SEBOOMOOK TOWNSHIP – Excessive speed was to blame for a Sunday morning snowmobile accident involving a Massachusetts man, Maine Warden Service officials said.

“If you could take away speed- and alcohol-related accidents, you’d still have your freak accidents, but the number of injuries would decrease dramatically,” Greenville District Game Warden Adam Gormely said.

Chris Serrogano, 22, of Wakefield, Mass., was taken by LifeFlight helicopter to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor after suffering injuries to his back, Gormely said.

Serrogano had been leading a group of friends on an ungroomed, packed-powder trail between the Golden Road and 490 Road while traveling between 60 and 70 mph when he failed to make a turn to the left.

The Massachusetts man rolled the sled onto its side in a last-second attempt to make the turn and was launched 15 feet from his seat into a group of small alder trees, Gormely said. Alcohol was not a factor in the accident.

Members from the group of about six people from Massachusetts found Serrogano moments later and contacted officials by cellular phone, Gormely said. Serrogano was carried more than 300 yards to the nearby 490 Road where he was picked up by the helicopter.

The group had been staying at a camp in Rockwood and was coming from the Pittston area during a day of snowmobile riding, Gormely said. Trails in the area that are not part of the Interstate Trail System still have around 2 feet of snow.

“ITS trails are icy and very bare,” the warden said. “All the snowmobiles that go over the ITS trails compact the snow right down into ice. The good trails to ride are the ones off the ITS system right now.”

Serrogano’s 2000 Arctic Cat had minor damage, Gormely said. No one else was involved in the accident.

Four of the five wardens on duty Sunday in northwestern Maine were summoned to the scene, leaving officials feeling uneasy at the prospect of an accident somewhere else and of another snowmobile death during what already has been a record-tying winter for deaths.

“It wasn’t 70-mile-per-hour conditions on that trail, more like 35 to 40,” Gormely said. “What if something else had happened in Jackman?

“He’s lucky to be alive. He’s lucky he wasn’t number 13.”