CARRABASSETT VALLEY – A New Hampshire man who snowboarded into a tree at Sugarloaf ski resort Saturday is expected to make a full recovery after a LifeFlight helicopter crew saved his life, the man’s father said Tuesday.
Grant Jones, of Bedford, N.H., said surgeons believe his son, Nicholas Jones, 24, would have died without a mid-flight blood transfusion he received en route to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston.
“Based on the knowledge I received from the initial surgeons, the people in the med-flight saved his life,” Grant Jones said, reached by phone Tuesday at the hospital.
On Saturday, friends discovered Nicholas Jones lying in the snow unconscious after he hit a tree alongside the King’s Landing trail around noon, police said. He was not wearing a helmet.
Ski patrol responded to the accident scene and transported Jones down the mountain in a toboggan, taking him to the Sugarloaf First Aid Clinic near the base lodge.
Paramedics from NorthStar Ambulance took over Jones’ care once he arrived at the clinic, where he was conscious and responsive.
Jones was taken by ambulance to a landing site at the Kingfield fire station, where he was transferred to the helicopter that flew him to the Lewiston hospital.
Grant Jones, 61, said his son remained in critical condition Tuesday, having fractured most of the bones in his face and suffered severe internal injuries, but doctors told the father that his son is expected to make a full recovery.
The incident came shortly after the first skier death at the mountain this winter. A Canadian man who was visiting Sugarloaf with his wife and two children died Thursday after he skied into a tree.
David Morse, 41, of Harmony, Nova Scotia, died shortly after 5 p.m. in an ambulance that was en route to Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington, police said.
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