I think I saw someone die while skiing

[drifts]

This is just a tldr because I don’t wanna make this detailed but I thought I was being a bro bringing someone who fell their skis and skied up on ski patrol doing cpr on this guy who fell didn’t self arrest and slid really fast into trees and rocks, lifts around it got shutdown a helicopter came and left then they opened up everything except the lift where the guy fell

mods go ahead and delete this if it’s not ok to post about, I’m just kinda shook about the whole thing idk

**This thread was edited on Feb 28th 2021 at 3:08:29pm

 

[T.L.]

I hope they made it.

Did you fill out a witness statement with patrol? Those really help in figuring out situations like this.

 

[drifts]

I hope they made it.

Did you fill out a witness statement with patrol? Those really help in figuring out situations like this.

Ive been looking at the news and haven’t seen anything about it yet so I’m hoping that’s a good sign because they love to report on deaths at ski areas.

all I really saw was skis and the end point of the skid down the mountain so I didn’t think to fill out a witness report. Someone who saw the whole thing from the lift came up to me when I skied out below the accident and told me what he saw happen

**This post was edited on Feb 28th 2021 at 4:17:50pm

 

[WoFlowz]

This reminds me of last year. I saw a kid in rentals fly off our large line (not rly large only like maybe 20ft on the second) and on the second he landed maybe 25-30ft past the landing on his back. He didn’t even scream. So me and my buddy immediately called ski patrol since we were on the lift. By the time we skied down they roped off the park and had 3 sleds. And ambulance pulling into the parking lot. He ended up getting airlifted and broke his femur in half and 2 vertebrae. Poor kid. I think that’s more of a parenting thing than the kids fault he was maybe 8 or 9 probably closer to 6 or 7

 

[MoneyMakerMike]

This reminds me of last year. I saw a kid in rentals fly off our large line (not rly large only like maybe 20ft on the second) and on the second he landed maybe 25-30ft past the landing on his back. He didn’t even scream. So me and my buddy immediately called ski patrol since we were on the lift. By the time we skied down they roped off the park and had 3 sleds. And ambulance pulling into the parking lot. He ended up getting airlifted and broke his femur in half and 2 vertebrae. Poor kid. I think that’s more of a parenting thing than the kids fault he was maybe 8 or 9 probably closer to 6 or 7

Someone got paralyzed waist down at my resort on the “big line” this year. Overshot the landing of a 30 foot jump by like 35 feet. It’s so sad to hear about this stuff

 

[SWRTOFFICIAL]

I was working today and 2 fucked accidents happened on our jump line within 10 minutes of each other. one dude fell off the Side of a 20foot high roller and another dude on rentals sent a jump to flats. Hope they all ended up okay enough

**This post was edited on Feb 28th 2021 at 6:01:48pm

 

[WoFlowz]

Someone got paralyzed waist down at my resort on the “big line” this year. Overshot the landing of a 30 foot jump by like 35 feet. It’s so sad to hear about this stuff

Yeah it is a shame some people don’t think before they do some of these things. A it sucks for them B it gives the resort another reason to not build jumps

 

[theabortionator]

It happens. An unfortunate part of skiing. Not talked about much and while not super common not uncommon. Stay safe have fun

 

[profa_212]

That shit always blows man I'm sorry. I've seen 2 people go out, unfortunately. Skiing is dangerous. Let's not forget that.

 

[partyandBS]

I’ve seen someone die on the hill. They do not send helicopters for dead people. Only if there is a chance of saving them. I saw them doing cpr on a sled and load them up to a silent ambulance and slowly pull away.

someone sent a roller with no spotter and killed the man skiing below. His son had to be pulled out of ski school and told he no longer had a dad. They no longer groom that run because of this so now no one sends the tiger roller.

