This is terrible news. The early season death toll continues to unfortunately rise. The latest tragedy was a 23-year-old female snowboarder at Mountain High ski resort in So Cal on Sunday, November 27th, 2011.
This snowboarder was a beginner and was wearing a helmet. Details about the actual mechanism of injury are fuzzy, but she apparently fell around 4pm, was injured, was evacuated by ambulance to the Community Hospital of San Bernardino, and was pronounced dead there at 5:25pm.
The coroner’s office reports that the victim died due to internal injuries.
This bad news is compounded by the fact that two people died at Colorado ski resorts last week in hard falls as well as pro skier Jamie Pierre perishing in an avalanche in Utah two weeks ago.
It’s likely that these sort of accidents are generally not visible in the media, but this does seem like a lot of terrible accidents for so early in the season.
Our hearts go out to all of these victims and their families.