Ski Safety Blog

A western New York skier faces a misdemeanor reckless endangerment charge after a collision three weeks ago that seriously injured a veteran ski instructor.

Dominic Galasso, 25, was charged by state police with a misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment, stemming from a March 4 collision at Kissing Bridge with Carl Hensler, 64, of Fort Erie, Ont.

The head of security at Kissing Bridge told state police that Galasso was skiing in a "full tuck" position when he hit Hensler on Mistletoe, an intermediate slope, late that afternoon. Hensler's injuries included a broken arm, leg and nose. Three weeks later, Hensler is still in the hospital with internal injuries, along with fractures to his nose and arm. He is listed in fair condition after two surgeries. Galasso suffered a minor facial injury, according to state police.

The reckless endangerment charge carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail and additional charges are being considered. The charges will likely set a precedent in new York State.

And it's not just U.S. prosecutors pursuing criminal charges against reckless skiers. An Austrian court earlier this month convicted a German state governor of negligent homicide in a skiing accident that killed a woman on New Year's Day. The court in the southern city of Graz, Austria, fined Dieter Althaus the equivalent o $41,550 and ordered him to pay another $6,300 to the victim's husband.

Althaus, 50, is the governor of the eastern Germany state of Thuringia and a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats. Althaus was not present for Tuesday's trial because he is still recovering from head injuries sustained in the collision at an intersection of two trails at the Riesneralm ski area in Austria's Upper Styria region. Investigators said Althaus had skied onto the wrong slope at the time and skied a few yards along it in the wrong direction.

The first criminal conviction in a skier's death occurred just nine years ago in Colorado. In 1997, a collision between an employee of Vail Ski Resort and a visiting skier resulted in the visitor's death. Three years later, the employee was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Prior prosecutions in Colorado related to collision-related skier deaths were resolved through plea bargains, Jim Chalat said to The Buffalo News. The 2000 conviction by an Eagle County District Court jury "is now a precedent that gives prosecutors a basis upon which they may make a prosecution for recklessness," Chalat said. See the full article.

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Matt Davis, 19, won't be skiing for the next year. He will be recovering from a fractured leg after slamming into a tree at Alyeska Ski Resort. But, even after he recovers, his skiing days at Alyeska are over. The Ski Patrol has banned him from the mountain.

Perhaps more hurtful, they billed him $845 for the Feb. 28 rescue, too. Davis was skiing in a clearly marked, roped-off stretch of 3,939-foot Mount Alyeska. Ben Habecker of the Alyeska Ski Patrol told reporters it took 13 highly trained ski patrollers to rescue Davis.

Tucked amid the Chugach Mountains on Alaska's south central coast, Alyeska Ski Resort is located just 40 miles south of Anchorage, in the quaint town of Girdwood. Billing skiers and snowboarders for rescues is still rare, but it is an option being entertained more frequently across North America and in Europe, as more snow enthusiasts venture out of bounds,see Bad Judgment May Result in Big Bill.

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For the second time this season, a high profile tragedy on the ski slopes has stimulated discussion about the use of ski helmets. See Fatal Austrian Ski Accident Reignites Helmet Debate .

National statistics do demonstrate that skiing is a relatively safe recreational activity, but for the hundreds of participants each year who are injured by an inattentive lift operator or walloped by a fellow skier, the consequences can often be life-changing if not fatal. The National Ski Areas Association, the trade group that represents ski resorts as well as ski gear manufacturers, published a 2006 fact sheet reporting there were 2.07 skiing/snowboarding fatalities per million participants, fewer than for bicycling or swimming. The group says a person is twice as likely to die from being struck by lightning as in a skiing or snowboarding accident.

But even the National Ski Areas Association strongly recommends helmets for all participants. Forty-three percent of U.S. skiers and boarders wear helmets, according to a 2008 survey by the National Ski Areas Association, up from 25 percent in 2003.

Some medical groups, including the Association of Quebec Emergency Room Doctors, have called for helmets to be mandatory, claiming 60 percent of head traumas could be avoided, and some countries are introducing laws over helmet use for children.

Sales of helmets in Germany have doubled since a skiing accident in the Austrian resort of Styria in January which left one woman dead and German politician Dieter Althaus seriously injured. Althaus credits his helmet for saving him from serious injury or death.
Austria, which has recorded about 30 ski-related deaths this season, is now introducing a new law requiring all children under 14 to wear helmets on the slopes.

Colorado, with its world-class skiing opportunities, has its share of serious ski accidents. Aspen Mountain, since 2003, requires helmets on children 12 and under who participate in ski school. At Vail, children 14 and under who participate in the ski school are strongly recommended to wear helmets, and must decline their use in writing. The NSAA reports that the vast majority of children 9 and under wear helmets in the U.S.

The Colorado Bar Association, as part of its "Law School for Journalists," offered a program February 19, 2009 on the "Colorado Ski Safety Act" with discussion of the Colorado statute and ski cases - the handouts to the presentation are available at the CBA website. And for those more interested in the consumer safety issue rather than the legal questions, Skier and Snowboard Safety: Hot Issues for Consumers, part of the CBA discussion.

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The widow of a Rhode Island man who died last year while skiing in Killington has filed a lawsuit against a Killington ski shop and Giro, one of the largest ski helmet manufacturers, and Motorola for the Bluetooth device he was wearing at the time of his death.

According to a lawsuit filed this month in federal court in Burlington, Kirk W. O'Brien, 44, was wearing a Giro Omen Model S216 helmet equipped with a Motorola S805 Bluetooth Audio System designed specifically for the helmet when he crashed into a tree at Killington Mountain Ski Resort Feb. 18, 2008, and suffered a fatal skull fracture.

