The risks of skiing/snowsports

[Rainbow Jenny]

I live in North Tahoe and have participated in the local winter injury monthly case discussions for the past 5+ years, initially in person at the Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee, then transitioned to Zoom. The last meeting in January had over 200 first responders and healthcare providers dialed in. I think it's worthwhile to examine the safety data to assess your own risk tolerance.

An overview on total annual cases and rates of snowsport fatalities vs. auto collision vs bicycling was presented. Interesting to see the common denominator of quantifying deaths per million hours exposed: 0.12 snow vs 0.3 auto vs 0.07 bikes. Although snow sport is dangerous, you can also infer that riding in a car is more than twice as dangerous. I don't have a reference for this data.

A case review study performed in CO with data from 1980-2001 of 149 deaths in snowsports compared adults to kids. Most striking was the high prevalence of faralities due to collisions, mostly fixed objects. I have not personally read the article, but the recent Mt Rose fatality discussion thread gave me the opportunity to pull the abstract up on PubMed, you'll see the PDF link and other research papers in the field. Feel free to dive into it.

Downhill skiing injury fatalities among children - PubMed

Traumatic brain injury was the leading cause and collision was the leading external injury mechanism of fatal injuries associated with downhill skiing among child skiers. This underscores the importance of brain injury prevention strategies, including the use of ski helmets and prevention of...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Head injuries-helmet not as protective as we think, a couple local emergency medicine physicians shared. Famous cases were RFK Jr.'s son Michael died after playing football in Aspen in 1997, Sonny Bono 1998 at Heavenly, Natasha Richardson 2009 at Tremblant, and the recent news with Lynn Bank.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234024617_HELMET_USE_AND_SEVERITY_OF_HEAD_INJURIES_IN_SKIERS

I worked in epidemiology and patient safety projects for a few years, just like looking at aggregated data and trace causal pathways.

 

[Rainbow Jenny]

Correction: Lynn Ban*

 

[Jilly]

Skiing Tremblant all the time the accident with Natasha Richardson was the talk for a long time after. I thought that it was determined that the fall did not result in her death. She actually had an issue of some type in her brain. I'll have to see if I can find anything.

But regardless...helmets are not the be all and end all for TBI. That's for sure. And it seems to be that the younger skiers (and maybe some older) think that the brain bucket is going to save them. It might help, but reckless skiing is also an issue.

 

[Amplify]

Thank you for sharing this! I think about this topic often and appreciate the link to actual statistics.

 

[MissySki]

Skiing Tremblant all the time the accident with Natasha Richardson was the talk for a long time after. I thought that it was determined that the fall did not result in her death. She actually had an issue of some type in her brain. I'll have to see if I can find anything.

But regardless...helmets are not the be all and end all for TBI. That's for sure. And it seems to be that the younger skiers (and maybe some older) think that the brain bucket is going to save them. It might help, but reckless skiing is also an issue.

I never saw anything saying the fall wasn't the cause of her death...

Natasha Richardson Died of Epidural Hematoma After Skiing Accident

The actress Natasha Richardson has died of an epidural hematoma after a fall on a Canadian ski slope Monday. Family members said they were "shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha."

abcnews.go.com

 

[Jilly]

All I remember reading was something about this could have happened when she was walking across a street. I don't remember seeing anything about an "epidural hematoma". Nothing that specific was given in the Canadian press.

But it doesn't really matter. TBI are not fun. I know a paddler from a few years ago. He could paddle with us. He could actually steer a crew in a boat. But someone had to be with him as his attention span was that of a flea. Even paddling we had to remind to focus.

 

[MissySki]

Well it's also a good reminder to get checked out if Patrol suggests it after a fall. Who knows if she would have been okay had she received medical intervention sooner.

 

[beane]

There was another fatality-- Alpine meadows on monday 2/3. Apparently someone got into a steep and very icy area and took his skis off to (I guess) walk down, and slipped and hit a tree.

https://www.sfgate.com/renotahoe/article/62-year-old-man-dies-crash-tree-palisades-tahoe-20154349.php

 

[Amplify]

There was also a death today 2/8 at Gore, on Sagamore right under the lift. A 53-year old man who apparently (from what I’ve read so far) was skiing with his kids. Incredibly upsetting and hits very close to home. Police are still investigating what happened. Gore has had fairly bad conditions this year and I’m pretty sure they just finally opened that trail this weekend. Just scary and sad.

 

[ski now work later]

I just read about the Gore accident, so tragic and traumatic for his kids who were with him. Apparently he went off the groomed part of a trail that just opened into ice chunks onto bulletproof ice and must have died on impact, he was bleeding from his eyes under the goggles. Ugh.

 

[Amplify]

Yeah. It’s been a very long time since I was on that trail but I feel like it’s definitely possible you could really just not realize that the groomed trail kind of just drops off into giant ice boulders on the side. Kind of one of those flat-light optical illusion type areas. This one feels extra scary to me because I feel like so often it is people skiing into trees etc whereas in this one it seems like it was just hitting the ground that killed him. Just really tragic and upsetting. This poor man who died, his poor kids who were with him, the poor people on the lift who witnessed it - just all of it is really sad and horrifying.

 

[Rainbow Jenny]

I lost a dear friend to an avalanche in 2016 who had deployed his airbag but died from trauma. His mom will never recover from the loss. He was one of the smartest people who was incredibly conservative in his life choices in career, finances, and relationship. Sadly, he succumbed to the heuristic of terrain familiarity after skiing for 45 years (including 30 backcountry years with 8,000 vertical gains each of 40-50 days per season) and was days away from his 50th birthday.

So of course I examined the data to see how frequent avalanche fatalities occur… turns out we lose 3 times more people from lightening strikes. I’d have never guess that since I don’t live in areas with high lightening hazards.

Hence in the initial post, we all have to make our own decisions of risk tolerance.

Ski area fatalities make the news every time; automobile fatalities with featured life story-rarely; infant mortalities in developing countries-never.