Fence to stay after fatal sledding accident
Sledding on Mount Charleston can be chaotic and dangerous. There are trees, hard-packed snow, the roadway, other sledders.
At least three people have died sledding on the mountain in the past six years, including 11-year-old Vanesa Lara on Tuesday. She hit a fence that was supposed to make sledding safer.
A few years ago, Clark County officials tried to do something about the dangerous conditions.
They went to the Meadows play area, which the county owns. Up the road, the U.S. Forest Service controls the popular Foxtail area. But it costs money to park there. Lots of people prefer the Meadows for sledding.
So county officials removed a few trees and filled in a drainage ditch so emergency personnel could get to injured sledders more quickly.
Two years ago, they installed a safety fence, the kind made of orange plastic netting like you would see at a ski resort. They put up signs warning sledders of the danger. The signs said not to go past the fence.
The point was to keep sledders from going too far up the hill, where it can be really dangerous.
There are lots of trees up that high, and speeds on packed snow are too great.
But the fence did not last.
"Vandals took it down on the first day of snow season," said Erik Pappa, a spokesman for the county. "The whole point of the fence was obviously to keep people from going beyond it."
After that first fence was destroyed, officials put in another fence, this one made of wood.
It lasted only a week before vandals destroyed it.
They decided to make it impossible for that to happen again.
They installed a 9-foot-tall steel fence that could not be removed by vandals.
That is the fence Vanesa hit.
Police said her parents were with her on the mountain and that she was riding on the sled with another child. The other child was not injured, but the impact with the fence tore a blood vessel going to Vanesa's heart, killing her.
Pappa said that despite the tragedy, there are no plans to remove the fence or replace it.
Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.
