OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #521070
VAIL ASSOCIATES, INC.
VAIL, CO·
Event description
Employee killed in fall while skiing
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 and seven other food service workers decided to ski down the mountai n from a restaurant on a clear, moonlit night without the aid of any artificial lighting. Employee #1 and two coworkers became isolated from the main party, and after initially descending a closed trail, Employee #1 became separated from he r two coworkers. After skiing straight down the trail for several hundred yards, she failed to negotiate a turn at an intersection with another ski run and a cr eek bed. Employee #1 lost control and departed from the boundaries of the ski tr ail, falling vertically approximately 17 feet off a culvert. She hit her head on rocks in the creek bed and was killed.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 26 Female
- Nature of injury
- Fracture (12)
- Part of body
- HEAD (13)
- Accident type
- FALL(FROM ELEVATION) (5)
- Source of injury
- BODILY MOTION (5)
- Occupation
- Occupation not reported (999)
- Human factor
- PERCEPTION MALFUNC,TASK-ENVIR. (8)
- Environmental factor
- WORK-SURFACE/FACIL-LAYOUT COND (13)
- Task assigned
- Task not regularly assigned (2)
Labels are OSHA's own, from the code dictionary published with the accident-investigation file. The raw code is shown beside each one so this page can be reconciled against OSHA's bulk data. OSHA notes that nature of injury, part of body, source of injury and accident type in this file are not coded to the Occupational Injury and Illness Classification System, and that the occupation titles are not standardised — so these values are not directly comparable with the OIICS-coded severe injury reports.