Marian Veith has had the right mindset to make a comeback. Photo: New Boundaries
Marian Veith is a 34-year-old action sports enthusiast from Germany. Raised in the Alps, as the great-grandson of one of Europe’s pioneering skiers, he began riding snow nearly as early as he could walk. He’s made the mountains his home. And his love for the high-country has never wavered, even when an avalanche accident outside the boundaries of Lermoos, a resort in the Tyrol region of Austria, resulted in the loss of his leg.
Veith was skiing a backbowl area of the resort with several couloirs that he’d ridden many times. The conditions weren’t abnormally scary but a large slide let loose in the chute, sweeping him off his feet and down the steep mountain for the ride of his life. Midway through he felt extreme pain in his lower body. As the slide came to a stop, he made a swimming motion towards the surface, just as the avalanche slammed him into a tree in a forested area. The first thing he noticed was his right leg twisted grotesquely, with his ski boot near his head. He wasn’t sure if his leg was still connected to his body. An air ambulance helicopter got him out of the treacherous terrain but the real journey was yet to come.
After his complicated rescue, three years later, Veith returned to the slopes with a prosthetic leg and a story to tell (this time on a snowboard as he says it was easier to control his balance and weight distribution with the prosthetic). I checked in with Veith to hear his story that’s now told in the docu-series, New Boundaries.
The first of four episodes of New Boundaries debuted a month ago. The videos are serious, solemn, and feel equally cinematic as they do documentary. Designed to tell the story of Veith’s recovery, the scenes are chronological, with flashbacks recounting the accident in the mountains, and other important moments, like when he rediscovers skateboarding with a prosthetic leg, or the day of the accident as rescue operation members tell the story of flying in to retrieve Marian from the mountains.
Despite that harrowing incident, Veith is upbeat when we talk, smiling, humble with his answers, and chatting like an old friend. Perhaps, this can be attributed to the sheer miracle of his being. Although Veith had been injured numerous times before, this incident was different. The first episode of the docu-series explains that without a serious rescue operation, Marian wouldn’t have survived the avalanche.
The series cuts, vividly, from clips of Marian landing double backflips in the park to him wheeling himself in a wheelchair down a busy street. It’s not hard to envision how the avalanche shook Veith’s world.
In the documentary, one of Marian’s doctors says that “there is an enormous amount of work that goes into achieving such a positive attitude. When you’re stuck in the hospital for days, weeks, months, knowing your leg is gone… it’s hard to come to terms with, even with a positive attitude.”
“The accident illustrated to me that life can be over in a second,” Veith said. “You start to cherish life more, the good and the bad things, because you’ve been on the really, really low side of things, then, all of a sudden, the little things that in everyday life might distract or annoy you, all of a sudden, they’re not bad anymore.”
The simple things brought Veith joy, like riding a bike or even walking. “Having to use a wheelchair for a couple of months, that was really hard for me,” Veith said. “I appreciate being able to move, to travel, skate, snowboard, all these things. It’s not a given thing.”
How’s that for never giving up? Photo: New Boundaries
Besides Veith’s positive attitude to his adjustment post-accident, perhaps even more impressive is the timeline through which Veith rebounded to begin work on the documentary. Recovering from an injury is one thing. Recovering from a forever life-altering accident while undertaking an entirely new, massive project is another.
In 2022, just a few months after the avalanche, Marian explained that his friend Nicholas, who he’d known for 16 years, would produce the documentary and reached out via a phone call. “He said, ‘hey I met some guys from ottobock. I told them about your accident. Would you like to make a documentary with me?’” That was it. The project was on.
Like many kids who grow up in the mountains, Nicholas and Marian made ski videos together as teenagers. Veith said, “now he has a production company, so when he asked me about the documentary, I knew it was a nice opportunity to hang out with Nicholas and just enjoy the process.”
Talking to people for the project proved to be therapeutic for Veith. But there was a serious, underlying goal. “I knew it was an opportunity to make these freak accidents visible,” Veith explained.
Working on location was the best part, Marian said. Photo: New Boundaries
Many skiers venture into the backcountry without proper avalanche training. In Veith’s case, he had the proper training, but even with the best assessments, some risk remains. “I’m not a professional, but it’s a passion,” Veith said. “I participated in avalanche safety courses. I am prepared.”
“You can always think about what you could have done differently, but, really, what difference does it make? Second guessing and doubting is not changing the current situation,” Veith said.
Not only does Veith live in the present, he embraces opportunities with open arms. Making the documentary turned out to be even better than he expected. “The best part was just the traveling,” Veith said. “We went to Paris to snowboard.”
Veith also said that the responses to the documentary have been heartwarming. “All of the messages from the people that saw it who were strangers and sent me messages to say, ‘this was such an inspiration. I wanna try this or that, and now there are no more excuses,’ that was awesome and an unexpected part of the documentary.”