RIP

 

[DesertStix]

Damn sorry to hear that. You’re probably going to be a little shook next time out on the hill too. Last season, my fiancé and I were riding up the express lift early in the morning and a dude was like directly below it looking v e r y lifeless with ski patrol trying to resuscitate him. There looked to be a big pool of blood around the dude. Later in the day, we were on a chair with the family who were first on the scene and they looked like a deer in headlights. Apparently the guy was in his 70s I believe (older for sure) and just ripping some bumps when all of a sudden they said he just looked like he blacked out and lost all control and went right into the tree. He died on the hill from either cardiac arrest mid-run or the impact.

When they told us, it put a sad, dark vibe on the rest of the day knowing we clearly just saw a dead man roughly 30 yards below us. Hell, we still think about it when we go by the spot on the lift. Some people say “damn he died doing what he loved having fun” but he was by himself and older. I feel bad for friends and/or family who get that phone call.

 

[Mingg]

Almost the exact situation happened with me - there was a guy down and another person had already stopped to help. When I got to the bottom I told the lifty to call patrol but they were already called. I took another run and when I was over top of the scene I saw them doing CPR. Not too long later an ambulance arrived and the ambulance waited around for a while. I don't think he ever made it off the hill and did pass away. My guess is if they life flighted him out of there they must have got a pulse back? From my very limited experience there usually is at least some chance that things were going okay but please correct me if that's wrong. Either way it's a long road to recover from a cardiac arrest situation. I'm sorry you had to see that - it's a pretty jarring experience especially in such a familiar/unexpected situation.

 

[whitenab]

Just a heads up that people react in a wide range of ways to traumatic events like seeing someone die or be severely injured. All reactions are totally valid and whether you are affected a little or a lot it's totally okay. It would make sense to me that seeing severe injury in context of something you love doing could be pretty upsetting. If you can't get rid of the "kinda shook" feeling, it gets worse, or maybe just because it will feel good - talk to someone in real life about it. NS is great for some things but maybe not the best for sharing emotions or actually talking about how traumatic events might be affecting us.

**This post was edited on Mar 1st 2021 at 11:36:00am

 

[Mingg]

Just a heads up that people react in a wide range of ways to traumatic events like seeing someone die or be severely injured. All reactions are totally valid and whether you are affected a little or a lot it's totally okay. It would make sense to me that seeing severe injury in context of something you love doing could be pretty upsetting. If you can't get rid of the "kinda shook" feeling, it gets worse, or maybe just because it will feel good - talk to someone in real life about it. NS is great for some things but maybe not the best for sharing emotions or actually talking about how traumatic events might be affecting us.

**This post was edited on Mar 1st 2021 at 11:36:00am

I support this 100%

 

[Thegenericskier]

This season 2-3 people have passed at my hill because the higher ups don't want to spend money putting pads up on snow guns on the sides of the runs. The day before christmas a father of 3 kids passed because he hit a snow gun head first at about 30 MPH with no helmet. i've never heard so many sirens in my life before.

 

[kylersucks]

I've had a similar experience. me and a few friends were hiking the park on our local's school skiing night. A little kid on rentals maybe 11 at most bombs the whole park and hits the 20ft jump and lands like 30 feet too flat. They fenced off the park for 40 minutes and later on the news I saw he was paralyzed.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't think I've ever seen anybody die but I've seen two people fall of lifts before, both at Blue Mountain PA, which I believe also had a hugely disproportionate amount of the total skier deaths last year or something like that.

I also once saw the aftermath of somebody skiing into a tree. They sent somebody with a bucket to pick up the bloody snow and get rid of it. Not sure what happened to the person who crashed.

 

[DesertStix]

Holy shit the GoPro story is harrowing

I’ll bite.

First and foremost thanks to all you ski patrollers because people “know” what you do out there but most of them have no fucking clue.

People can die a lot of different ways at ski resorts, collisions with people or objects, sliding into objects or just sliding at high speeds on steep firm slopes, tree wells, medical emergencies, workplace accidents and too many others to list. It’s more common thank you’d think.

One time we had a guy ski down to the village at the end of a nice day. He stopped and dropped dead of a heart attack in front of his wife. Unfortunately we have this policy where a coroner has to pronounce someone dead at the scene of the death before we can move the body 99% of the time. Coroners aren't always right around the corner so sometimes it takes a while. This one took a while and I had to stand there with the guy and his wife for an hour until the coroner got there.

