The following gives some details about the horrible accident at Snowshoe. http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/charlotte/news/breaking_news/10503015.htm
The Colonel

Additional details:
http://wvgazettemail.com/section/News/Other+News/2004122617
From the Charleston WV Sunday Gazettemail News
December 27, 2004
North Carolina teen dies after Snowshoe ski mishap


By From staff, wire reports


A 14-year-old North Carolina boy died Sunday from head injuries suffered skiing Wednesday at Snowshoe Mountain Resort in Pocahontas County, officials said.

The Jacksonville, N.C., resident was airlifted by a HealthNet helicopter to Charleston Area Medical Center after the accident, resort spokesman Joe Stevens said. He died at the hospital Sunday.

Stevens declined to identify the boy, saying the resort has a policy not to name accident victims.

- advertisement-

The accident, which was not witnessed, occurred sometime after 2 p.m. Wednesday in the middle of Cupp Run, an expert slope, Stevens said.

The surface was groomed and skiing conditions were normal, he said. The boy was wearing a helmet which was intact and still on his head after the accident, he said.

It was the first skiing death at Snowshoe since February 2002, when a 17-year-old Georgia boy suffered multiple injuries on the same slope.

"It's an expert trail, and through the years, there have been unfortunate accidents on that trail,'' Stevens said.

"It's an unfortunate situation, and the bottom line is our thoughts go out the family that this happened during the holidays.''

The resort does not control access to slopes of higher difficulty, Stevens said.

"All the trails are clearly marked, so it's the responsibility of the skier to participate on the trails that are within their limits,'' he said. "It's a personal responsibility.''
The Colonel

And from the Jacksonville, NC Daily News of 30 Dec.
http://www.jdnews.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?...mp;Section=News
Loss in the Northwoods family
December 30,2004
DIANE MOUSKOURIE
DAILY NEWS STAFF

Three days before Christmas, Jordan Koonce Shepard zoomed down the expert slope at Shoeshoe Mountain Resort in West Virginia.

Jordan was an expert skier, and the ski trip was an annual event for the Shepard family, one he looked forward to with anticipation, assistant principal Allene Batchelor at Northwoods Park said Wednesday.

Jordan, an eighth-grader at Northwoods Park Middle School, died early Sunday from injuries he sustained during a skiing accident around 2 p.m. Dec. 22. Friends remembered Jordan during a service Wednesday afternoon at Jacksonville High School.

Another skier, maybe not as skilled or as prepared as Jordan, lost control and slammed into him on the slope, she said. Following the accident Jordan was airlifted to the Charleston (W.Va.) Area Medical Center where he was treated for brain injuries, Batchelor said. He was in and out of consciousness, but by Saturday his condition had deteriorated to the point where the doctors could do no more.

"We had a prayer chain going for him at home," she said. "We knew his time was limited, but we didn't want him to die on Christmas day. He died at 12:15 a.m."

Jordan had been wearing a safety helmet, and he followed all safety precautions, Batchelor said. He had just celebrated his 14th birthday one week earlier on Dec. 16, she said.

"It was just such a tragic accident," she said fighting back tears.

Batchelor has known the Shepards personally and professionally even before their oldest son, Jordan, was born, she said. Kathy Shepard teaches language arts at Northwoods Park and has for at least 16 years. Larry Shepard teaches math at Richlands High School. Jordan has two brothers, Carson, who is a sixth-grader at Northwoods Park, and 4-year-old Peyton.

Jordan was considered a part of the Northwoods Park Middle School family from the beginning, Batchelor said. For such a young person, he had a grasp on life many adults never attain.

His faith in God was rock solid. He was "any teacher's dream." And he loved sports, especially skiing, Batchelor said.

"Jordan was always at school - after school, for staff meetings or teacher workshops," she said. "And he was always offering his assistance."

He was active in nearly every extracurricular activity available. He played trombone in the school's jazz band. He was on the baseball and soccer teams. And he was an officer in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

"Jordan was very much a Christian, and his responses to questions on the application for FCA clearly indicated his strong religious beliefs," Batchelor said. "He was all about sports, a big Carolina fan."

When Jordan was not in class or busy practicing he was helping others, whether they were teachers or peers, Batchelor said.

"He was a great student, every teacher's dream, always smiling and always willing to help," she said.

Even though the Shepards attend church in Beulaville and live in Richlands, a memorial service was held Tuesday afternoon at Jacksonville High School. That was arranged so all who wanted to could attend, Batchelor said.

"Even though they lived in Richlands, we knew a lot of his friends from school would want to be there," she said. "We're expecting some of the kids to ride their bicycles since their parents will be working."

In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made in his honor. A Jordan Koonce Shepard Memorial Fund has been set up at RBC Centura and deposits can be made at any branch, she said.

"They haven't established where the money will go yet, but I'm sure it will be worthy," Batchelor said.

Onslow County Schools has organized a Crisis Intervention Team with counselors who will be on campus Monday for teachers and again Tuesday for students as they return to classes.

"It will be the first time they will all be together, and there will be a void because Jordan won't be here," Batchelor said.


Contact Diane Mouskourie at dmouskourie@freedomenc.com or 353-1171, Ext. 235.
Please, ski in control....and ski defensively.
The Colonel

This incident was all over the news when it happened.

Maybe it will drive-home that Cupp is for experts only. The kid seemed to be a great skier, its unfortunate that another, most-likely less-experienced skier slammed into him. It's incredibly tragic that I know someone who suffered the same fate, not on Cupp but at Timberline. She survived (wasn't wearing a helmet either), but broke every bone in her face. Months later her surgery was impressive... she passed the next two years of highschool with excellence only to die her freshman year in college from complications which arose when she came ill with meningitis.

