If you leave the ski area, with or without boundary markers you are on your own.

If your parents sue because you died outside of the ski area, they are just publicizing your bad decisions.

A family from New York is suing Idaho and Wyoming sheriff’s departments and search and rescue units for failing to rescue their son. It appears that the ski area may be facing suit also. The son skied outside of the boundaries of a ski area and got lost. He notified a sheriff’s dispatcher using his cell phone but died before he could be found.

Now his family is suing for “botched the rescue attempt in January and failed to communicate with Wyoming rescuers trying to locate Fitzgerald after he went outside Grand Targhee Resort boundaries, which the claim says were not adequately marked.”

It is sad when someone is injured or dies. However, leaving a ski resort without adequate knowledge, skill, gear and equipment is just stupid. Doing so when you do not know where you are going is also dumb.

Maybe New Yorker’s just don’t understand the west. While working at a resort in Summit County years ago I was summoned to the clinic. As I walked in I heard yelling from one of the examination rooms. As I walked in the eyes, and arms indicated that the yelling was coming from the room where I was needed.

As I walked through the curtain the person was upset because no one would help her get to her hotel room. She was threatening to call a cab. That alone made me grin, at the time there were no cabs in Summit County. She would have waited several hours for a cab to arrive from Denver. I inquired where she was from, (NY) and told her I was there to help. After about 5 minutes of additional yelling, she explained her predicament; swollen ankle, no shoes and ski boots. We got a pick up and took her the 80 yards to her hotel.

She was applying New York knowledge and logic to her predicament. She did not know where she was and had no idea how to deal with the situation except to insist that someone else solve her problems. You have to be a little more self reliant in the West.

• Yelling does not work in the mountains, even if you are lost.
• Calling a cab in the mountains does not work.
• Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are not New York.
• Lost is not a TV show in the west, it is a good way to die.
• Suing does not bring your dead daughter back.

The only thing a lawsuit might do is make the next lost person die because volunteers did not want to put their lifestyle on the line to save your butt.

See Family of dead skier files lawsuit against Idaho rescue teams

Copyright 2010 Recreation Law (720) Edit Law, Recreaton.Law@Gmail.com

© 2010 James H. Moss

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