Letter | Hayden: ‘Lucky to be alive’ — a reflection on the 1976 gondola tragedy
The recent story of Vail’s March 26, 1976, gondola accident corrected a few errors from previous write-ups. One of these was noting that Vail Ski Patrolman Dan Walcher assisted Chupa Nelson on top of tower 5, instead of John Murphy. Having Chupa, as well as Paul Testwuide, who was in charge at the accident site, relate their first-hand experiences made your account more accurate, breath-taking, and interesting.
Having been picked up by a snowcat at the base of Lionshead, I arrived at the accident site with every spare radio collected from Vail executives, food service and mountain ops managers. Those radios would be needed for the massive lift evacuation. Paul Testwuide, Vail Ski Patrol Director at the scene of the accident, ordered me to take the radios and proceed up to the Eagles Nest Patrol Room to join Dennis (Buffalo) Mikottis, who was then dressing for the Gondola Two lift evacuation. While pulling on the overalls worn by the bike riders, Scooby, Roger Hesseltine, called for either Buffalo or myself to attend to a back 10:50, patrol speak for an accident on Simba. Scooby was on phone duty that day. Buffalo, already dressed for the evacuation and senior to me, told me to take it. On that bluebird sunny day with fresh powder, there were many other accidents over the rest of the huge Vail Mountain.
Every off-duty and former VSP, including Byron Brown and Steve Boyd, raced up to ski patrol headquarters to help out. My cousin, Gerry Haskins, had taken the day off and was on Vail Pass on his way home to Silver Plume when he heard on the radio of the accident and returned to assist.
Kudos to you and the Vail Daily.
My book, “Don’t Get Too Comfortable,” which had the original story of the rescue, now includes the rest of the story of my family’s return back to Vail from Pulap Island in Micronesia. In the first edition, of which Randy Wyrick wrote a wonderful review, I didn’t know if I would live after dissecting both of my vertebral arteries. One of the victims in the gondola accident, a student at CU, had the same and was not as lucky. In my condition, every doctor that examined me told me how lucky I was to be alive.
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Robert Buckley
Hayden, Idaho