In 2007, he had purchased both items and had the Bluetooth installed in the helmet at Basin Sports in Killington. His widow, Heather O'Brien, is alleging that on impact, components of the Bluetooth dislodged and resulted in her husband's skull fracture.

Neither the packaging of the helmet nor the Bluetooth warns of any injuries that could be sustained by using the two pieces of equipment in tandem, the suit alleges. The suit also alleges that both Giro and Motorola breached an implied warranty that their products were "safe for skiing and riding and would not pose any danger to the user." Basin Sports too breached that implied warranty, the suit continues, by selling a product that was "defective and dangerous to the end user" and not "fit for its intended use."

The suit also claims that Basin Sports was negligent because installing a Bluetooth device in a ski helmet "created a danger to Mr. O'Brien that the agents of Basin Sports should have realized and warned Mr. O'Brien of."

At the time of his death, it was reported that O'Brien was described by family and friends as an expert skier, who'd skied globally and first learned the sport at age of 9. It is reported that this is the first lawsuit involving a ski helmet accident brought against Easton-Bell Sports Inc.

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Colorado Ski Country USA says skier visits so far this season are down 5.9 percent from the same time last season at its member resorts. The figure released last Thursday doesn't include visits to four Colorado resorts owned by Vail Resorts Inc., which said Wednesday that skier visits so far are holding steady. Colorado Ski Country USA has said skier visits at its 22 member resorts were down 7.7 percent for the early season, from Oct. 15 through Dec. 31. Colroado Ski Country USA said visits were down 5.8 percent for January and February, but no exact numbers were released.

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A 30-year old snowboard instructor, died Thursday after hitting a tree at the Buttermilk Mountain ski area. The instructor was off-duty, but in uniform. He was described as "going fast" when he collided with a tree in a small tree island on the Columbine run on the lower half of Buttermilk. He was not wearing a helmet and suffered head trauma.

The intermediate Columbine trail is under the Summit Express lift. The trail had been groomed Wednesday night. A passenger on the Summit Express lift witnessed the accident at 12:22 p.m. and called for help within a minute. A ski patroller, who is also a paramedic, happened to be skiing down the hill and reached Polk within seconds of the call.

This is the first ski or snowboard in-bounds fatality this season at one of the four SkiCo ski areas. However, a former patroller on Aspen Mountain, was killed in an avalanche just outside the ski area boundary on Dec. 14. And a SkiCo snowmaker also died after hitting a tree on Snowmass Ski Area on Dec. 5 but he was driving a snowmobile at the time.

There have been at least four other fatal accidents in-bounds at Colorado ski areas this season. On Dec. 13, a 28-year-old-man died after an accident on an intermediate trail at the Keystone ski area. On Jan. 6, a 22-year-old man from Oklahoma hit a wooden post at the Breckenridge ski area while snowboarding. He later died from his head injuries. A 65-year-old woman from Arrowhead died from her injuries after hitting a hydrant on Jan. 16 while skiing at Beaver Creek. And on Feb. 3, a 55-year-old man from Connecticut died after skiing into a tree at in the Prospect Bowl area at the Telluride ski area.

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For many of us, the thought of being stuck high above the runs, dangling from a lift chair is a possibility which one wishes to ignore. But for nearly 90 skiers, it became a reality on Wednesday when wind gusts caused a mechanical problem at Snowbird Ski Resort in Utah.

The Peruvian-built ski lift stopped Wednesday afternoon when sensors to detected a cable pops out of alignment. While the system didn't completely come off the wheel-relay system, the resort decided to evacuate the 89 skiers from the lift.

Ski patrol workers helped riders onto the ground using a harness system and wooden seat. Snowbird personnel climbed the lift towers, helped passengers attach a harness system and sit on a wooden seat, then slowly lowered them to the ground.

Some skiers were stuck on the chair lift for up to two hours while ski patrol used a harness to belay the guests down. Skiers then received a free lunch and a voucher for a day of skiing.

This is not as uncommon as one might hope - last ski season during the week between Christmas day and New Years a mechanical failure on the Pioneer Express chairlift at Winter Park, Colorado stranded skiers and riders for three hours in blizzard-like conditions. There too high winds, estimated at 50 to 60 miles per hour, caused a chair on the Pioneer lift to swing and jam into the top terminal.

Two guests fell out of the chair but were not injured. The jam caused mechanical failure of the lift, and Winter Park ski patrollers performed a lift evacuation for all 115 passengers that were stranded in the strong wind.

Twelve evacuation teams helped belay guests from the Pioneer lift with suspended ropes and rescue chairs. The longest people were stranded was three hours. Must have seemed like an eternity.

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Demonstarting how seriously Colorado ski areas take the risk posed to skiers who enter closed areas, five skiers were charged Saturday at Aspen Highlands for violating the state's Ski Safety Act after allegedly skiing in a closed area at the top of Highland Bowl. A Pitkin County sheriff's deputy issued each skier a court summons, and all face a maximum fine of $1,000 each.

All five of the skiers are Colorado residents, male and in their twenties. Two of the skiers identified themselves as seasonal Aspen residents.

Avalanche danger is the greatest concern for those who venture out of bounds or into closed areas. The first ski death in Colorado occurred in December when a skier in Aspen was caught in an avalanche outside the ski-area boundary. The skier, a local who lived in Old Snowmass, was trapped beneath a slide approximately 100 yards long and 30 yards wide in an area known as Power Line.

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