Fresh call for use of snow sport helmets

The Mountain Safety Council is recommending that all skiers and snowboarders wear helmets. Photo / Thinkstock

The Mountain Safety Council is strongly recommending skiers and snowboarders wear helmets after another fatality at Mount Hutt skifield in Canterbury.

But the council told Radio New Zealand it doesn't want the wearing of helmets made compulsory, but believed there was growing momentum for it to happen.

A Christchurch snowboarder died from injuries after falling about 300 metres at Mt Hutt yesterday, the fourth fatality on the mountain this season.

Council avalanche programme manager Andrew Hobman said opinion remained divided over whether the helmets can prevent injuries or deaths.

However, a woman who died on Mount Hutt this season was wearing a helmet.

The snowboarder, about 30 years old, was with two friends when he slid while traversing back from groomed terrain to the bottom of the Triple chairlift, ski area manager Dave Wilson said.

He appeared to have caught an edge while traversing the area.

His fall, about 11am, took him below the bottom of the chairlift and outside the ski area boundary over rocky outcrops.

The friends alerted ski patrol, who found the man and helped him, Mr Wilson said.

A doctor stabilised him, and he was taken to the Mt Hutt Medical Room before being transferred by Westpac Helicopter to Christchurch Hospital where he later died.

He was not wearing a helmet at the time of the incident, and suffered head injuries.

In July, a 54 year-old Christchurch woman died while skiing with her daughter outside the skifield boundary. A month earlier, a 21-year-old American woman died after injuring herself while skiing, also off-trail.

Also in June, a 60 year-old man died after his car veered off the access road as he was drove home from a day at the mountain.

Before this year, the last fatality was in 2005.

The ski field operator was investigating the accidents, alongside police and the Department of Labour. There were no links between the accidents at this stage.

- NZPA