Early in 1979, two California skiers were the first to be fined for violation of a year-old amendment to the state trespassing law which makes it a misdemeanor to ski in a closed area. The skiers left the boundary of Northstar-at-Tahoe’s bowl into what marketing director Vance Fox described as the “inviting-looking” though off-limits back of the mountain. “Signs are posted practically on every tree,” he says. “It’s rather obvious that there’s no skiing back there.”
The skiers were found at 10:05 p.m., settled in for the evening next to a fire. The Placer County Sheriff fined them for violating Section 602-Q, “knowingly skiing in an area or on a ski trail which is closed to the public and which has signs indicating such closure.”
Mammouth Mountain also has one section where people are lured past a phalanx of warning signs into a notch that “looks” as if it ought to lead back to the lift area. Says operations manager Don Rake, “We have four big 4×5 signs painted in Da-Glo colors in a natural clearing that say: ‘Stop! You Are Going the Wrong Way. Turn Around and Follow Your Tracks Back to the Ski Area.’ People never do. They think they can just ski around a corner. The slope isn’t steep, but no matter what the signs say, people rarely walk uphill to save themselves.”
If one skier has gone out of bounds, any number of others will follow those tracks. One memorable day Mammoth patrollers found 13 people below that clearing and made them all walk out.
A particularly grisly episode occurred two winters ago. Two young men drove from Los Angeles to Mammoth late on Friday. Tired and inadequately clad for a blizzard, they skied on Saturday. One got lost in the storm off Chair 12 at about 2 p.m. His friend, who later said the lost skier had a terrible sense of direction, wasn’t too concerned. At 5 p.m. he reported the incident to the patrol, who routinely told him to check the bars and base area and come back if he needed help.
The man came back around 10 and told Mammoth’s night watchman that he was waiting for someone who had the car keys. The watchman invited him to warm up in the boiler room. At 9 the next morning, with the storm still blasting, the man came back to the patrol, which immediately began a search. They searched all day Monday. On Tuesday, when the storm finally lifted, they sent out 100 rescuers and a STOL aircraft. They continued looking and flying for 10 days without finding a trace.
The following June, Rake took a 90-man crew back into the area. They found two boots with legbones sticking out, scattered clothing and a jawbone. There were signs of an attempt at making a shelter and a cigarette lighter full of fluid but with no flint. Rake theorized that by the time the victim tried to save himself, he was suffering so from hypothermia that he could no longer function. “A bear must have gotten him,” says Rake. “That’s the only animal that can crush a skull.”
He was the only skier Mammoth has ever lost. Rake said, “Nine times out of ten the missing skier will be found in a bar- or back home – or in bed.”
Vail has installed nearly 50 miles of ropes on the perimeter of the patrolled area. Signs posted warn that skiers who are lost or injured may have to wait a long time to be rescued – and that this could be extremely expensive. There are, however, standard egresses for popular off-trail skiing. The Vail patrol asks that skiers leaving the area check in and they are warned of avalanches or other potential danger. They are never encouraged to ski beyond Vail’s boundaries, although patrol chief Joe Macy acknowledges that “they have the right to do so if they wish.”
Last year four Illinois youngsters skied out of North Game Creek toward Minturn. About three-quarters of a mile down, one boy lost a ski. Another skied out and called for help. Patrollers responded, bringing a spare ski with them, and skied the boys out. Vail billed the parents about $40 but never collected.
“The company provides a patrol to safeguard skiers on the mountain,” Macy says. “When problems occur outside the area, there’s a decision to be made. Do we take patrollers from the mountain, whom the skier is paying for, to find skiers who have gone where they don’t belong?” Increasingly, Vail is answering “no.”
Vail patrollers conduct a particularly thorough end-of-day sweep. Only once in Vail’s 17-year history has a skier been left on the mountain. Longtime patroller Lou Livingston recalls “a crazy kid from Scarsdale who dyed his hair orange,” who apparently decided to test out his Scout survival training. He skied out beyond a fence and hid under a log. Search parties skied 15 or 20 feet, stopped and called the boy’s name and continued.
