MAMMOTH LAKES — Rescuers who tried to save two ski patrollers who fell into a crevasse formed by a volcanic vent at Mammoth Mountain said Saturday that they found themselves confronted with a danger they did not expect.
"We had worked around this thing for years, and I think our initial response didn't take into account that it was a toxic environment," said ski patroller Steve McCabe. "We were looking at this as a traumatic injury from a fall."
For as long as Mammoth Mountain ski patrollers can remember, the vent, or fumarole, on the Christmas Bowl ski run has been a quirk of the landscape, its poisonous fumes dissipating harmlessly into the air. But trapped by record snowfall, the fumes had concentrated to a lethal level.
In an interview at ski patrol headquarters at the main lodge, McCabe and ski patroller John McGrath offered the first eyewitness accounts of Thursday's attempts to rescue their two ski patrol colleagues and a third who succumbed when he tried to reach the pair.
The rescue scene, McCabe said, was "controlled chaos" as the patrollers realized that toxic carbon dioxide was the real problem. "You are trained to keep your eye on the big picture," he said, "but when it's your friends you see dying, your emotions take control," he said.
The investigation into the deadly accident continued Saturday as a state workplace safety investigator arrived to learn more about what killed the men. The inspector declined to discuss the probe.
Mammoth Mountain officials said they were conducting their own investigation and expected additional investigations by their insurance company and the U.S. Forest Service.
The ski patrol deaths were the first at Mammoth since the early 1970s, when an employee was killed after an artillery gun used for avalanche control malfunctioned.
Also Saturday, Jeff Bridges, a ski patroller who was overcome by fumes as he tried to reach the three fallen patrollers, was released from Mammoth Lakes Hospital. In a telephone interview, he said he still suffered from pain in his chest, mostly from the pressure of the rope that was tied around his midsection to hoist him out of the crevasse.
"I've lost three of my buddies," Bridges said. "Three of them died, and I'm the one who survived. They weren't just co-workers, they were my friends."
McCabe and McGrath agreed to be interviewed on Saturday, saying they wanted people to understand the tragedy and repeatedly emphasizing that the rescue effort involved many of their colleagues on the ski patrol.
