British Man dies in Italian ski resort

A snowHead

Lizzard, firm but fair... please let's not get into princess Di syndrome faux emotion

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

You need to Login to know who's really who.

I have to agree with Latchigo, that out of respect for the guy involved in the accident and, perhaps more relevantly, his family and friends, name calling on an internet forum is a bit low. Speaking from personal experience, I can assure you that reading criticism of your loved one made by complete strangers who are not in possession of the full facts surrounding an accident is heartbreaking and does not help anyone.

Please think before you type and respond bearing in mind that this could easily be your friend or family member and how you would feel reading these types of post.

So my sincere condolences to Mr Monk's family and friends and hopefully a wake up call to others that alcohol+snow is not the best mix, tragic that this has proved the case.

Best wishes to all, have fun in the snow but please take care.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Lizzard's tolerance threshold is very low after the baby talk last week. Laughing

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FigJam, welcome to snowHeads. An excellent post and my sympathies are with you. I'm not sure that, if I had a family member who had been hurt or killed in an accident in the snow, I would be brave enough to look at a snowsport forum at all, let alone contribute in such a measured and thoughtful way as you have done. It must be painful enough reading inaccurate and insensitive newspaper reports, without subjecting oneself to the free-for-all zoo that is an internet forum. Thank you for bothering to post - your comment will certainly encourage me to be more careful how to express myself in future, not least because you expressed yourself so quietly and without rancour.

After all it is free

Hurtle- Thank you for the kind words. I think what is frustrating and upsetting is seeing the comments from people who should know better (not that the "armchair critics" posting on the Scotsman/Daily Mail websites are any less hurtful), and may very well one day be in a similar situation. Everyone knows that the press will report from whatever angle they like and this is often far from the truth.

It's the age old "treat others as you would like to be treated" that I think we forget about when the internet and forums make us so anonymous- how many people would make the same comments when face to face with the persons family or friends?

I know that friends and family are more than likely to come across these types of threads or forums, whether intentional or not. In my friend's case, his parents and close friends most definitely found comfort in the kind thoughts and condolences expressed- both by people who knew him and others who simply shared the same passion for the outdoors.

Red 27 - please see my comments above. As a community with a shared interest to the person involved in this accident, it obviously will catch our attention and make us think twice about what we do and I am genuine in saying that I hope his family and friends can come to terms with such a tragic, out of the blue accident.

If there is anything to be served by posting in a news of this kind it would be to alert the fellow skiers about such event.

Sending condolence is for friends and relatives.

A loss of life is always tragic and nobody would deny it.

However fellow skiers may wish to know/understand if the loss of life was accidental that can happen to themselves, random due to pure lack of luck, regular as it is a risk everyone must take if going skiing , avoidable if one's level of skill is just slightly better, inflicited by a third party outside the victim's control, self-inflicited due to a momentary bad judgement or inexperience or simply a result under influence of drug or alcohol.

All the above has little to do with with us personally.

The level of interest I think is more to do with the direct reuslt of somebody stripping off a safety packing/mattress installed to crushion the impacts by skiers accidentaly run into an obstruction.

If this thread is to have any value to the snowheads it would be bringing out an live example of the consequence of such act. This thread at least documents some snowheads have participated in similar activities in the past.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

Before people get too sanctimonious, is the story disputed? If not why should we have any more sympathy for a drunk middle aged vandal than for a 20 yr old car thief who kills himself at the wheel?

If we were dealing with a child here it might be different, but this does sound like a Darwin awards candidate

snow reports

stoatsbrother,

I suppose if a resort is poorly maintained, say there are safety mattress missing, loosely lying around and not properly fixed to the stationary objects inside the piste, there would be a strong temptation by the resort owner to blame someone has stripped the mattress out, used it to sled down a piste and crashed into the same obstruction from which he removed the mattress. That way the resort can deny responsibility if it is sued for negligence. That would not surprised us and the local information certainly goes this way. If a skier dies as result of the resort failing to protect his/her against the known and obvious danger then we expect the victim's family to sue the resort for compensation. Thus the question to many snowheads here who visited this resort before would be "Was the mattress poorly maintained, omitted and easily removed there?"

