Janell and the (almost) broken back

Why was Janell being carried out of the woods behind the block house on a stretcher while we all looked on worriedly?  Well, it started with a new sled, probably given as a Christmas gift (not sure about that but it is a good guess).  Then one snow covered, sunny day we decided to head to the block house to look for a good sliding hill.  All the other kids brought along whatever old sled they happen to have, but Janell brought her brand new, shiny- and soon to be revealed slippery sled.  This baby must have been waxed up good at the factory to give the maximum sledding experience.   Once we found a great spot to slide in the woods behind the block house I noticed that someone had made a small jump out of snow at the bottom of the hill, it looked innocent enough to me.  We had the hill to ourselves and the first couple of sledders came down just fine- the jump was not a problem because they stopped before reaching it.  However Janell was a different story, on her first ride on the new sled she took off like a jet down the hill and by the time she reached the bottom she was really flying.  A great first ride except for one issue, she was heading straight for the jump and still going strong.  I saw her hit the jump and go airborne immediately, she screamed as she and the sled parted company.  I didn't measure the distance she traveled in the air but is seems to me like it was about 20 feet before she landed hard on her back.  I figured she would have the breath knocked out of her but did not expect her to be in so much back pain.  She just laid there moaning and crying about how bad her back hurt.  We decided she needed to be carried out and that we couldn't do it, so one of us ran back to the car and got to a phone to call for an ambulance.  Once the ambulance crew got there they had to trudge through the woods with their stretcher to get her out.  They very carefully strapped her down to the stretcher and carried her out to the road where the waiting ambulance was.  In the hospital we found she had a "cracked" back not a "broken" back and it would just take time to heal.  In time it healed, we avoided sledding for a while and her sled eventually got roughed up so it wasn't so fast anymore and all was well in Winter Wonderland again.