Buttermilk snowboard pro dies after hitting tree

[Pat Donnelly]

http://www.aspendailynews.com/print/132963

[carvedog]

So sad. Vibes to the family.

[Ray]

This is so sad. Heard about it last evening… conditions have been tricky during the last days, even icy spots sometimes… what strikes me most, NO helmet!!! Every day we are out we see so many instructors without helmet. I don’t get it.

[Neil Gendzwill]

Condolences to his family.

Ray, I agree that people helmets are a grand idea, and my whole family is in helmets. However, snowboard helmets simply aren't enough protection for a high-speed crash into a tree or other stationary object. They protect well against incidental contact (branches while riding trees, etc) and knocks on hard snow during falls, but for trauma sufficient to cause death on the slope, very likely it would not have mattered. I found this Ski Canada article very interesting reading.

[Loc]

That's tragic, he's riding on the run that never ends now. Have fun safely everyone. I always wear a helmet, and wish my friends would too.

[carverchick]

Ugh that is sooo sad! My heart goes out to his family and friends. There is never enough words to say...:(

[Ray]

Condolences to his family.

Ray, I agree that people helmets are a grand idea, and my whole family is in helmets. However, snowboard helmets simply aren't enough protection for a high-speed crash into a tree or other stationary object. They protect well against incidental contact (branches while riding trees, etc) and knocks on hard snow during falls, but for trauma sufficient to cause death on the slope, very likely it would not have mattered. I found this Ski Canada article very interesting reading.

Not saying a helmet would have saved his life, nobody knows!

Nothing we can wear on the mountain can save us when crashing hard enough in certain ways. There is always a harder more violent crash out there, no matter how good you protect yourself, it could be your last one. We all know that, every time when we go up the mountain, right?

It’s an odds game, play it smart and always in your favor, as much as you can and with all available tools you can get. A helmet is just one small easy available tool in this game. No matter how good people think they are, it might catch em one day.

This is so sad, the mood in town is very depressed today. Chris was well known here by so many people.

[WASMAN]

horrible when you hear about this stuff... must be contageous, we had another fellow carver pass away last weekend in Ontario at Beaver Valley when he collided with a tree.

[valsam]

This is really tragic!

But has the thought of hitting something or someone in mach speeds ever crossed your mind's?

l rode GS skis from 1990 to 1996 and after i rode alpine stiff boards with big SCR up until last year and never wore a helmet and last year i fell and hit my head really hard on ice and had a concussion with a huge lump and was hospitalized and that was at a speed of just 20-30 mph. and it got me thinking !

And from now on i always wear a helmet and bought a shorter board with a 10m scr and do what i love but a little safer i think because i have 2 little girls to think about!

So all of you out there think safe first and don't try to prove anything!

[philw]

Obviously it's sad that someone died that way, although people die driving to the slopes all the time.

This is really tragic!

But has the thought of hitting something or someone in mach speeds ever crossed your mind's? (sic)

If people put the effort into buying and wearing a helmet, then I'm slightly surprised that they don't even skim the data to see what the helmet's actually good for.

That is significantly dangerous behaviour - if you think a helmet's going to help you when in fact it's not, you're likely taking risks which you otherwise would not take.

Still, don't let the facts get in the way of a good emote.

[skatha]

I find it interesting that the same statistics that people are using to prove helmets don't help-a relative risk reduction ratio-are the same type of statistics used to gain approval for medical procedures and drugs. Do not believe clot busting drugs and cardiac catherizations resulted in a 100% reduction in risk of death from acute myocardial infarction-they didn't- they resulted in the same percentage of risk reduction described in this article. Does that mean we don't use those drugs or that procedure?

I find the same argument against use of helmets to as weak as not using cardiac catherization in the setting of an acute MI.

I lost a day from getting knocked out and a day on the snow is a precious thing to flatlanders living in Houston. I had a worse blow to the head deliberately falling backward to avoid 2 little kids bombing the hill-what I suffered then was a sore neck. The difference? A helmet.

Does a helmet protect me from being flatout stupid? No.

