http://www.lohud.com/article/2009912110354
Chappaqua family mourns skier killed
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CHAPPAQUA — Alex Singer loved the outdoors and loved Boulder, Colo., so much that it was sometimes hard to get him to come home or visit relatives in Chicago, his family said.
"He spent the majority of his time mountain biking, camping, skiing and hiking, especially once he got to Colorado," said his older brother, George Singer, 27, of Chicago. "He never wanted to come home."
Alex Singer, 22, grew up in Chappaqua, and the student of ecology, biology and physics at the University of Colorado was starting to come into his own and making plans to go to work for the ski patrol when he was found dead Wednesday at the Wolf Creek Ski Area in southwest Colorado.
Singer, who was on an ungroomed trail, died of suffocation and hypothermia after falling into a tree well, the column of shallow snow that forms at the base of a tree, Mineral County (Colo.) Coroner Charles Downing said.
Another skier saw skis sticking out of the snow Wednesday and Singer buried head first in the tree well, Downing said.
Singer most likely fell Tuesday, after buying a half-day pass for Wolf Creek, which saw more than 4 feet of new snow fall this week.
His brother said that by falling into a tree well surrounded by powder snow, Singer would have had a hard time pulling himself up.
"He was unlucky, and it's unfortunate," George Singer said. "I don't think he was doing anything reckless. ... He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Friends and family gathered at his parents' Millwood Road home Thursday to offer their condolences.
His mother, Susan Singer, 58, a teacher at Nyack High School, said the family often would ski together, and Alex was adept on the slopes and comfortable in deep powder.
"He had been skiing since he had been in diapers," she said.
Singer, who was studying to be an ecologist, relished nature and science, she said, noting that she remembered walking around the New York Botanical Garden with him. He would point out the trees, leaves and insects, expertly identifying each of them and their origins.
"It was his passion," she said. "Everything outdoors was his passion."
After college, he had planned to work for the ski patrol for a year.
"He wanted to do it because he wanted to have the most interaction with people in the outdoors," said George Singer, who himself worked on the ski patrol after college but described his brother as the better skier.
"I couldn't keep up," George Singer said. "He would have been a more technically adept skier."
Alex Singer's family last saw him at Thanksgiving when they gathered with relatives in Chicago.
They said they last spoke to him Sunday, and had not known he had gone missing from the slopes until his body was found.
In addition to his mother and brother, Singer is survived by his father, Lewis; three aunts, Ruth Singer, Carolyn Clark and Abigail Bienkowski; and many cousins.
