California has no system to track ski injuries or deaths at its resorts, leaving safety experts, families, and skiers without reliable data to assess slope risk — a gap that has persisted despite multiple fatal incidents this winter and more than a decade of failed legislative attempts to mandate reporting.
In February alone, a 21-year-old skier was found dead on a black diamond run at Northstar California Resort, a fatal collision there followed within two weeks, and an avalanche killed nine backcountry skiers near Lake Tahoe, according to a CalMatters investigation distributed by the Associated Press. Not one of more than two dozen resorts contacted by the outlet responded with accident, injury, or fatality data.
Two governors have vetoed ski-safety reporting requirements over more than 15 years, a third legislative effort died without reaching the governor’s desk, and the ski industry has opposed each attempt — leaving skiers without the data needed to assess the comparative safety of the slopes they pay to visit.
A reporting void that no agency fills
John Rice, president of Ski California, the industry association for ski areas in California and Nevada, said there has been “no indication that there are more injuries this year than previous years — just more media coverage around serious ones.” He may be right, CalMatters reported, but the absence of comprehensive data makes it impossible to confirm either way.
California’s workplace safety agency, Cal/OSHA, oversees ski lifts through its Amusement Ride and Tramway Unit and requires incident reports for injuries that need more than first aid. The slopes themselves fall outside its jurisdiction.
Resorts operating on national forest land must notify the U.S. Forest Service “as soon as practicable” after fatal incidents, catastrophic injuries, search and rescue operations, and similar events. Those reports are difficult to access and can take six months or more to obtain. And not all California resorts operate on national forest land — Northstar California Resort, for example, is largely on private land.
In court, resorts gain additional protection. Ravn Whitington, lead litigation partner at Porter Simon Sierra Injury Lawyers, said waivers and decades of court decisions have established that skiing and snowboarding come with inherent risks. He said case law has not caught up to the changing conditions on the slopes.
A family’s two-decade push
Twenty years ago, Dan Gregorie flew from South Carolina to California to ski with his 24-year-old daughter Jessica. He learned of her accident as he stepped off the plane.
Jessica Gregorie had been carrying her snowboard across a steep traverse from one lift to another slope at Alpine Meadows ski resort near Lake Tahoe. She slipped on an icy surface and slid down the slope, plummeting off a cliff with no fences or guardrails. Her boyfriend watched her slide backwards on her belly, looking up at him.
Jessica Gregorie was an animal lover who had started her own dog care business in San Francisco and had biked across the country from Maine to Washington state to raise money for a women’s shelter. She was her parents’ only child.
“They have a moral obligation to fully inform people as to what the risks are that they’re taking,” Dan Gregorie said. “Most people that go skiing on a weekend expect to come home at the end.”
The waiver Jessica had signed dealt a major blow to the family’s subsequent lawsuit. The court ruled that she had accepted the risks of skiing.
Gregorie, a retired physician who spent his career in health care management, founded the SnowSport Safety Foundation in 2008. He spent more than a decade personally funding a lobbyist to push for transparency legislation in California, Colorado, and Maine. His goal, he said, was not more regulation — it was more information.
Three efforts, three failures
The legislative effort came closest to success in 2010, when California lawmakers passed a bill authored by then-Assemblymember Dave Jones requiring ski resorts to prepare publicly available safety plans and to release monthly reports of fatalities — including cause, location, the age of the person involved, and where medical care was provided.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — who broke his femur in a skiing accident the same year Jessica Gregorie died — vetoed the bill. He said at the time that the requirements duplicated those of the U.S. Forest Service and “may place an unnecessary burden on resorts.”
Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed an almost identical measure the following year, calling it “yet another exercise of the State’s regulatory power for objectives that, in the ordinary course, are handled by private business or the people themselves.”
A third effort — a two-year push to require ski resorts to send monthly accident reports for serious injuries and deaths to the California Department of Public Health — died in the Legislature without reaching the governor’s desk.
Jones, who later served as the state’s insurance commissioner, said the failure has extended now across 16 years.
“It’s disappointing that 16 years have gone by, and it continues to be the case that safety plans and reporting of fatalities or injuries is not required,” Jones said. “I don’t think sticking our head into the sand makes the risk or problem go away.”
The industry’s position
Ski California said it has opposed legislation to increase reporting. Spokesperson Jess Weaver said the legislative efforts attempted to force untenable requirements on ski areas and did not find support from the industry, local legislators, or California governors.
Weaver said ski areas operate in environments with varying terrain, weather conditions, visitation levels, and skier ability, and that raw totals do not accurately reflect safety performance. Weaver added that confidentiality and privacy laws prohibit disclosing details of injuries handled by ski patrol or resort employees.
The industry does collect national totals. Last winter, 63 people suffered catastrophic injuries such as broken necks or backs at ski resorts, and 50 people died, according to the National Ski Areas Association’s annual report. Analyses of a comprehensive state injury database by Gregorie and, separately, the Los Angeles Times two years ago suggested that industry statistics miss thousands of serious accidents requiring emergency room visits or hospitalization.
The ski and snowboard industry in California and Nevada added $1.8 billion to state GDP and $100 million to state and local tax revenue last winter, according to Ski California.
Researchers say data is the missing piece
Without comprehensive resort-level data, scientists say they cannot study how safety risk changes on crowded slopes or as climate conditions shift — questions that have taken on more urgency as ski terrain and snowpack patterns evolve.
“The data is probably the biggest linchpin in really being able to say anything about it,” said Benjamin Hatchett, an earth systems scientist at Colorado State University who grew up skiing near Tahoe.
Gregorie said he has given up on legislation. The SnowSport Safety Foundation is no longer active. He said he has not, however, stopped raising the question with people he encounters.
“When I talk people tell me they’re going skiing, I say to them, ‘Do you know this? Do you know what you’re going into?’” Gregorie said.