13-y.o. girl dies at Manitoba hill

[Corey]

Whoa, this is the ski hill I go to frequently: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/296054551.html

I know the fence. It's on the side of the terrain park run, quite far away from anywhere people go, and parallel to the fall line. It's a shame, and reminds me of how a small mistake can be costly once you add some speed.

[Beckmann AG]

A shame.

 

We had many fences of that type, cordoning off the sides of our half-pipe, race arena, and as lift corrals.  All were pulled out back in the nineties, presumably to avoid liability for accidents of this type.

[lowrider]

Sad to hear of this Corey. Sounds like everything was going according to plan until the girl ended up on the wrong run. I have seen this happen often with school groups. In spite of being assessed  and assigned coloured tickets depending on their skill kids still end up going where they are not supposed to go. Everyone is assuming someone else is policing the kids activities. The parents think the teachers are watching them the teachers think the ski school is watching them and the kids are looking over their shoulders hoping no one is watching them. A  17 year old girl died Tuesday at Blue Mt Colliingwood after clipping a tree.  Last year a young man was injured and not found for several hours at the same resort he died of his injuries. Pilot Mound is a very nice small community it will be a difficult time for the whole town. I hope this doesn't result in some knee jerk response from the school board.

[dingbat]

Sad, and totally preventable.

 

From my experience with the school groups that come to our mountain, most chaperons are here only for the free pass that comes with the position. Many of them even get irritated with me when I bring to their attention one of their students behaving in a way that is likely to get them or others injured. Excuse the crap out of me for disturbing your ski time jackass. I also notice that people also tend to insist that moderate to poor skiers are capable of skiing trails that are far above their ability level. They saw their student/kid/friend survive their way down a blue, therefore they can ski anything on the mountain. From the linked article it sounds like most if not all the other students and chaperons were on this type of terrain. Where the hell did they expect she'd end up? Skiing with a few of her friends of course. Com'on Kelsey. You'll be fine. People have no god damn idea how much velocity a kid can build up, even on a green run, until you've seen them locked up over their tails. The smart ones throw themselves to the ground. The lucky ones get taken out by the terrain before they hit anything. The unlucky ones hook a carve and go off the trail at nearly the full speed they had attained until they run into something hard. They leave in the ambulance, often unconscious. Then we track down one of their chaperons.

[Corey]

One note I forgot to add: The 'black' runs at this ski hill barely qualify as blue runs in the mountains. Which makes this even more puzzling...

[dingbat]

Doesn't matter. We have this sort of stuff, fortunately not resulting in death but easily could but for the grace of god, happen on green runs. Head trauma and loss of consciousness long enough that they don't come to until half or all the way to the hospital.

[Oldasdirt]

The Blue Mountain fatality was a racer however not on coarse probably doing warm ups sad

Edited March 16, 2015 by Oldasdirt