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Lack of snow in Colorado leads to more spills on ski slopes |
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Saturday, December 31, 2011 11:16 |
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Photo by Andy Cross, The Denver Post
By JASON BLEVINS, THE DENVER POST
COPPER MOUNTAIN — Joe Hennessy of Wisconsin was zooming down an intermediate run at Copper Mountain on Friday when he bounced into a rut and tomahawked over his skis, dislocating his shoulder.
"It was a pretty nasty wipeout," said his pal Sid Toering. "The snow isn't that deep up there. . . . He hit a ditch that would typically be full of snow."
As ski patrollers rolled a grimacing Hennessy — his arm in a sling but the pain fading thanks to a snort of Fentanyl nasal spray — into the slopeside emergency room, he became one of hundreds who have clogged high-country ERs in the past week.
The driest December in recent memory and a paltry snowpack are triggering surges in ER visits in ski towns as typical holiday crowds ski fewer and icier acres.
Typically the busiest week of the year for both resorts and emergency rooms, this season's holiday week has been especially traumatic.
In Summit County, home to four ski areas that account for close to 4 million skier visits a season, emergency rooms have been hopping. The county's four St. Anthony emergency rooms and mountain clinics have seen their busiest days of the year in the past week. Not coincidentally, the county's four ski areas range from 16 percent open at Arapahoe Basin to 43 percent open at Breckenridge.
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