Ski Safety Blog

A skier was killed in an avalanche on Friday on Sun Valley Resort's Bald Mountain, Idaho. The coroner says the avalanche was reported at 2:31 p.m. Friday and that Michael was located about 15 minutes later by the Sun Valley Ski Patrol. Resuscitation efforts were performed while the victim was being transported to a local medical clinic, but they were unsuccessful. He was pronounced dead at 3:31 p.m. at Wood River Medical Center on Friday due to suffocation.

An investigation was conducted by the Sawtooth National Forest Avalanche Center:

"(The) skier was killed by an avalanche in an off-trail area near the bottom of Fire Trail on Seattle Ridge," reported Lundy in the center's Saturday advisory. "The victim was wearing a beacon and was found buried five feet deep in a group of trees just above the (Lower) Broadway groomed run. The avalanche broke two to three feet deep on faceted snow near the ground, was 40 to 50 feet wide, and ran about 200 vertical feet. Ski patrol had him dug out within 15 minutes of the initial report, began administering CPR, and transported the victim to the base of the ski area."

On Friday, Sun Valley Resort issued a prepared statement that the skier was buried at 2:31 p.m. by an avalanche off the side of the Lower Broadway ski run, below Fire Trail Lane and that Sun Valley Ski Patrol members located him at 2:46 p.m.

The avalanche occurred some 30 yards above a groomed portion of Lower Broadway, in a forested area. After a few days of silence, Sun Valley Resort answered the looming question on Tuesday morning of whether Michael was skiing in an open or closed area. A resort spokesman said the victiml was skiing "inbounds."

Witnesses said other skiers in the general area rushed to move away from the site of the avalanche. Even though Michael was skiing inbounds, it appears "almost certain" that he triggered the avalanche.

Forecasters at the Sawtooth National Forest Avalanche Center wrote this week, "In a region known for a weaker snowpack, we are seeing avalanches this winter that indicate we are dealing with an exceptional problem.

"We have received more reports of human-triggered avalanches than we ever have by this time of year, yet not many people are going into the backcountry. Most of the people out there are staying in low-angle terrain and remotely triggering all these slides." Remote triggering occurs when pressure spreads from skiers to start slides that occur yards away from them.

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More skiers are wearing helmets on the slopes, and the youngest and oldest skiers are the ones most likely to wear protective head gear. A study by the Colorado-based National Ski Areas Association shows that nearly half of all skiers wore helmets last season, 48 percent. That's up from a 43 percent helmet rate during the 2007-2008 ski season.

But the study suggested that young adults refuse to heed the safety message. Two-thirds of skiers and snowboarders between the ages of 10 and 14 said they wore helmets. But only about one in three skiers and boarders between the ages 18 and 24 wore helmets last season.

Very young skiers had the highest helmet rates in the survey. About 77 percent of children 9 years old and younger wore helmets. Ski workers say most children learned to ski wearing helmets and don't mind them. Older skiers like helmets, too. The usage rate was 63 percent for adults ages 65 and older.

Vail Resorts made helmets mandatory for employees this season, and resort owner Intrawest requires helmets for all youth in ski school and students of any age in freestyle terrain parks. Intrawest operates Copper Mountain, Winter Park and Steamboat resorts in Colorado. Helmet use is still optional for most skiers, except those taking ski lessons from resorts.

Austria recently mandated that kids younger than 15 to wear protective lids on mountains there.

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When skiers shuffle through lift lines at many Colorado resorts these days, all they need to do is point to the pocket holding their lift ticket or pass. New technology -- radio-chipped "smart cards" -- have done away with the antiquated hole punch and the visual scan.

With the introduction of Vail Resorts' five-mountain, $600 Epic Pass, more skiers than ever are using season passes. Even though the season pass agreement explicitly forbids any sharing of the pass, incidents of pass fraud soared. And the cheats are being caught because the new scan equipment displays the height, weight and photo of the actual pass owner. Vail Resorts scan system had nabbed 14 scammers by the week before Christmas.

The number of fraud tickets issued by Vail police climbed from 90 tickets in 2007-08 to 204 in the 2008-09 ski season, the same year the company introduced its smart passes. Aspen Skiing Co. also introduced radio-chipped passes last season and saw a surge in fraud attempts and busts, though it hasn't released how many people were caught.

Resorts and law enforcement say it's hard to know whether the uptick in fraud cases is from more people trying to sneak onto the hill or from the new radio-frequency technology enabling ticket checkers to more easily spot scammers.

Vail Resorts designed its own software for lift-ticket scanning, engineering a system that is both efficient -- virtually eliminating lift lines -- and effective in catching frauds. Scanners get a $50 to $75 bonus for each scam they disrupt.
Signs in Vail's lift lines are updated daily to show how many ski days have been ruined by scanners sniffing out ticket fraud.

