Three Ski Patrol Members Die After Falling into Volcanic Fissure

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1816676&page=1

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif., April 7, 2006- Three members of a ski patrol were
killed when two plunged into a volcanic fissure at the Mammoth Mountain
resort and the third fell trying to rescue them, a resort official said.
Four other would-be rescuers were hospitalized for exposure to carbon
dioxide and were doing well late Thursday, said Rusty Gregory, chief
executive officer of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area.

The Mono County coroner has not determined whether the ski patrol members
died from the 21-foot fall or from inhaling toxic fumes.

The victims were part of a four-man team inspecting the mountain after
heavy snowstorms and fencing off the rock's gap, Gregory said. The snow
collapsed under two patrollers and they fell into the fissure on the
11,053-foot peak in the Eastern Sierra.

"It's likely the heat from the gas vent eroded the snow and didn't support
the weight of the patrollers working on the fence," he said.

The other two patrollers saw their colleagues fall and came to help, but
one of them also fell in, Gregory said.

The fourth person used a rope to lower himself into the hole and was
overcome by gas, but three other responders pulled him out, he said. That
patroller survived.

The three who died had multiple years of experience, the most senior with
more than 20 years, and they were working carefully because of the heavy
snow, Gregory said.

"It's not like they were out there cowboying," he said.

The resort and local officials did not release names of the victims.

One of the dead, however, was identified as Walter Rosenthal, a researcher
at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who jumped in to help his
fellow patrollers, said UCSB spokesman Paul Desruisseaux.

Rosenthal, who was in his 40s, worked at the Sierra Nevada Aquatic
Laboratory in Mammoth Lakes and was an expert in snow hydrology and remote
sensing of snow. He was also identified as the snow and avalanche analyst
for Mammoth Mountain.

The role that gas might have played in the deaths was uncertain, but
Mammoth Lakes Mayor Rick Wood said a police detective told him that "the
level of carbon monoxide inside this cavity was extremely high."

Gregory said there were no recent increases in gas release.



The mountain, about a six-hour drive north of Los Angeles, is popular with
skiers from Southern California. The peak towers over a dramatic landscape
in a volcanically active region, but the region has been quiet for six
years, said Dave Hill, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo
Park.



The accident was not related to any volcanic activity, he said.



It was the latest in a string of accidents at Mammoth, where four skiers
have died in a season marked by a record 52 feet of snowfall since October.
The latest deaths quickly became the talk of the slopes and around this
close-knit community of 7,600 residents.



"It's just guys doing a job and it's just an accident," said Shon
Eastridge, a gas station clerk. "They were just trying to protect other
people's lives and they lose their own."


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