This is an e-mail i sent to Ethan Muller, VP of operations for Crested Butte Mountain Resort, please let me know what you think.
Ethan,
Let me start by saying that i truly appreciate everything that you and your family have done for our mountain and town, we would not be where we are today without you guys.
My name is Steve Florentine, and this will be my 8th winter in Crested Butte. We have the most amazing terrain on the planet, and i love it here. When there is not new snow i like to spend alot of time in the Cannon terrain park. I have also lived in Breckenridge, and have competed in freestyle skiing for 10 or so years. I love it, it is my passion, but the older i get ( i am now 28) i am more and more concerned about safety and getting hurt. This is what i am writing you about. Following is an article from the Seattle times concerning a skier injured in a terrain park:
Jury gives $14 million to skier paralyzed at Snoqualmie
By Sara Jean Green
Seattle Times staff reporter
After a five-week trial, a King County jury on Friday awarded $14 million to a 27-year-old skier who was paralyzed after dropping 37 feet from a ski jump at the Summit at Snoqualmie.
Kenny Salvini, of Lake Tapps, was 23 years old when he went off the jump at the Central Terrain Park at Snoqualmie Central and landed on compact snow and ice in February 2004, said his attorney, Jack Connelly.
During the trial at the Regional Justice Center in Kent, "information came out ... that the man who built [the jump] eyeballed it with a Sno-Cat" rather than engineering a design, Connelly said.
Engineers and an aeronautics professor from the University of California, Davis, testified that the jump was improperly designed and featured a short landing area, Connelly said, adding that ski jumps are supposed to be sloped so that energy from a vertical jump is transferred into a skier's forward motion on landing.
"Going off this jump was the equivalent of jumping off a three-story building," Connelly said. "If you're going to be throwing kids 37 feet in the air, these jumps need to be engineered, designed and constructed properly."
Officials from the Summit at Snoqualmie on Friday afternoon wouldn't answer questions about the incident but released a statement. It said risk is inherent in snow sports, but, "that said, any time there is an incident, our genuine thoughts and prayers are with our guests and their families."
The statement said Summit officials "are disappointed but respectful of the [trial] process."
According to Connelly, other people were injured on the same jump in the weeks before Salvini's accident, including a snowboarder who broke his back. A week after Salvini was injured, 19-year-old Peter Melrose of Bellevue died going off a different jump at the same terrain park, he said.
"There were 10 accidents with eight people taken off the slope in a toboggan" in the weeks before Salvini was hurt, landing on what Connelly said was a flat surface. In all, he said, evidence of 15 earlier accidents was admitted into evidence but "nothing was done" by ski operators to fix or close the faulty jumps.
The full jury award was for about $31 million, Connelly said, explaining that the amount was decreased to $14 million after calculating "the comparative fault" of his client and "the inherent risk of the sport."
Before he was injured, Salvini, now a quadriplegic, was captain of the wrestling team at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, where he graduated in engineering technology, Connelly said. His mother is now his full-time caregiver.
Over the course of his life, Salvini's medical needs are estimated to cost between $23 million and $26 million, Connelly said.
end article
Now i love that you have been putting more efforts and funds into our terrain parks, but i need to express my problem. I feel that if change is not made, CBMR will begin to run into these type of lawsuits because our jumps are not designed correctly. Frankly i feel that CBMR is lucky you have not already, considering the amount of broken backs, legs, arms, and internal injuries people have suffered from overshooting jumps #2 and #3 (known as cheese and money) .If you have ever been to Breckenridge you can see what i am talking about. You can not overshoot a jump there. Their jumps are also much bigger, but you must realize they are safer if designed correctly. Cannon does not have the natural rollers that are needed to make landings longer. Everyday i ski the Cannon park i overshoot a jump, and it really hurts. Cannon is simply too flat of a run to just blow massive piles of snow for giant jumps with short landings. There are so many runs on our mountain that could potentially host world class terrain parks, and be much safer. There is Upper Park, Gold Link, East River, all of which have amazing natural rollers which could host longer safer landings and reduce the insane amount of injuries we have each year. There was some talk with the addition of DC as a sponser that the park would be moved to frontside, Westwall, which would also be perfect. I recently learned that this is not true and our park will again be on Cannon. So i beg you, please consider moving our park, and re-engineering our design. We don not need anymore injuries or potential deaths from poor engineering, design, and construction.
Sincerely,
Steve Florentine