One time we had a guy that was reported missing. Eventually patrol found him in a tree well. Later that year the patrol director found a dead gopro in the location that the guy died and he turned it in to us. We turned it into the sheriffs department but before we did I was asked to review the footage to see if anything substantial was on there. Obviously because I’m posting this story in this thread you can imagine what was on there.

One time I got word towards the end of the day that a guy was found dead in a tree well. A short time later I got a call from a wife who couldn’t get ahold of her husband. He was gonna ski the trees on the front side and then pick up their son from ski school. He never made it to ski school. Long story short I basically had to twist this ladies arm and lie to her for the next three hours because of that weird coroner rule. I was directed to tell her that patrol was sweeping the mountain and looking for him but we already knew where he was.

Sorry if that’s a somewhat off topic thread jack but I’ve never talked about any of these before so figured maybe it was time to let em out.

 

[KooK_Luke]

Snowmass terrain park, specifically the makaha jumps claim lives every year (including this year) and I’m pretty sure I saw the death riding on the lift a month or so ago. Pretty wild because people die on these jumps the same way every time. There is always way too much speed from the drop in on the first jump, making it easy for Jerry’s to send to the flats and land on their necks. Very gnarly and maybe the fault of the park builders? I’m not sure but the crash I saw had me shook. And there was a reported death on those jumps sometime after so I’d assume it was what I witnessed. There are many stories of the same fashion from snowmass.

 

[SlitherySnake]

not in the park, but last year someone tried the gap over the road to the resort and somehow had a bad run in, landed on the road, and got hit by a hummer with like a 16 year old girl driving. the guy had been hitting the gap for 16 years (he was 32) had a wife and two kids. absolutely heartbreaking.

 

[No.Quarter]

I was at A Basin when I was a kid and was riding the lift and saw someone lose control going too fast on an icy groomer (the steep roller and compression at the top of Lenawee Face) and then shortly after watched Flight For Life do some pretty fancy flying to get down onto the mountain

 

[Sngl2th]

I had an experience over a year ago where I was driving in the Catskills and this distraught kid was in the road. He said his friend was in the water, and I looked down in this ravine where some people. I ran down there and there were a few people with a woman who was in hysterics--she had been trying to get to someone in the water under falls, which is a popular place to jump. I swam up below the waterfall and pulled out a boy who was on the bottom about 10 feet down. It was a kid who was about 18 or 19, stone dead. We did CPR to no avail.

Anyways seeing that sort of thing can really get into your head. I would recommend talking about it with a professional if you find yourself thinking about it a lot. Might not help too much but it can't hurt. Just because other people see even scarier stuff or have worse things happen to them doesn't mean it's not a big deal when you see something. Also, be careful out there! You have to always think about what could happen.

 

[DesertStix]

Holy shit. Hope you’re doing alright. That’s some hero shit bro...

I had an experience over a year ago where I was driving in the Catskills and this distraught kid was in the road. He said his friend was in the water, and I looked down in this ravine where some people. I ran down there and there were a few people with a woman who was in hysterics--she had been trying to get to someone in the water under falls, which is a popular place to jump. I swam up below the waterfall and pulled out a boy who was on the bottom about 10 feet down. It was a kid who was about 18 or 19, stone dead. We did CPR to no avail.

Anyways seeing that sort of thing can really get into your head. I would recommend talking about it with a professional if you find yourself thinking about it a lot. Might not help too much but it can't hurt. Just because other people see even scarier stuff or have worse things happen to them doesn't mean it's not a big deal when you see something. Also, be careful out there! You have to always think about what could happen.

 

[WoFIowz]

Almost the exact situation happened with me - there was a guy down and another person had already stopped to help. When I got to the bottom I told the lifty to call patrol but they were already called. I took another run and when I was over top of the scene I saw them doing CPR. Not too long later an ambulance arrived and the ambulance waited around for a while. I don't think he ever made it off the hill and did pass away. My guess is if they life flighted him out of there they must have got a pulse back? From my very limited experience there usually is at least some chance that things were going okay but please correct me if that's wrong. Either way it's a long road to recover from a cardiac arrest situation. I'm sorry you had to see that - it's a pretty jarring experience especially in such a familiar/unexpected situation.