Skiing above your ability is like drinking and driving. It's not the fact that you can hurt yourself; it's the fact that you have the potential to hurt others, possibly fatally. It's a BAD IDEA! People, if you don't have the ability, don't ski the trail! It not only puts everyone on the trail at risk, but those who are already attending to other injured skiers.

Another distant friend cracked several ribs and sustained a concussion on Cupp New Year's Eve. He hit the bottleneck too fast, couldn't control it, and swerved uphill into some trees. It wasn't pretty, but that sort of accident is common. He's lucky he didn't take anyone out... he was skiing slightly above his ability and slightly out of his control.

Don't ski above your ability... prove your IQ is above room temperature.

I think the ski industry has to take a more aggressive role in discouraging inexperienced skiers from sking on slopes that they should not be on. I was skiing at 7Springs, North Face on 12/28 and with the kind of crowds that are there during the holidays it amazed me at the speed some of the skiers (and especially snow boarders)were sking. It was actually frieghtening at times. I hate to say it but I feel that most snow boarders are rude and irresponsible when it comes to skiing etiquite. On 2 occassions they clocked my wife and didn't even bother to help her up. It also concerns me when you see some jerk skier who obviously doesn't know what he's doing just point his skis down hill, assume a contorted tuck position and then just fly down a crowded slope with out any concern for fellow skiers or boarders. I had one hit me in the back at Roundtop and I tumbled and slid at least 100 feet before I stopped. How I or the idiot weren't hurt amazed me. There was a group of boaders just sitting at the top of the slope just pointing their boards downhill and then seeing how fast they could go! This ain't Montana...it's Roundtop for gods sake. I think the Ski Patrol should be looking for dangerous situations like this. Is it testosterone that makes males do such stupid things?

In my opinion the most dangerous runs are the blue runs, and these are also the runs where the greatest proportion of the skiers are over their heads. True expert runs have a much better skier ability level and are much less densely populated. Also IMO, the most dangerous spots in the mid-Atlantic are the "S-curve" on Salamander at Timberline, and the "mixing bowl" area at Blue Knob, just above the base station of the triple chair. We all just have to be very careful out there. In this part of the country, many people really have no experience base and no clue of what they are getting into when they start down a trail. Couple this with a big population base and throw in teen and young adult testosterone poisoning and you have a dangerous mix.

I'll add to what Denis said. As a generalization, speed is what kills. Whether it is you going fast or another slider going fast. Most skiers can't go fast on a true expert run such as Extrovert or Lower Shortway, but just about anyone can go fast on a basically intermediate run such as Cupp Run, Widowmaker, Exhibition, the slopes/trails on 7 Springs' North Face, etc. The labeled intermediate runs have even more skier traffic, so the chances of someone zigging into someone else's zag increase even more.

That is why I don't like all the grooming that goes on. Sure, groom all the green stuff and most of the blue but not the black trails. Do them every so often to keep the moguls down to a respectable size and to clean up the ice but the reason people fly down trails is because they can. Put them on lower Shay and they learn quick you can't just go, same effect as speed bumps. Lower Cupp was starting to bump up pretty good the day I was there and it kept speed down on most of it becuase people either had to slow down and hit the bumps or they were sliding on their back after falling over one. It actually kept things safer. The problem came at the bottom when the bumps stopped and everyone was flying through the bottleneck. You don't see beginners going on any of the bump runs there more than once because they don't like them because they don't give them the false sense of ability that a groomer does. How many people snowplow down a groomed Widowmaker and think, hmmm, I must be an expert cause I didn't fall. Nobody goes down Lower Shay and thinks they're an expert unless they really are.

The one problem I have w/ snowboarders is that many seem unaware of the increased blindspot that their sideways stance creates. It's not a big deal if they're skiing slow, but I've seen several fairly proficient boarders going fast just wipe out skiers that were in their blind-spots.

Truly a sad story. If anything good comes from this I hope it is a crackdown on reckless skiers/boarders and perhaps spurs Snowshoe to build a couple of blues on the western territory.

Excellent point JR. I am waiting for some lawyer to pick up on this and sue because the mountain made it possible for their client to go fast enough to injure themself by providing wide grromed boulevards. Too many mountains in the mid-Atlantic are an invitation to speed and too many accept the invitation. (BTW I used to race and have no problem with people going fast in control and out of heavy traffic.) To my knowledge Mad River has never had a fatality since opening in 1947. Almost everything is narrow and twists and turns, and all but the beginner slopes are NEVER groomed.

I read a book a few months ago called "Right on the Edge of Crazy: On Tour with the US Ski Team." There is a lot of good material in that book about why Kitzbuehl's Hannekam course is so dangerous, and what the resort has done to make it a little safer. One of the major new safety features is netting. This prevents skiers from going into the woods. I've always wondered why Snowshoe has never installed netting along some of the more dangerous sections of Cupp. The trail has huge embankments and if you wipe out incorrectly on one of those embankments, you end up flying down a 20-foot high artificial ravine.

I also agree with John about speed. Good skiers do not ski fast. They just don't. Skiing fast is for over-confident intermediates who don't understand what a high-speed fall is like-getting your breadth knocked out of your lungs and wondering how many bones you've broken.

Another problem is bad skiers, but skiing slowly is a better way to avoid them than accelerating. I'd rather be hit hard from behind than run into someone because I was skiing too fast and got cut off. Remember folks, no matter how bad the skier is in front of you, he has the right away: the down slope skier ALWAYS has the right of way.