Family: Vail Misled Officials About Fatal Slide

The family of a teen killed in an avalanche at Vail Mountain last year says there is “substantial evidence” that employees have given misleading information, altered documents and failed to do slide mitigation work.

According to depositions obtained by The Denver Post, Vail’s ski patrol director wrongly led a state agency to believe that the resort had done avalanche mitigation on the Prima Cornice trail in the weeks before 13-year-old Taft Conlin was killed. A ski patroller also didn’t think the times of mitigation work reportedly done the morning of the fatal slide were accurate either, according to the documents.

The lawyer for Conlins’ parents filed a motion Wednesday seeking punitive damages as a result.

A Vail spokeswoman says the suggestion that anyone lied or deliberately misled anyone is “absolutely false.”