Yeah medical helicopters won't pick up an unstable patient so he definitely would've had to have a pulse and be somewhat stable. That said, the survival rate for out of hospital cardiac arrest is like 10%. Immediate trauma arrest from blunt force trauma is probably worse. Sorry for being a debbie downer but unfortunately that's the reality of these things.

This season 2-3 people have passed at my hill because the higher ups don't want to spend money putting pads up on snow guns on the sides of the runs. The day before christmas a father of 3 kids passed because he hit a snow gun head first at about 30 MPH with no helmet. i've never heard so many sirens in my life before.

I almost saw some guy do that at Jay Peak. Dude was zooming and ate shit and his head missed the spout for the snow gun hose by inches. My brother couldn't understand why I was yelling holy shit. Well yeah because that dude almost died by an inch. Those are preventable deaths and definitely liable.

I’ll bite.

First and foremost thanks to all you ski patrollers because people “know” what you do out there but most of them have no fucking clue.

People can die a lot of different ways at ski resorts, collisions with people or objects, sliding into objects or just sliding at high speeds on steep firm slopes, tree wells, medical emergencies, workplace accidents and too many others to list. It’s more common thank you’d think.

One time we had a guy ski down to the village at the end of a nice day. He stopped and dropped dead of a heart attack in front of his wife. Unfortunately we have this policy where a coroner has to pronounce someone dead at the scene of the death before we can move the body 99% of the time. Coroners aren't always right around the corner so sometimes it takes a while. This one took a while and I had to stand there with the guy and his wife for an hour until the coroner got there.

One time we had a guy that was reported missing. Eventually patrol found him in a tree well. Later that year the patrol director found a dead gopro in the location that the guy died and he turned it in to us. We turned it into the sheriffs department but before we did I was asked to review the footage to see if anything substantial was on there. Obviously because I’m posting this story in this thread you can imagine what was on there.

One time I got word towards the end of the day that a guy was found dead in a tree well. A short time later I got a call from a wife who couldn’t get ahold of her husband. He was gonna ski the trees on the front side and then pick up their son from ski school. He never made it to ski school. Long story short I basically had to twist this ladies arm and lie to her for the next three hours because of that weird coroner rule. I was directed to tell her that patrol was sweeping the mountain and looking for him but we already knew where he was.

Sorry if that’s a somewhat off topic thread jack but I’ve never talked about any of these before so figured maybe it was time to let em out.

That sucks. It's really sombering to hear of skiing accidents and I'm sure it sucks to be part of them. I think that coroner procedure is a law or something. At my ER in Ohio, when someone arrives in cardiac arrest, the family/friends can't touch them until the coroner arrives. This is especially fucked when it's kids but it makes sense so they can rule out any foul play. It would suck to be the person who has to keep the family away or to watch the person until the coroner arrives.

 

[MoneyMakerMike]

not in the park, but last year someone tried the gap over the road to the resort and somehow had a bad run in, landed on the road, and got hit by a hummer with like a 16 year old girl driving. the guy had been hitting the gap for 16 years (he was 32) had a wife and two kids. absolutely heartbreaking.

This guy was experienced tho and had hit the road gap many times before. It goes to show you that even the most experienced riders aren’t invincible

 

[Brule.]

This thread brought back so many dark memories that I have from the past 10-12 years holy shit.

I think I was like 14 (give or take one year older or younger than that) when this happened but one time at Jore I was taking some summit laps on a nice bluebird day and as soon as I made my way down Lies, I saw a lot of Ski Patrol jackets with skis crossed up and they were literally resuscitating a skier after they had apparently skied out of control on a double-black diamond and sped right into the trees near where the trail opened out onto the main trail back to the lift. The guy was then air flown to a hospital and later died from his injuries, but during that whole situation I was very clueless as to what was going on until after I found out the person had died, which was probably the most fucked-up part of this whole incident.

