Snowboarder dies in Mt Hutt fall

Photo / Miles Holden

A Christchurch man has died from injuries after falling about 300 metres at Mt Hutt Ski Area this morning, the third skiing fatality on the mountain this season.

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.

There was no change to the ski field's processes in evacuating injured people, and there was no indication that time taken was a factor in today's accident.

He was found a matter of minutes after the accident, and the helicopter was waiting in the carpark to fly him to hospital by the time he was taken down.

"This has hit our patrollers very hard and the entire management and staff at Mt Hutt are devastated, to say the least," Mr Wilson said.

The man's name will not be released until next of kin have been notified.

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.

"We'll look at everything that we've been doing, and make sure if there's anything that we can improve, or any additional information we should be giving out to people or anything we can do to mitigate that," he told NZPA.

- NZPA