Happy Halloween! What's the scariest thing you've witnessed on your ski hill?

Seen people die skiing 3 times. Kinda fucked up, maybe don't read this if squeamish.

One was a jerry that straightlined into the second biggest jump in the park, landed on the up part of the biggest jump, dude overshot like simon dumont only landed way backseat no helmet. Didn't look up close but per my coworker it was really fucking bad. Next was a kid that went flying into a stall feature thinking it was a jump, landed on his head; might've lived but was definitely paralyzed. Last guy was a mountain ops guy that slid down a bulletproof mogul course and they cancelled a mogul comp cause of it.
 
14475560:weatcoast said:
That’s awful. Great way to die super fast from hypothermia let alone the force of that and / or falling. I’m curious how much they’re suing the resort for.
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I think it was like 400k, we had a lot of lawsuits last season
 
Holy shit…

14475499:rojo.grande said:
couple years ago at my local hill it was a quiet night, my old man was on patrol with I believe 3 or 4 other patrollers. Snow was super granular and slick, but not many people on the mountain. my brother and I were cruising down one oof the mountains little "black diamonds" and we passed by a lady in maybe her 60s who was slowly working her way down trail with a good lack of edge control. This trail has a few headwalls, creating blind spots for those uphill of the people under the headwall. Anyways, a snowboarder came flying up and over one of these headwalls, hit the lady who was struggling to make it down, and his board caught her right in the back of the neck. With the lack of help on hill, my dad called and asked for me and my brother to come back to the accident to help with scene safety. We watched the lady's eyes roll back into her head after 10-15 min of CPR, later to find out that her brain stem had snapped. To this day the most rattling experience Ive ever been a part of
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When I was around 8 or 9, I remember watching someone launch off a jump at snowbird and crash really hard...like really bad. We later learned that he died on hill that day
 
2 yrs ago at Cannon, and although I wasn't there to see it, some guy flew into the woods and died. One of those trails where it's super twisty. Heard he was a local too, not like he didn't know what to expect, which just goes to show how careful you gotta be.

Another case at Stowe (I know this isn't really my experience but it goes with the theme of the thread kinda) two guys went out of bounds looking for some chutes off the backside (at 4pm as well), but they ended up cliffed out above a 200 ft drop or something, one of them fell (they were brothers). It was pretty dumb of them to go so late, and you're supposed to enter the bowls from Smuggs' side for that reason, but still pretty sad. Can't imagine just standing on top of the cliff in the dark with your brother dead at the bottom of a cliff waiting for evac...
 
14475254:Goretex_Vidal said:
From the summit triple at Waterville during MA school vacation week last year I saw a kid who was 10 or 11 following some bigger kids onto True Grit where he had no business being. Wiped out at the top and it was a boilerplate day so he just bombed the length of the run on his back while me and another dude a chair up were yelling at him to self arrest with his poles. He ended up sliding off a cat track and stopping after pinballing off some chunks of ice on the side of the trail. He was sitting on a mogul when I got down to him, the kids he was with had hiked back up to him after realizing what happened and luckily he was just knocked around and able to ski off on his own.
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The best thing about that trail is it's the fall line is pretty direct. You can eat shit pretty hard and not go into the trees, especially if you're near the left side of the trail. Fun thing to do is to bomb into the cat track at the top and gap as far down as possible. Best spot on the lip is on the cat track right under the chair and cutting a bit to the right. Would be basically impossible to overshoot. Good idea to have a spotter cause you're semi blind.

I've seen like 4 people break their wrists airing off the cat track on Lower Bobby's.

14475547:cyphers said:
if it makes you feel better most metal parts of a lift are either grounded or isolated from each other with rubber. telluride even puts cages over their lifting frames to keep their texans from getting crisped
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Idk if this is a NH thing but a lot of mountains apparently don't use safety padding/mesh netting on the sides of trails or around lift towers. Someone told me it's cause if they hit padding and still get hurt, the mtn failed to save the skier but if they hit a tower or a tree then that's just the risk of skiing. Idk if there's some case that set that precedent but it seems kinda fucked up. Apparently that's why the trail Flume at Loon has no netting on the right side despite the fall line pulling you into the trees if you're skiing fast and double eject.

I know in Colorado it's set up that if you wanna sue a mtn, you're basically suing the state which is really hard to do.
 
14475724:jompcock said:
The best thing about that trail is it's the fall line is pretty direct. You can eat shit pretty hard and not go into the trees, especially if you're near the left side of the trail. Fun thing to do is to bomb into the cat track at the top and gap as far down as possible. Best spot on the lip is on the cat track right under the chair and cutting a bit to the right. Would be basically impossible to overshoot. Good idea to have a spotter cause you're semi blind.
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That's cool. I'll have to try the next time I get out there (whenever that is).

Jompcock: Idk if this is a NH thing but a lot of mountains apparently don't use safety padding/mesh netting on the sides of trails or around lift towers. Someone told me it's cause if they hit padding and still get hurt, the mtn failed to save the skier but if they hit a tower or a tree then that's just the risk of skiing. Idk if there's some case that set that precedent but it seems kinda fucked up. Apparently that's why the trail Flume at Loon has no netting on the right side despite the fall line pulling you into the trees if you're skiing fast and double eject.[/quote]

Yeah I can't think of any trails with mesh netting on the sides in NH or VT. I'm sure there are some but it's not coming to mind. There will be ropes sometimes, at the top of a run or something but no mesh. Can't see myself liking it though, makes the trail feel more restricted. Haven't noticed anything about the padding on towers but I agree that's pretty messed up.

