This one is more detailed.
'Freak' crash claims life of Crested Butte teen
Asher Crank, a well-known Crested Butte teenager, took a fatal fall while warming up for a freeskiing competition Saturday morning at Copper Mountain's terrain park
.
The 17-year-old, who was wearing a helmet, was on his third warm up run, when a trick jump went wrong and he crashed after catching about 40 feet of air.
"It was just a total freak accident," said Ben Somrak, Asher's freeride skiing coach. "That's a trick he can do."
Somrak, who coaches Asher at the Crested Butte Academy, was shadowing Asher down the warm-up run to give him tips for the competition.
Asher landed backward off his first jump and stayed backward to go into his second jump, where he attempted a "switch 540" – meaning that he would start off backwards and then do one and a half twists in the air before landing.
As he spun through the air, he either under-rotated or over-rotated and came down after completing a 360-degree spin, Somrak said.
"He was a little off balance in the air and I was like, 'Oh, this is going to hurt,'" Somrak recalled.
But Somrak had no idea the crash would be anything unusual.
"We crash every time we go, because that's what we do – we learn by our mistakes," he said.
Asher landed on his feet but his skies were pointed sideways across the slope, instead of downhill. He caught the downhill edge of his ski and slammed over.
"He slapped over and it was loud — it was like a gun shot," Somrak said.
Somrak didn't know if the bang was Asher's head or his ski breaking, and he quickly skied down to check on him.
"I was just like, 'Hey, Asher man, are you all right?'" Somrak said.
"He didn't say anything and I was like, 'Asher, are you okay dude?'"
That's when Somrak noticed blood on the snow.
Somrak is also an emergency medical technician, so he is trained for accidents and began to notice signs that Somrak was in serious trouble.
"He was taking 'agonal' respirations," Somrak said, which he explained is many times someone's last breaths.
"It's not a good sign," he said.
"My first two words were, 'put the helicopter on standby and get the ski patrol,'" Somrak said, describing how he called out to a nearby event official who had a radio.
The call went out at 9:47 a.m. and by 10:50 a.m. Asher was in surgery at St. Anthony Central Hospital.
"It was a great team effort," Somrak said. "To get him to Denver in an hour and three minutes is incredible."
The efficient response, however, didn't make a difference.
Asher had cardiac arrest in the helicopter, but the doctors said he probably didn't have a chance from the moment he fell.
"The doctors told me that he basically died on impact, (that) his brain was done from that second," Somrak said.
"No bones were broken at all," said Keli Massey, who is the partner of Asher's father, Kib Crank. "It was just kind of a freak accident."
The doctors said he died from massive brain trauma, she said.
Somrak said the stunt Asher strived to do on Saturday was well within his repertoire of tricks.
"He takes off backward all the time," he said.
Losing a beloved local
and rising champion
Asher was a senior at the Crested Butte Academy, the town's private college prep school that is specifically geared towards athletes with high competitive ambitions.
"He was one of the best in the country for what he did as a freeride skier," said Academy Headmaster Graham Frey. "Traditionally, he was at he top of the podium almost every time he competed."
Asher had been freeskiing for about five years and was ranked nationally.
"He started out as a ski racer and he just wanted a little more excitement," Massey said.
Freeskiing is a style of skiing that pushes skiers to the limits to
perform on rails, jumps, half-pipes and steep slopes. It inherently
carries high risks and demands big talent and lots of practice.
Asher began skiing competitively when he was four years old, racing for the CB Cyclones ski team and later for the Crested Butte Ski Club.
Asher's father said Asher was "climbing the ranks as a freeskier."
According to Kib, Somrak had recently said this could be Asher's break-through year, because Asher had a new "bag of tricks."
When Asher crashed on Saturday, he had been warming up for a freeskiing event called "slopestyle" in the Copper Series, but he was actually preparing for a bigger goal — the U.S. Freeskiing Open that took place on Tuesday at Copper.
Headmaster Frey said Asher "lived to ski and be on the snow."
"If you asked Asher about being a student, he would have said that 'skiing was his thing,'" Frey said. "He was a good student in the fall and spring and in the winter he concentrated on skiing and he excelled at that."
But Frey also said that Asher "had a lot of intellectual depth."
He appreciated learning and had a love for art history, he said.
Sally Brown Crank, Asher's grandmother, said Asher had ambitions to be an Olympic competitor in freeride skiing.
But there was also a new goal on Asher's horizon.
He had been planning to take a year off after graduating from the
academy to compete and figure out his next steps, his father said.
But recently, Asher started filling out college applications.
"It was a really pleasant surprise," Kib said.
Asher is a native to Crested Butte and was well known and endeared in the community.
Asher's family and friends describe him as outgoing, fun loving,
fearless, "super laid back" and extremely loyal to his friends.
"He was one of the really beloved children of Crested Butte," said
Frey. "This is a boy who's grandfather (Bill Crank) was town manager and The Secret Stash (a local pizza place) has a pizza named after him."
Asher was very popular among his peers, and Frey said he had deep friendships and a "quiet leadership component to him."
On Sunday night the academy held a candlelight vigil for Asher to allow a time of reflection for friends and family.
Kib said Asher's death has been especially hard on Asher's mother, Stephanie Watkins.
"She's taking it pretty tough," Kib said. "They had a real special bond."
