, it’s not about anybody’s disability, because we are going to overcome it. We are going to find ways to have fun, safely, and overcome it.”

Sheets has run ski weekends for amputees, people suffering from brain injuries and veterans in wheelchairs. He’s taken experienced skiers like Gilbert and some who are new to the slopes.

The message is simple: If you can do this, you can do anything.

On this day, Saturday, March 15, the group gathered at Olney’s office, which held an arsenal of specialized equipment and accessories. The most notable contraption sat outside: an $8,400 French-made tandem ski, believed to be the only one of its kind in the United States. Half-sled and half-chariot, it can whisk a person down a mountain while he or she breathes through a respirator.

Olney’s volunteer staff includes instructors who lost limbs during military service. They arrived at the resort prepared to teach, and to dish it out.

“I can’t believe we’re trying to teach Army guys,” roared Terry Terry, an ex-Navy man who shrugged off one-liners about his name like snowflakes. “It’s hopeless.”

After a retaliatory volley of comments about the Navy, the group headed for the ski lifts.

For Gilbert, 38, a father of five, it was his second time on skis since 2003, when a gunshot wound in Afghanistan cost him his right leg, just below the knee.

He spent about six weeks recuperating at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, then went home to his family in Boonville, N.Y., on a prosthetic limb. Gilbert wears shoes and walks without a noticeable limp. Unless he puts on a pair of shorts, no one would suspect.

“You’re always going to have your disability,” he said. “It’s the way you live with it that matters. If you stay in the house, if you don’t get out and do things like this, if you don’t keep your emotional health up, you’re limiting yourself. … As soon as you get over the fear of, “Hey, I might get hurt again,’ you’ll have no problem.”

Gilbert said it took him a year after the loss of his foot to try skiing again. Sheets invited him for a weekend and the adaptive instructors took it from there.

Flanked by Terry and Peter Connell, a Vietnam veteran who lost a leg in 1969, Gilbert moved gingerly down the slopes on his first run. About 100 yards from the finish, his prosthetic liner began to slip, and he tumbled into the snow.

“I’m a former paratrooper,” he said. “I know how to fall.”

In the lodge, Connell scrounged up a special knee brace, offered a few suggestions, and soon Gilbert was heading back up the mountain.

Hours later, he had finished eight runs, falling just once more.

Gilbert, who retired from the Army last year, said trips like this help a person connect with kindred spirits.

“It affords you the opportunity of just going out, having fun, doing something you enjoy doing with people of the same relative disabilities,” he said. “Everybody’s on an even footing.”

Young veterans with similar disabilities must not become demoralized, Gilbert said.

“They still have their whole lives in front of them,” he said. “If they think in their mind that they have only a ceiling that they can attain because of their disability, they’re mistaken. You can come here and show them.”

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But victories come in small increments. At the last minute, health issues and scheduling conflicts caused two veterans to cancel the weekend trip. Sheets said he’ll keep making the ski trips. And when the snow melts, there will be whitewater rafting, fishing trips and golf.

“When you’re out in the open air, when you’re just having fun, you’re not thinking about your disability,” Sheets said.

He already has a caseload of about 30, a number destined to increase as thousands of young men and women leave the service after multiple tours of duty.

On the ski slopes, the vets sound like old friends.

“The people were great,” Gilbert said. “Not one negative. Their teaching style was always, “You’re going to do this!’ They’re like a big family themselves.”

He was walking with Connell, the two men tromping forward on their stumps, when Gilbert noticed Sheets lagging behind.

“I can’t believe how we’re always waiting on the guy with two legs,” he thundered.

They laughed all the way up the mountain.

RB END SEELY

(Hart Seely is a staff writer for The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y. He can be contacted at citynews(at)syracuse.com.)

2008-03-24-INJURED-VETS-SKI

AP-NY-03-24-08 1303EDT