A skier is paralyzed below her shoulders after crashing into a tree at Copper Mountain, her friends said. 

Anna Buhrmann is from Germany and goes to school at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, where she plays field hockey. Last week, she came to Colorado with two friends for a spring break ski trip. 

One of her friends said Buhrmann hit a tree while skiing and had to be flown to the hospital for emergency spine surgery. She is still in the ICU. 

“It’s been difficult just considering how capable she was of doing everything on her own,” her friend Kenzie Riccardi said. “She’s a very independent person and she’s a D1 athlete.” 

“As soon as we realized the severity of the situation with her spinal cord injury, we realized it was going to cost a lot of money, especially because she is an international student,” she said. 

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