Oceanside skier found buried in deep snow on Mammoth Mountain dies

OCEANSIDE —  A 52-year-old skier from Oceanside died this week after he was discovered upside down and unconscious in deep snow on Mammoth Mountain, authorities said.

Other skiers and snowboarders at the Central California ski resort found the man, whose name has not been released, around noon Thursday, and began digging him out while calling for help from the Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol, according to a statement from Lauren Burke, a spokeswoman for the resort.

Members of the ski patrol tried to revive the man, who was unconscious and did not have a pulse, using CPR and defibrillator shocks, Burke said. They continued CPR until the man was transferred to an ambulance and medics took him to Mammoth Hospital.

Doctors at the hospital pronounced him dead, according to Burke and Mono County sheriff’s spokeswoman Sarah Roberts.

The skier’s cause of death was under investigation Friday, Roberts said in a statement.

Burke said the ski resort received more than seven feet of snow between Tuesday and noon Thursday, when the skier was found near the intersection of two trails known as Hully Gully and Redwing, not far from the bottom of the mountain on its eastern slope.

In a Thursday morning Facebook post, the resort had warned skiers about the risk of becoming buried and suffocating in snow, saying the “danger is very real today.” The post warned skiers and snowboarders to stay with partners and “avoid the base of trees and if you’re going to fall, attempt to do so feet first.”