A 13-year-old skier from Connecticut died today after colliding with a tree on Keystone Resorts’ Diamondback Run.
The young man died of massive chest trauma, according to Summit County coroner Joanne Richardson. She said the skier and his family arrived at the resort on Saturday.
Resort spokesperson Kate Lessman said a call came into the Keystone ski patrol about 10:15 a.m. and the patrol responded immediately to the scene of the accident.
The patrol provided life support, and then the patient was flown to the Summit Medical Center in Frisco, where he was pronounced dead at 11:53 a.m., Richardson said.
The skier was wearing a helmet at the time of the incident. Richardson said the young man’s name will be released today.
The ski slope death was the latest in Colorado this season.
Last week, two other skiers died on different slopes. A 33-year-old Southwest Airline pilot was racing a friend when he lost control and hit some trees at Telluride Ski Resort. He wasn’t wearing a helmet.
A 68-year-old retired Air Force general, Richard Gefford of Arvada, died at Winter Park after he was found face-down in the snow. He died of natural causes. On Feb. 6, John McWethy, a retired national-security correspondent for ABC News, died in a skiing accident at Keystone Resort.
Witnesses said McWethy, 61, was skiing fast when he lost control in a turn on and slid-chest first into a tree.
In 2002 Colorado set a record for ski deaths at 15, exceeding the previous record of high of 12 set in the winter of 1998-99.
The spike in fatalities at nine different resorts led some victims’ families to call for a Colroado ski helmet law, but ski resorts still have no such requirement.
According to the National Ski Areas Association, an average of about 37 people a year die on the slopes out of 55.1 million U.S. ski trips each year. There were 22 fatalities nationwide in the 2006-2007 ski season.
However, that figure does not include people who die of natural causes, said a spokeswoman for the Lakewood-based national association, which does keep statistics by state.
On Jan. 25, a 22-year-old snowboarder, Jared Daniel, of Auburn, Mass., died on an intermediate trail at the Steamboat ski area when he fell head-first into a tree well, a depression of unstable snow that forms beneath low-hanging branches around tree.
On Jan. 15, skier Mark Joseph Stout, 45, of Ottsville, Pa., died at Steamboat under similar circumstances after falling into a tree well.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