Also at the same mountain when I was 11, I got clotheslined by a closed rope trying to duck it at a very high speed on my way to a race that was on the said closed trail and knocked myself out. I just remember opening my eyes and seeing the sky and screaming in pain. I tried to ski it off but I was spitting out a decent amount of blood mixed with a whole ass tooth and ended up realizing that I had two other teeth practically laying on my tongue and they were still attached to my gums. I couldn’t stand up straight, let alone walk in a straight line while I was trying to put my skis back on, and one of the parents that was gatekeeping saw how I was bleeding all over my face. He immediately called for ski patrol bc the shack wasn’t that far up the hill and my mom thought I broke my nose as soon as she saw me in base first aid. My mom drove me to the hospital from the mountain bc fuck an ambulance ride, and to this day idk if the crash or the hospital trip was more traumatic bc the tooth that fell out completely was almost put back in the wrong way in the ER, on top of the multiple injections of novocaine directly into my fucking mouth. At the end of the day, I fractured my maxilla and came extremely close to having my jaw wired shut for a short period of time.

Mentally, I’m extremely fucked up from both incidents, but it’s definitely worth getting it all off my chest now than never.

 

[SlitherySnake]

This thread brought back so many dark memories that I have from the past 10-12 years holy shit.

I think I was like 14 (give or take one year older or younger than that) when this happened but one time at Jore I was taking some summit laps on a nice bluebird day and as soon as I made my way down Lies, I saw a lot of Ski Patrol jackets with skis crossed up and they were literally resuscitating a skier after they had apparently skied out of control on a double-black diamond and sped right into the trees near where the trail opened out onto the main trail back to the lift. The guy was then air flown to a hospital and later died from his injuries, but during that whole situation I was very clueless as to what was going on until after I found out the person had died, which was probably the most fucked-up part of this whole incident.

Also at the same mountain when I was 11, I got clotheslined by a closed rope trying to duck it at a very high speed on my way to a race that was on the said closed trail and knocked myself out. I just remember opening my eyes and seeing the sky and screaming in pain. I tried to ski it off but I was spitting out a decent amount of blood mixed with a whole ass tooth and ended up realizing that I had two other teeth practically laying on my tongue and they were still attached to my gums. I couldn’t stand up straight, let alone walk in a straight line while I was trying to put my skis back on, and one of the parents that was gatekeeping saw how I was bleeding all over my face. He immediately called for ski patrol bc the shack wasn’t that far up the hill and my mom thought I broke my nose as soon as she saw me in base first aid. My mom drove me to the hospital from the mountain bc fuck an ambulance ride, and to this day idk if the crash or the hospital trip was more traumatic bc the tooth that fell out completely was almost put back in the wrong way in the ER, on top of the multiple injections of novocaine directly into my fucking mouth. At the end of the day, I fractured my maxilla and came extremely close to having my jaw wired shut for a short period of time.

Mentally, I’m extremely fucked up from both incidents, but it’s definitely worth getting it all off my chest now than never.

my uncle has a similar clotheslining story except on a dirtbike. He never wore his helmet when he was just riding through the fields except for one day that the farmer had just so happened to fix his barbwire fence. He's going like 20-30 through the fields, can't see the wire, hits it and the chin bar on the helmet caught the wire instead of slicing off his head. sooooooo scary

tldr: wear a helmet, don't get decapitated

 

[Brule.]

my uncle has a similar clotheslining story except on a dirtbike. He never wore his helmet when he was just riding through the fields except for one day that the farmer had just so happened to fix his barbwire fence. He's going like 20-30 through the fields, can't see the wire, hits it and the chin bar on the helmet caught the wire instead of slicing off his head. sooooooo scary

tldr: wear a helmet, don't get decapitated

Yikes man that’s really scary.

I didn’t have a chin guard on my helmet at the time bc it wasn’t a slalom race and I wasn’t old enough to where I needed the slalom guards, but if I was wearing one of those during that ski crash I would’ve broke my neck or had my head decapitated.