It’s no fun getting blown off
MMST riders tossed from Chair 6 by wind gust.
With winds gusting at approximately 50 mph on the morning of January 16, three Mammoth Mountain Snowboard Team riders were hit with a “very intense and momentary localized cyclonic wind” at approximately 9:25 a.m. while riding Chair 6 (Thunderbound Express), Mammoth Mountain said in a statement.
“We were in practice with the team. It was a windy day but nothing too crazy,” George Scott, 19, said. “We just got unlucky with a gust of wind at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The gust blew the chair into the approaching lift tower, which is “pretty unheard of,” Scott said. “We were just having a chat [and] next thing I know I’m hitting the pole with my board and with the initial impact I just flipped right off. It was pretty scary.”
Scott didn’t see Liam Whiley, 16, fall off behind him, but both boys fell 28 feet to the ground, sustaining minor injuries.
Sean Neary, 16, however, managed to stay on the chairlift. According to his statement given to the team, the wind gusted “twisted his snowboard in the air” which caused his femur to break, said Mammoth Snowboard Team head coach Ben Wisner. The gust caused Neary to come out of the chair but he was able to hang on and pull himself back up, stabilizing his leg. The chairlift stopped immediately, while Lift Operations and Ski Patrol responded to the scene and assisted Neary and the other skiers off the lift.
Neary had surgery on his femur at Mammoth Hospital Friday night and remained in recovery over the weekend. Snowboard coaches Wisner, Mike Ramiraz, and Nacho Vaz took turns staying with Neary throughout his entire stay at the hospital until his family traveled to Mammoth from the East Coast. “We look after our kids. We wanted to make sure we were there from start to finish,” Wisner said.
Neary visited the team up at Main Lodge on Monday before flying home to New York on Tuesday to recover. Wisner said his recovery will take six to eight weeks plus physical therapy but “we hope to have him on snow again as soon as possible.”
Whiley sustained minor injuries. He has been working with the Mammoth Snowboard Team “physios” and was on snow Wednesday for the first time since the incident, Wisner said.
Scott suffered some mild trauma with back bruising and muscle strains. He traveled down to Los Angeles to recover with his family. “I’m just laying on the sofa and doing physical therapy,” he said. “It’s looking good so far. Just a sore back and sore leg mainly.” He expects to be back up in Mammoth in a couple of weeks depending on what his physical therapists recommend.
Wisner said the rest of the team has been very supportive of all the boys involved in the accident and visited Neary at the hospital. According to one rider, it is now Mammoth Team policy to ride with the safety bar down on every chairlift.
There was minor damage to the chair that hit the lift tower, and Lift Maintenance and the State Tramway inspector, who was doing routine inspections the day the incident occurred, inspected the entire chairlift. Chair 6 resumed operations the following day.