The story in Telegraph yesterday quoted one of the surviors saying they did not remove the mattress. Kids were already playing with it. Pressumably the kids surrendered the mattress to them or arranged they could have the use of it. Thus the group did went down in a mattress sourced from the safety crushions installed on stationary objects for the protection of the piste users. This has never been disputed.

The Telegraph quoted the rescue service identified the mattress in question was removed from the stationary object that the victim crashed into. Pressumably there was sufficient evidence to support it if omission of mattress was not widespread. I suppose the rescue services should be of a high standard like our paramedics here and their words carry weight.

The information from various sources appear to be consistent that it was beyond doubt a safety mattress was being used and the object crashed into had its safety crushion removed. Also as there were more than one injuried in the same incident so it was most likely several of them went down as a group and so the matress had to be large or long enough to accommodate at least three adults, making it easily identifiable and the downhill momentum would be more deadly (due to the charging down force increased several times, each time by the addition of one adult). The information suggests one of the adult was reported walking away in blood, one died, one hospitalised and one discharged.

Any experienced skier would know that the weight can assist speed. Children being small with short skis cannot ski fast like adults. To sled down a slope as a group on a plastic material with no control of direction and speed is technically a suicide. This huge downhill force can be proved by physics taught in any high school. Children may be able to do it without injury but in the case of adults the same act can be lethal. I really hope snowheads reading this thread get this message.

If my information is inaccurate please point out.

You know it makes sense.

saikee, not so much inaccurate as 100% speculation (in which I include reliance on newspaper sources.)

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

Hurtle,

You could be right that it is a 100% speculation.

To complete the rest of the speculation here are some numbers. Not that I want to open up the subject but I feel the danger should be pointed out. If I made mistakes then it won't hurt but at least I've done my part to bring it to others' attention.

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When an object is about to slide down a slope its vertical weight can be replaced by or resolved into two components of forces. One is perpendicular to the sliding surface and the other is parallel to it.

The sliding surface has friction and the magnitude of the frictional force is often expressed as

Frictional force = force acting perpendicular to the sliding surface x coefficient of friction of the sliding face.

For a rock sliding a rock face (or soil against soil) the coefficient of friction is about 0.3. I have read the coefficient of friction of snow is about 0.1 as the snow particles can act as loose layer to aid the sliding action. The 0.1 is just an estimate as depending on how the piste is prepared and compacted but 0.01 has been quoted whereas wet snow is known to have a figure of around 0.14. Thus the figure 0.1 is conservative for an object sliding down a snow slope on a plastic sheet.

For a French slope used by beginners and early intermediates my estimate of the slope is 10 to 12 degrees. A 10 degree slope will therefore has 1 horizontal, 0.176 vertical and 1.015 diagonal.

For a 70kg adult sitting on a plastic sheet on a 10 degree slope the force perpendicular to the slope, parallel to the slope and the frictional resistance to prevent a downward motion can be computed to be 69.965, 12.138 and 6.996kg respectively. As the downward force, the one parallel to the slope which is 12.138kg, is larger than the frictional resistance of 6.996kg and so the adult's sliding down motion is guaranteed as the all of the frictional resistence can be overcome. The speed of the adult's descend depend on the force available for the acceleration which is the difference between the force parallel to the slope and the friction, or 12.138-6.996 = 5.142kg. The unit quoted here is the mass weight. The force unit can be obtain by multiplying the mass with the gravitational constant 9.807m/s/s and is expressed as Newtons. Talking about the mass as the force isn't straight correct but may be easier for everybody to understand.

In the above simplist analysis, which may not fully simulate the actual motion but good enough to show the key features, the downhill force is proportional to the weight of the adult. Thus a child doing the same act at 1/3 of the adult weight would have only 1/3 of the downhill force for the acceleration.

At the opposite end if the plastic mattress carries 4 adults each has 70kg weight then the downhill force will be 4 times of the single adult.

Thus the above model would suggest 4 adults travelling on one plastic mattress together on a 10 degree slope can potentially have a total of about 20kg of acceleration force available for the descend. If the motion comes to a complete halt by a statioary object then that object has to resist or absorb the 20kg. The reaction equal to reaction law means the 4 adults would have to experience an impact of a 20kg freely dropped onto their bodies.

The above is just an speculation on the magnitude but the underlying mechanism and risk of the sliding down a snow slope by several adults ballasted onto a single mattress should remain unchanged.

Help!!

British Man dies in Italian ski resort

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