Taos High School freshman badly injured after tumbling from chairlift.

Andre Bertoncin, 15, suffered massive external and internal injuries after falling more than 20 feet from a chairlift at Taos Ski Valley Resort around noon on Monday, the Taos News reported on its Web site.

Bertoncin, a freshman at Taos High School, suffered a ruptured spleen, a lacerated liver, six broken ribs with some bleeding in the chest, a small lung puncture, contusions to the heart and kidney, fractured lower back, a broken pelvis and split tailbone, his stepfather, Dr. Timothy Quigley Peterson, told the Taos News.

Peterson, as it happens, was on call at the Mogul Medical Urgent Care Clinic at Taos Ski Valley when his stepson was brought in following the accident, according to the paper.

Bertoncin was taken to Holy Cross Hospital in Taos, then airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital Level 1 Trauma Center in Albuquerque. He is expected to remain at UNM Hospital for about six weeks, the Taos News reported.

"He is over the critical phase," Bertoncin's stepfather told the paper. "Still, as a parent and a physician, this is everyone's worst nightmare."

No explanation was given for how Bertoncin fell from the chairlift.

A spokesman for Taos Ski Valley told the paper he couldn't recall the last time such an unusual accident happened.

"Fortunately, this kind of thing doesn't happen very often," Chris Stagg, the ski valley's vice president of marketing, told the paper.

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