Crime & Safety
8 Skiers Dead, 1 Still Missing In CA's Deadliest Avalanche
The skiers were on the final day of a three-day excursion when the avalanche hit. They have been missing in heavy snow for nearly 24 hours.
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UPDATE: Eight backcountry skiers are dead, and one is still missing, following what has become California's deadliest avalanche.
The missing skier is presumed dead, deputies said. Six other skiers — four men and two women — were rescued Tuesday evening as emergency crews faced rugged, snowy terrain and the threat of more avalanches, according to the Nevada County Sheriff's Office.
Authorities said the skiers had little time to react.
“Someone saw the avalanche, yelled ‘Avalanche!’ and it overtook them rather quickly,” said Capt. Russell “Rusty” Greene, of the Nevada County sheriff’s office.
Survivors were already searching for their missing by the time authorities arrived. They had located three dead before search and rescue crews found the remaining five, deputies said.
The victims, including three guides, were found fairly close together, Greene said. The dead and missing include seven women and two men, ranging in ages from 30 to 55. The crews have not yet been able to remove the victims from the mountain because of the extreme conditions, the sheriff said.
The group of 15 skiers, consisting of guides from Blackbird Mountain Guides, a ski tour company, and several clients, was on the final day of a three-day backcountry trek in Northern California's Sierra Nevada Mountains. They were in the Castle Peak area near Truckee when the avalanche swept toward them at around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Deputies say that, given the extreme weather conditions, search and rescue crews arrived at the avalanche site by 5:30 p.m. Crews were able to get a snowcat two miles from the site before having to ski the rest of the way, deputies said during a news conference Wednesday morning.
To stay warm, survivors assembled a shelter and used whatever equipment they had. Search and rescue crews were able to get the six survivors back to safety, including two who could not walk after suffering injuries in the avalanche, deputies said.
The two injured individuals both had non-life-threatening injuries. One has since been released while the other is still recovering at the hospital, deputies said.
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Authorities are still working to recover the bodies of the dead skiers from the backcountry, as weather and avalanche conditions have made it unsafe for a response team to deploy out there. The dead and missing include seven women and two men, deputies said.
Authorities were waiting to release the victims' names to give the families time. “They’re still reeling,” Nevada County Sheriff Shannan Moon said . “I could not imagine what they’re going through.”
Moon said investigators would look into the decision to proceed with the trip on Sunday despite the forecast for a major storm. That morning at 6:49 a.m., the Sierra Avalanche Center issued an avalanche watch, indicating that large avalanches were likely in the next 24 to 48 hours.
The center increased the watch to a warning hours before the avalanche hit. It’s not known if the guides would have known about the warning before they ventured out.
The threat of new avalanches remains a serious risk in the area through Thursday. The Sierra Avalanche Center recommends people avoid traveling in the backcountry.
"Horrific conditions, just white-out conditions," deputies said, describing the weather in the Central Sierra. "It's a known area where we have a lot of missions, search and rescue missions."
The area near Donner Summit is one of the snowiest places in the Western Hemisphere and until just a few years ago was closed to the public. It sees an average of nearly 35 feet (10 meters) of snow a year, according to the Truckee Donner Land Trust, which owns a cluster of huts where the group was staying near Frog Lake.
Three to 6 feet (0.9 to 1.8 meters) of snow has fallen since Sunday. The area was also hit by subfreezing temperatures and gale force winds. The Sierra Avalanche Center said the threat of more avalanches remained Wednesday and left the snowpack unstable and unpredictable in an area known for its steep, craggy cliffs.
This is California's deadliest avalanche in modern history, surpassing the 1982 avalanche in Alpine Meadows, which killed seven people. It's also the fourth deadliest in United States history. The deadliest are the Wellington Avalanche, which killed 96 people in 1910 in Washington, and the Palm Sunday Avalanche in Alaska that killed 65 in 1898.
Before Tuesday, six people had been killed in avalanches this year in the United States. Last month, a snowmobile died after being buried in an avalanche at Castle Peak, just north of Donner Summit, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
The avalanche on Tuesday was about a mile from where the snowbiler was caught, deputies said.
Castle Peak, a 9,110-foot (2,800-meter) mountain north of Donner Summit, is a popular backcountry skiing destination.
The summit, which can be perilous in snow, is named for the infamous Donner Party, a group of pioneers who resorted to cannibalism after getting trapped there in the winter of 1846-1847.
AP News contributed to this report.
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