The fines in Vail, says Police Chief Dwight Henninger, typically run $500 and include forfeiture of any season pass used in the fraud. Fines can reach $999. Lie about your name -- or in the most popular case from Keystone so far this season, lie about undergoing a sex-change procedure when busted with your boyfriend's pass -- and you get jail time. The ski areas may revoke passes that are used fraudulently.

Though Summit has less prosecutions, Keystone Resort and Breckenridge Ski Resort have tallied comparable numbers of people committing ski pass and lift ticket fraud. In 2009 Vail Mountain recorded 454 cases, Breckenridge Ski Resort had 418 and Keystone Resort had 337.

Many resorts have begun stings to nab renegade ski instructors who offer on-the-hill lessons without going through the resort. Last season, Vail ski instructors groused about the increasing prevalence of underground paid lessons and guiding at Vail and Beaver Creek. They wondered whether Vail's guardians were doing enough to stop it and protect their jobs.

The mountain joined the U.S. Forest Service in an undercover operation that netted a dozen illegal instructors. Those instructors faced federal charges and fines up to $5,000, although most first-time offenders were cited for $525. The real sting is a lifetime ban from skiing at all five Vail Resorts ski areas.

Anyone -- including hunting, rafting, hiking or snowmobiling guides -- who makes money in exchange for services on public land without a permit is breaking federal law, says Forest Service ranger Don Dressler.

Aspen Skiing Co. looks to its army of 1,200 to 1,400 instructors to keep an eye out for underground instruction. In Vail, several of the underground instructors nabbed last season were former resort employees. Many of the instructors had told their clients, if questioned, to deny any financial deal.

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A California woman died in a Colorado heli-skiing accident after she fell into a creek and apparently drowned when her helmet got stuck between two rocks. A California woman was downhill skiing with a guide in the Mineral Creek Basin near Telluride on Saturday morning when she crossed a creek.

Heli-skiing is backcountry downhill skiing in which skiers are taken to the top of a mountain by helicopter instead of a ski lift. Two guides tried to rescue her, and about ten minutes later she was pulled her from the creek, lifeless. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Sheriff's officials say the victim was not a beginner at snowboarding. They called the incident a "freak accident."

Responders weren't sure whether she died of blunt force trauma or drowned, however, the incident had all the indications of a drowning, according to San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters.

A skier at Copper Mountain died from head injuries Sunday afternoon. The male skier was pronounced dead at St. Anthony's Summit Medical Center in Frisco at 12:25 p.m., according to the Summit County coroner's office.

Both victims were in their fifties and each was wearing a helmet.

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Another young skier fell from a ski lift, this one on a chair that had a safety bar. Tuesday's fall in Park City marked at least the third time a skier fell off a chair at a Rocky Mountain ski area in less than a month, and the fourth reported by international news sources.

Deer Valley Resort said the boy fell 20 to 30 feet off Sterling Express chair, a modern detachable lift. Detachable lifts slow down when they pick up and drop off skiers. The boy was with a ski instructor and another young child near the top of the lift, getting ready to push off the chair when the he slipped, reported a Deer Valley spokeswoman. Fortunately he was not seriously injured.

The ski resorts argue that safety bars don't make a chair lift safer. Alta Ski Area, scene of a December accident, has no lifts equipped with safety bars, and Utah doesn't require it.

What is not clear about the Park City accident is whether the safety bar had been raised. Since the instructor and young charges are described as "preparing to push off" it is reasonable to assume that the bar had been raised just before the fall. This would clearly inoculate the argument that safety bars do nothing to prevent falls.

At Alta ski area, a 4-year-old girl who fell Dec. 18 from a chair lift was found face-down in the snow and not breathing when ski patrol arrived. She made a full recovery days later at a hospital.

On Dec. 30, another boy fell off a chair lift at Snow King Resort in Jackson, Wyo.

The Utah Department of Transportation regulates the operation and safety of ski lifts, but officials say they never felt the need to mandate safety bars. In Colorado, ski area operators are not required to install safety bars on chairs either. And the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board is responsible for overseeing the safe operation of ski lifts as provided by statute.

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On the afternoon of January 2, 2010, a 9 year old female victim was struck and injured by an unknown white male snowboarder while on the slopes at Bear Mountain Ski Resort, California. The male snowboarder struck the victim and continued down the run without making contact with the victim. The young girl sustained injuries that included a compound fracture to her femur and severe facial injuries. The victim was flown to a local hospital for treatment of her injuries.

Now the local police are asking the public for help in locating the snowboarder. The suspect is described as a white male adult, 25-30 years of age, approximately 5'10" - 6'2" tall, wearing a black and white jacket, black pants, and using a black snowboard. The Big Bear Sheriff Station has taken a report and is actively investigating all leads to identify the suspect. Detectives of the station have worked with the victim and her family to produce a composite sketch of the suspect.

