Colorado Tragedy Underscores Safety

After a dry and barren December, more than 100 inches of snow has fallen on Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado.

But the tears rolling down residents' cheeks are not those of joy.

The town is in mourning after the tragic deaths last week of Grant Martin, 16, a popular star of the local ski team, and Bob Redman, 63, an avid snowboarder who worked at a local art gallery and funded a program to introduce poor children to the slopes.

They died after colliding last Saturday on a ski run called Doublejack.

Martin had flown off a jump he had negotiated hundreds of times, but this time Redman was standing at the landing point.

The collision was so violent that Martin, who was wearing a helmet, was left in a heap--unconscious and without a pulse or respiration when help arrived.

Redman, suffering from severe internal injuries, was rushed to Vail Valley Medical Center, where he died during surgery.

Barbara Jennings, spokeswoman for Colorado Ski Country USA, a marketing group that represents all but one resort in Colorado, said there are no records of two people dying in the same collision on any of Colorado's ski slopes.

"And I've never heard of anything like that happening anywhere before," she added.

Less than a week earlier, a 24-year-old skier visiting Breckenridge from Seattle was killed during another collision with a snowboarder. It was the fourth accident-related death on Colorado slopes this year. The other involved a skier hitting a tree at Keystone.

That three of the deaths occurred at Breckenridge, and that two of the victims were widely known and well liked was hard for the community to swallow.

An emotional tribute to Martin was held Monday at the site of the collision, and attended mostly by close friends and teammates and coaches of the Team Breckenridge ski team.

About the same time, friends of Redman gathered to console one another at the Village Gallery, where he had worked for 11 years.

That all three of the Breckenridge deaths involved people running into each other brought up all sorts of questions.

Notable among those were whether the resort was doing enough to ensure the safety of its customers, whether too many people are allowed on the slopes, and whether the ski patrol is actively enforcing the mountain's "responsibility code" that skiers and boarders are supposed to abide by.