**This post was edited on Nov 2nd 2022 at 11:53:33pm
 
14475761:SteezyYeeter said:
That's cool. I'll have to try the next time I get out there (whenever that is).

Yeah I can't think of any trails with mesh netting on the sides in NH or VT. I'm sure there are some but it's not coming to mind. There will be ropes sometimes, at the top of a run or something but no mesh. Can't see myself liking it though, makes the trail feel more restricted. Haven't noticed anything about the padding on towers but I agree that's pretty messed up.
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I personally like not having netting on the sides as well cause that's often the spot where there's the best snow, but there are still some places I think it could help lower fatality.

Have you hit the Camel gap before? It's the big roller under the chute, usually with two humps. Some years it's better than others depending on snow making and at its best you can straightline the chute and land right in the sweet spot. They're gonna put a T bar that goes up to the roller so this is probably the last season it will be doable. Sad to see the Camel go but at least it gives us the option to lap a longer park.
 
14476017:jompcock said:
Have you hit the Camel gap before? It's the big roller under the chute, usually with two humps. Some years it's better than others depending on snow making and at its best you can straightline the chute and land right in the sweet spot. They're gonna put a T bar that goes up to the roller so this is probably the last season it will be doable. Sad to see the Camel go but at least it gives us the option to lap a longer park.
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Can't say I have. Only been to Waterville a couple times and it's been a few years. Definitely want to get back but idk when I'll be able to. Maybe I'll get the white mtn. superpass sometime in college.
 
Last season at Taos on a super deep storm day, a guy was downhill waving at my group saying he couldn't find his friend. We spotted one ski upside down in a tree well. Dug him out and he was out cold, gloves off and hands purple. One guy cleared a bunch of snow from his airway and gave some rescue breaths to wake him up while we waited for patrol. Heard he ended up fine after he thawed out but damn that was scary. Don't ski alone on deep pow days and always be cautious of tree wells!!

Runner up was when I smashed a tree and did a compound tib/fib fracture then ski patrol had to rappel me down a chute in the dead sled. That was pretty scary.
 
Snowboarder tried to go off of field goal at Baker. He got speed wobbles and went straight into a tree. Me and a buddy went down to check on him then an employee came down with a walkie and radio'd ski patrol. We left after ski patrol was done, but they lifted up his pant leg and he had a full femur fracture. It looked like his knee was where is ankle was supposed to be it was fucked
 
not really anything on-hill as of yet but one of my first calls was a really nasty displaced tib/fib fracture at the indoors facility. I thank the paramedics and fire guys who took them to the hospital but damn, this kid had some really gnarly blood-curdling screams because they couldn't place an IV and administer pain meds or fluids for a while.

Also last season as a coach, saw way too many hotloads and had to explain to kids what's going on and why it's happening, which is good for education. One time though the heli parked and shut off as patrol worked on a guest for at least 30 minutes, which isn't the best sign, so having to explain that to kids is something else. I didn't want to scare them straight too much to the point of traumatization, but I also took them to go look at burial sites for some unfortunate fatalities that happened literally just beyond the ropeline on some of the terrain we skied. Of course observed it from a safe distance, but I just wanted to hammer home to some young freeriders that I better not ever hear about them ducking ropes or getting smoked like that, if that makes sense.
 
14475275:FranklinTheSkier said:
I didn’t see this happen but some dude at a local mountain hit a tree going like mach 5 and died on impact then launched of a cliff and his dead body hit some kid in my schools dad which caused him to break a few bones or something.

less crazy but last year I saw some 8 year old kid fall 30ft off the lift into a sheet of solid ice.
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RIP to the guy that died, seriously, my prayers to his family. but cmon that is straight out of a cartoon
 
14475499:rojo.grande said:
couple years ago at my local hill it was a quiet night, my old man was on patrol with I believe 3 or 4 other patrollers. Snow was super granular and slick, but not many people on the mountain. my brother and I were cruising down one oof the mountains little "black diamonds" and we passed by a lady in maybe her 60s who was slowly working her way down trail with a good lack of edge control. This trail has a few headwalls, creating blind spots for those uphill of the people under the headwall. Anyways, a snowboarder came flying up and over one of these headwalls, hit the lady who was struggling to make it down, and his board caught her right in the back of the neck. With the lack of help on hill, my dad called and asked for me and my brother to come back to the accident to help with scene safety. We watched the lady's eyes roll back into her head after 10-15 min of CPR, later to find out that her brain stem had snapped. To this day the most rattling experience Ive ever been a part of
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Sorry that you had to experience that and my condolences for the lady. Did you happen to get a follow up on it, like was the boarder charged with anything? I feel like if the skier code has any legal binding he would be toast.

nvm saw your follow up

**This post was edited on Nov 5th 2022 at 1:57:16am
 
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