It is a criminal act to leave the scene of a skiing accident under California Penal Code section 653i, which states, in part: "Any person who is involved in a skiing accident and who leaves the scene of an accident knowing or having reason to believe that any other person involved in the accident is in need of medical and other assistance, except to notify the proper authorities or to obtain assistance, shall be guilty. . . ."

In Colorado the same duty to remain at the scene of a ski accident applies. The Colorado Ski Safety Act, § 33-44-109. Duties of skiers - penalties, provides:

(10) No skier involved in a collision with another skier or person in which an injury results shall leave the vicinity of the collision before giving his or her name and current address to an employee of the ski area operator or a member of the ski patrol, except for the purpose of securing aid for a person injured in the collision; in which event the person so leaving the scene of the collision shall give his or her name and current address as required by this subsection (10) after securing such aid.

Though this law was amended in 2006, it is a relatively new development to have law enforcement actively seek offenders for prosecution.

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A 14-year-old girl died from injuries suffered in a ski accident Tuesday at Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort. She was skiing on the backside at DMR with her friends on an intermediate run, when she hit a tree and suffered an injury to her liver. The unconscious girl was airlifted to Mercy.

The young girl was taken to the top of Chairlift 1 and flown to Mercy Regional Medical Center where she died Tuesday, said La Plata County coroner Carol Huser. She was skiing with a school group from Bayfield, Colorado.

In November, a 14-year-old died after hitting a tree in a Breckenridge run and in December, a 22-year-old University of Colorado student died when he fell head-first into deep snow at Wolf Creek Ski Area. The cause of death was suffocation and hypothermia.

On Wednesday, a 23-year-old ski instructor from Cedar, Mich., was found dead in a tree well beneath 2 feet of snow at the Steamboat ski area. The victim was an instructor at Arapahoe Basin Ski and Snowboard area.

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The company attempting to revive the Denver-to-Winter Park ski train was derailed the week of New Year's Day. The week before, a U.S. District Court judge in Denver refused to issue a temporary restraining order that would have forced Amtrak to operate the Rio Grande Scenic ski train for Iowa Pacific Holdings. Iowa Pacific claimed in court it had what amounted to a contract with Amtrak to operate the ski train with Amtrak crews from Dec. 27 to late March.

Amtrak's lawyers said a contract never was finalized, that Iowa Pacific had yet to agree to the passenger railroad's insurance requirements, and that the ski-train's locomotives and railcars had not passed Federal Railroad Administration safety inspections. Chicago-based Iowa Pacific Holdings LLC says Amtrak is making unreasonable demands to operate the train, including requiring $200 million in insurance which would cover terrorist attacks.

About 13,000 reservations have already been made for the train through March and all were promised a refund.

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Emily O'Rourke from Mullingar, Ireland, dangled for nearly a minute before she slipped from the grasp of fellow skiers onto the ice and snow thirty feet below in Westendorf, Austria. She is being treated for three cracked vertebrae in a hospital in nearby Sankt Johann. Doctors expect her to make a full recovery after Sunday's fall.

Skiers watching from the ground said they had seen the unidentified German pair clinging onto the child. Police said they grabbed Emily and according to witnesses tried to hang on to her until the lift could reach the landing station - but after a minute they could no longer hold on.

The couple were initially praised but, when they refused to discuss how the lift bar had been raised during the trip and then fled saying they wanted to enjoy their remaining time on the slopes, critics have questioned their behavior.

Though there are still many open questions about how the accident could have occurred, the couple did not even leave their contact details in case of any inquiries.

The young girl remains in the hospital and has no memory of the safety bar being raised.
Police said that adults travelling with children had a duty of responsibility to make sure the safety bar was down and that they were secure.

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Another young child has fallen off a ski lift, this time in Jackson, Wyoming. Jackson Hole Fire Battalion Chief Mike Moyer reported that 7-year-old Blaize Oswald was responsive when the ski patrol got to him Wednesday, New Years Eve. Authorities say the boy who fell 30 feet at Snow King Resort is in stable condition and recovering from injuries -- a ruptured lung and minor brain bleeding -- at a Salt Lake City hospital.

At Alta ski area near Salt Lake City, a 4-year-old girl fell Dec. 19 from a chair lift that has no safety bar. The girl was found face-down in the snow and not breathing when ski patrol arrived but made a full recovery days later at a hospital.

In addition to the two younsters fallling from a lift chair, an entire lift full of guests was unseated when brakes failed o a lift at the Devil's Head Ski Resort in Merrimac After the ski lift malfunction injured 14 skiers and snowboarders at , a state inspector found two more ski lifts at the facility that require replacement of devices that would prevent a similar accident. The inspector recommended replacing anti-rollback devices on two other ski lifts so the ski chairs won't begin moving backward.

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