An Oklahoma college student died after slamming into a tree while skiing at Keystone, authorities said Monday, marking the first on-mountain death of the season in Colorado.
Witnesses said that Benjamin Hawk, 20, a nursing student at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, lost control while skiing on the intermediate Spring Dipper run Sunday afternoon.
He was airlifted to St. Anthony Central Hospital, where he was pronounced dead of a severe head injury at 7:15 p.m., said Summit County Coroner Joanne Richardson.
Hawk, a junior who was on a ski trip with some friends from college on their holiday break, was not wearing a helmet.
News of his death stunned officials at the small, Christian liberal-arts school of about 1,000 students in Bartlesville, Okla.
“In many ways, Benji was an all-around leader,” said Everett Piper, president of the university. “And the student body is very close-knit. There will be hundreds of students who will mourn him as a colleague, as a Christian leader, as a young man and as someone with a bright future and who has already done great things.”
His parents, Phil and Debbie Hawk, flew to Denver from Portland, Ore., on Sunday night and could not be contacted.
Hawk, whose father is a Wesleyan pastor, served the school on a summer ministry team that led music camps for high-school students, and he had been chosen by his peers to lead a chapel service.
The school initiated a telephone chain to notify students and faculty members Sunday, and it will dedicate its first chapel session of the new year to Hawk, Piper said.
“As I was putting my son in bed, he asked, Was Benji going to make it?” Piper said. “I told him: ‘It doesn’t sound like it. Did you know Benji very well?’ He said: ‘Oh, yeah. I’d hang out with him out on campus in the game room.’ For a 19- or 20-year-old young man to be humble enough to reach out to a 12-year-old boy is pretty phenomenal. My son said his prayers for Benji as he went to bed.”
Piper considered Hawk an excellent skier who had been with classmates on previous ski trips to Colorado.
Hawk is the first ski-related fatality of the season. Last year, seven people died of injuries at Colorado ski areas.
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com.
