12-year-old critically injured in Maine ski resort’s second serious accident involving a child in a week
A 12-year-old “ski racer” is in critical condition after crashing while skiing at a mountain resort in Maine on Sunday morning.
Fire department officials said the boy had lost control after hitting rough ground and disconnected from his skis, before tumbling into the woods at high speed.
The incident happened on the Allagash Trail at the Black Mountain resort in Rumford, Maine, about 1,200 ft above sea level in the Western Maine Mountains.
It comes barely one week after a 9-year-old girl was found unconscious on a trail at the same resort, and airlifted to hospital with suspected head trauma.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of the young ski racer who was injured this morning skiing on the Allagash trail,” said the Black Mountain resort on Facebook Sunday.
“The skier was transported to the patrol room and left via ambulance to Rumford Hospital by Med-Care. That is all the information that we can provide.”
Mike Arsenault, deputy chief of the Rumford Fire Department, told local broadcaster News Center Maine: “A skier had caught what appeared to be mud or a rock or whatnot, and came out of their skis and then went into the woods at a pretty good rate of speed.
“It’s been warmer weather, so the snow becomes real like marbly and mealy type conditions, and it’s almost like skiing on ice.”
A spokesperson for the fire department told The Independent on Monday that there were no further updates on the child’s condition, but that he had been taken by ambulance to Rumford Hospital and then airlifted to the Maine Medical Center in Portland.
Eight days earlier, on Saturday February 28, a nine-year-old girl was found unconscious on a ski trail at Black Mountain by her family, who then called 911.
Although there were no witnesses to what happened, fire officials said she had likely been involved in a collision and that she was in and out of consciousness after being rescued.
“It’s hard to guess, but in my eyes, the patient was in critical condition,” Arsenault said at the time.