The youngster wasn’t found that night, but the next morning he showed up triumphantly at a nearby lift shack. The patrol checked their own tracks and discovered that one rescuer had skied six feet from the sheltering log. The prankster achieved a degree of immortality by having a trail named after him: Lost Boy.
The Colorado skier safety code, which at this writing is in the state legislature, skirts the issue of staying within marked boundaries, so Vail management is working with county officials to create a local code. Alta and Snowbird already have customized laws, including statutes against leaving lodges in times of great avalanche danger when guests are told to stay indoors.
Snowbird is another area that won’t start a search until convinced that a skier is truly missing and then confines rescuers to its regularly patrolled terrain. On a clear night, it takes 40 people four hours to resweep Snowbird.
“If a skier is reported missing, we wait to see if he shows up on the Plaza at 4:30,” mountain manager Kent Hoopingarner says. “Mostly they do. If not, we hit every bar, call his home, his friends, the hospitals and the jail. If he still doesn’t turn up, we’ll send out two-person rescue teams with radios.”
The only time rescuers leave the area is if they see tracks. Two years ago they followed tracks under a rope down to a cabin where they found the lost skier asleep at 5:30 in the morning. Snowbird billed him for the search. Did he pay? “Getting them to pay is like squeezing blood out of a turnip,” says Hoopingarner.
Lest it seem as if vast Western areas are the only ones with lost-skier problems, consider the young novice who started a run after lunch down one of Wildcat’s easier trails this year. No one missed the other boy until 4:30. At 5, with the aid of the New Hampshire Department of Fish & Game and volunteers from the nearby Appalachian Mountain Club, a search was begun. The boy’s body was found about 20 feet off the trail. He had evidently lost control, hit a tree and been hidden by the swirling snow.
There was also a case at Hidden Valley, New Jersey, an area with four narrow trails and a 620-foot vertical. An 18-year-old who had been drinking while night skiing came down the beginner-novice trail. In his hazy confusion, he saw a path leading to one of the slopeside houses and thought it was a trail. He fell or wandered off the path and went to sleep under a tree. A patroller spotted the youngster and hauled him out before he was reported missing – or froze.
Ski Area Management presents the following “laundry list” from which each ski area can adapt appropriate procedures for finding lost skiers:
1. Before anyone is lost: Set up a rescue procedure coordinating any of the following applicable agencies: Forest Service, state agencies, state or local police, Search & Rescue or other volunteer organizations. Appoint a rescue coordinator.
2. Stock and maintain rescue supplies in addition to regular ski patrol gear: Flashlights or helmets with lights for night searches, ropes and mountaineering gear, two-way radios.
3. When a skier is reported missing: Get a description, and find out his/her skiing habits from friends. Check the base lodge, popular area meeting places, bars, restaurants. Check lodging of overnight guests. For daytrippers call home and homes of any friends. Finally, check with local police and hospital.
5. Setting out: Divide rescuers into two-person teams, if possible equipped with lights and radios. Each team should have one member who is on patrol or knows the mountain especially well. Each team should have first-aid gear. The coordinator assigns each team a route and checks each out at the start of the search.
6. On the mountain: Ideally, there should be enough teams so that only one summit-to-base sweep is necessary. This should be done as carefully as possible. Sweep lights slowly over the trails and especially into the woods at the side of the trail. Keep calling the name of the missing skier, listening between calls for any kind of response or motion. If you find tracks out of the area’s perimeter, radio rescue coordinator for directions on how to proceed.
7. If the skier isn’t found: Rescuers should rest after the first thorough night-time sweep and be prepared to go out again at dawn’s first light.
8. Later: STOL aircraft, helicopters and trained dogs are used in several ski areas. If storm conditions prevailed early in the search operation, the search should be stepped up again as soon as the weather clears.
9. When it’s all over: Embark on a conscious education program to warn skiers of the pitfalls in off-trail skiing. It is part of the skier’s responsibility to stay in an area where rescue is available in case of injury.