A bike helmet won't help me much if I get hit by a car either-that's why I avoid getting hit by them

[SEJ]

Skatha, I agree. A helmet might not save your life every time, but damn, don't you want the odds on your side. A helmet increases your chance for less injury, no helmet does nothing.

[BlueB]

Condolences...

As for the helmets, it's a no-brainer...Literally.

If you even had half brain, you'd wear a helmet. If you were brainless... ah well... natural selection.

[ptran11]

he asked Chris to go to the terrain park but

that Chris had a GPS and wanted to do a speed run down columbine instead.

that might have been his mistake. When I go down a run I would never expect the run would be clear enough for me to do a speed run (meaning its clear of obstacles where you can bomb it best you can). You gotta expect the unexpected like a random person in the middle of the run.

I really feel bad for this guy and his family. One one deserves to die on a resort

[Pat Donnelly]

http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/133023

Published on Aspen Daily News Online (http://www.aspendailynews.com)

Snowboard pro Polk remembered as happy, passionate and well dressed

Writer:

Brent Gardner-Smith

Byline:

Aspen Daily News Staff Writer

<!--paging_filter--> When Chris Polk got dressed Thursday for his job at Buttermilk Mountain as a snowboard instructor, he put on a button-down collared shirt, a tie and a vest, just like he always did.

“It was just his style,” said Polk’s girlfriend, CJ Monaco. “He wanted to look presentable.”

On his way out the door he smiled broadly, as he normally did, kissed Monaco good-bye, told her he would see her that night and headed off for another day teaching people to snowboard.

“I know he was happy when he went to work,” Monaco said.

Polk, 30, always wore his shirt, tie and vest on under his ski school uniform. It was a measure of the pride he took in being a snowboarding professional and it was his own little marketing tool.

“He would come in for lunch, take off his ski school jacket, and clients would be like, ‘Wow, you look nice,’” Monaco said.

Thursday turned out to be Polk’s last day as a professional ski instructor.

At about 20 minutes after noon on Thursday, Polk was snowboarding with speed down the Columbine trail on lower Buttermilk when he collided hard with a tree and sustained fatal traumatic injuries.

Polk was off duty, but wearing his instructor’s uniform. And almost certainly, he was wearing a tie.

By Friday afternoon, about a dozen suit ties had been hung in the branches of the small tree island on Columbine, right next to the Summit Express lift at tower 11.

A photo of a handsome, smiling and hearty young man was posted on a stout tree trunk. A purple tie was hanging down next to the photo.

And many on-mountain employees at Buttermilk on Friday were wearing ties in honor of Polk, who had made many friends on the mountain in the three seasons he had worked there.

“He was so positive and always had this beautiful smile on his face,” Monaco said. “He was such a good person. And he loved the mountain. He loved the snow. He was just so passionate about it. Chris was the mountain. The mountain was Chris.”

Monaco, 26, works at Fringe Salon in Aspen and had met Polk last fall in three chance encounters in town. She said the third time was the charm.

“We were pretty much inseparable after that,” she said. “We were just like a little unit. We called it our little bubble.”

Monaco knew that Polk was from San Jose, Calif. and that his family had recently moved to Indiana.

She knew he had served in the Navy, was an avid rock climber who had worked in Yosemite valley, and that he had worked at both Mammoth Mountain in California and at Sunlight Mountain Resort in Glenwood Springs as an instructor before coming to Buttermilk.

“He was such a good teacher,” she said. “He was so hands on. He just went above and beyond to teach people. He’d run down the mountain to come get you.”

Until it clicks, learning to snowboard can be a trying and humiliating experience for people, but Monaco said Polk could get people up and turning quickly.

“He said it was just such a good feeling when people get it,” she said.

Andrew Shore, a good friend of Polk’s, concurred.

“I know that his love for instructing was rooted in the enthusiasm his students showed, and knowing that he had an effect on them,” Shore wrote in an e-mail.

Polk worked with Shore for two years as a land surveyor, but Shore said he didn’t really know too many details about Polk’s background.

“He was so ardent about his passions that conversation was never about the past or about his childhood,” Shore said. “Conversation was always about what he was going to do or wanted to do next. My favorite thing about Chris is that he never half-assed anything. If he was going to do it, he did it.”

