Pikes Peak Region Trail Finder

Snowboarder Kevin Pearce, seriously injured in a halfpipe accident nearly 2 years ago, will ride for the first time since then Tuesday at Breck.  Mike Groll, AP File Photo (March 11, 2011)

By John Branch, The New York Times

In the weeks and months after the champion snowboarder Kevin Pearce sustained a traumatic brain injury while training on a halfpipe, and even while he was in a coma in a Utah hospital nearly two years ago, his friends and fans provided support through a simple slogan: I Ride for Kevin.

Next week, those people will be able to ride with Kevin.

For the first time since Pearce’s life-altering accident, he will strap on a snowboard and glide down a mountain. He plans to ride Tuesday afternoon at Breckenridge, surrounded by friends in the snowboarding community and anyone else who wants to tag along.

“I want to get everybody to come and ride with me,” Pearce said in a phone interview.

Pearce, a favorite to make the 2010 United States snowboarding team, was practicing a particularly difficult trick in Park City, Utah, on Dec. 31, 2009, when he fell and hit his head on the icy wall of the halfpipe. He spent four months in hospitals in Utah and Colorado, missing the Olympics, and emerged with an unsteady walk, blurry vision and a diminished memory.

Read more about Kevin Pearce's long, quiet rehabilitation and his hopes for the future in the NY Times story.

Read an entry in John Branch's Reporter's Notebook, written shortly after Kevin Pearce's horrible fall. I remember the accident well, and still can't read Branch's Notebook entry - entirely different from the one he had intended to write - without tearing up.

Take the day off Tuesday and get to Breck to Ride WITH Kevin.