My inbox and voice mail are filling up with questions\/concerns re the tragic accident at Mammoth Mountain today.<\/p>\n
With 79" of new snow, the ski patrol had to do a great deal of maintenance work to make the hill safe for skiing.\u00c2\u00a0 In clearing up the Face of 3, a group of ski patrollers went to adjust a fence around a volcano vent on the far side of the slope.\u00c2\u00a0 The ground collapsed and they were trapped and the latest report is three people died.\u00c2\u00a0 It is not clear whether the fall killed them or the lack of oxygen or the volcanic gases.<\/p>\n
It was very strange.\u00c2\u00a0 One started to hear whispering.\u00c2\u00a0 And then the upper lifts were running but they wouldn’t let anybody board.\u00c2\u00a0 And then they stopped the upper lifts completely.<\/p>\n
Different stories were circulated.\u00c2\u00a0 One, that the snow just collapsed.\u00c2\u00a0 Two, that by covering up the vent previously, the gases found a new exit and a larger area was rendered unstable.<\/p>\n
First report was that skiers had died in an avalanche.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, that skiers had fallen into a tree well.\u00c2\u00a0 There wasn’t pandemonium on the mountain, but a weird air.\u00c2\u00a0 Usually deaths on the hill are a result of skier error.\u00c2\u00a0 This just seems to be the world working in mysterious ways, as these were the most experienced people on the hill.<\/p>\n
At the end of the day I asked a group of ski patrolmen what had happened.\u00c2\u00a0 They said there was an accident.\u00c2\u00a0 When I inquired further, they said they’d "lost some friends today".\u00c2\u00a0 I skied off.\u00c2\u00a0 One caught the funereal air.<\/p>\n
Skiing is a dangerous sport.\u00c2\u00a0 But there’s risk as soon as you walk out the front door.\u00c2\u00a0 No one wants their story to end.\u00c2\u00a0 But if they’re like the other patrolmen I’ve known, those no longer with us loved working on the hill.<\/p>\n
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My inbox and voice mail are filling up with questions\/concerns re the tragic accident at Mammoth Mountain today. With 79" of new snow, the ski patrol had to do a great deal of maintenance work to make the hill safe for skiing.\u00c2\u00a0 In clearing up the Face of 3, a group of ski patrollers went […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-6a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}