For CJ Monaco, losing Polk has been devastating. After she got the call Thursday afternoon from a friend, she went to the hospital and just sat alone with Polk until the coroner came.

“It is just not real,” she said. “It is just crazy. I keep waiting for him to show up. He was so young and had so much life ahead of him. My heart hurts.”

She said a memorial service was being planned for Polk sometime next week.

“He was just such a good spirit,” Monaco said. “Such a good soul. I just want people to know what a good person he was.”

bgs@aspendailynews.com

[Cindy Kleh]

I heard this on the local radio news but they said that it was a snowboard patroller. They should get their facts straight, esp when dealing with a death.

[Petrol]

very sad... prayers & thoughts to family and friends

[Kimo]

I agree that helmets are necessary. I realize they won't protect you from everything, but are pretty handy when you hook an edge and slam your noggin on the snow/ice or some similar kind of accident.

As I understand it, helmets aren't very useful for headon collisions with unyielding objects like trees and towers. I've been told that most people in those types of accidents die from aortic dissection. That happens when your body suddenly stops from impacting an unyielding object, but your heart continues moving forward for just a bit further tearing your aorta.

This happened to a friend of mine. He was tree skiing at Loveland and hit a tree. He survived an impact with a tree, an evacuation down the mountain and an ambulance ride all the way down to Denver (too cloudy for life flight) and lived long enough for them to repair his aorta and survive the ordeal. He was damn lucky. Most bleed out in minutes.

So a helmet wouldn't have done much in his case. The thing is, when you step out the door in the morning, you don't know if you'll have an accident or what kind it will be if you do so you might as prepare for it as best you can anyway. If I ran a mountain, or a legislature, I would require ski instructors/patrollers to wear helmets (at work or on their mountain) because they are supposed to be the example.

Note: I do not support outright helmet laws because I believe this country was built on personal freedoms... including the freedom to go out and off yourself being stupid... Darwinism in action.

[philw]

Note: I do not support outright helmet laws because I believe this country was built on personal freedoms... including the freedom to go out and off yourself being stupid... Darwinism in action.

Except as the data show, there's no relation between the boarding fatality stats and the incidence of helmet wearing, even though the latter is at 50% in your country.

So "being stupid" is what, the inability to understand some simple data like that I guess.

Darwinism? Please... it'd have to kill you (which manifestly it does not), and it'd have to do it before breeding age. Duh.

[SWriverstone]

Man, this thread reminds me of SOOOOOOOO many conversations/arguments I've been involved in over the use of motorcycle helmets and wearing full gear (versus nothing but jeans and a wifebeater).

I'm an ATGATT motorcyclist (All The Gear All The Time)...but there are VAST numbers who have the attitude of (prefaced with a nice beer belch) "Well we all gotta go sometime, so I'm damned well gonna enjoy myself before it happens!" **URP**

:rolleyes:

Scott

[valsam]

Ηas this become an issue if helmets protect or not ??

If so then nobody that ride's motorcycles shouldn't wear helmets and let's see if the death rate rises or not!

I don't know if Chris died from a head injury and i just stated that helmet's and going a bit slower than you actually can is a precaution from having a serious accident!

(By the way in my avatar i am wearing a helmet!)

[big mario]

THIS THREAD IS ABOUT A RIDER WHO HAS DIED!! NOT ABOUT HELMETS!!!PLEASE TAKE YOUR ARGUMENTS TO ONE OF THE 47 OTHER FLAME AWAY THREADS ON THIS TOPIC!!

show some respect. rant off

mario

[Coloradoking]

sorry to hear about this, always hurts to hear when another boarder passes away doing something they love.

[b0ardski]

+ + 1 Mario

I gotta say I rather go out that way than hit by a drunk driver

[Fastskiguy]

I sure feel sorry for his friends and family, it's a terrible thing for sure. As for Chris, well, if you're a believer then he's in a pretty good place (hopefully!) and if you're not then he is as he was before he was born.

Helmets, heh, I'm not riding without mine, ya'll can do as you wish :)

And one more thing, the deputy coroner Dr. Chuck Johnson is a veterinarian so that's pretty cool.