Skier who died in Tahoe was doing what he loved
Whether it was in California’s Sierra Nevada or Vermont’s Green Mountains, Kye Moffat’s infectious smile and conscientious demeanor were known to touch the lives of the people around him.
The 25-year-old Berkeley and Truckee resident was passionate about the work he was doing at his first job out of college and enjoying the outdoors with his buddies when his life was cut short April 23. At the end of a day spent teaching a friend how to ski at Palisades Tahoe in North Lake Tahoe, Moffat died that Saturday in a skiing accident.
“Kye died at the end of a beautiful spring day doing one of the things he loved most in the world with a large group of friends from the many spheres of his life at a place he had never not known,” his family wrote in a statement. “He will be greatly missed.”
Moffat was traversing the mountain inbounds after spending much of the day on the bunny slopes to get to the house where he and his friends were staying. A storm had pummeled the area with snow just days before, and as he skied along the closed Sunnyside trail, he hit some rocks “that he did not anticipate being there because of the unusual storm cycle” and “fluke snow conditions,” his older brothers, Corey and Keith Moffat, told The Chronicle.
Moffat’s cause of death is still under investigation, but he appears to have died from blunt head trauma, Corey Moffat said. He was not wearing a helmet, which was surprising, his brothers said, because he took mountain safety so seriously; he had worked as a ski patroller for three years during college in Vermont.
Moffat, born in Berkeley, grew up skiing the trails at Squaw Valley — which changed its name to Palisades last year — with his family. They own a house in Truckee and spent most weekends there between December and May.
By the time Moffat graduated from Berkeley High School, he had become an “immensely skilled” and “elegant” skier, Corey Moffat said.
“Kye was on the mountain from the time he was born, basically,” Keith Moffat said.
As a child, Moffat spent about a decade in the Mighty Mites youth ski program at Squaw Valley. He was a “top competitor” on the Squaw Valley Ski Team as a teenager, racing in several states at the International Ski Federation level, according to his family.
He also excelled on the Mersey and Mavericks soccer clubs in the East Bay and forwent scholarships at UC Berkeley to play on the men’s varsity soccer team at Middlebury, where he helped the Panthers compete in three NCAA Division III championship tournaments as a striker and center back. He also chose Middlebury because of its proximity to ski slopes, his brothers said.
In Vermont, Moffat became a ski patroller at the Middlebury College Snow Bowl while he majored in geology.
“He clearly had a love for being outside, and he had a natural curiosity,” said Kristina Walowski, a former assistant professor at Middlebury who tought Moffat and served as his thesis adviser.
She recalled how Moffat was one of the first students who walked into her office when she was hired at Middlebury in 2017. He told her how excited he was about geology. His smile said a lot about the kind of young man he was, Walowski said: “a positive and joyous person, constantly enthusiastic.”
In 2018, Walowski took Moffat and other students to Lassen Volcanic National Park to do some sampling for their research. The Carr Fire was burning nearby at the time and the air quality was hazardous, Walowski said.
“The experience and vibe of the trip could’ve been absolutely terrible,” Walowski said. But “one of the reasons that trip was still fun and good was because Kye was there. He’s so enthusiastic, so helpful, but he’s also just positive … There was never this dark cloud hanging over the trip.”
At dinners Walowski hosted for students, Moffat took time to make underclassmen feel comfortable, she said. He enjoyed his classes and was passionate about the environment and climate change.
After graduating, Moffat accepted a job at the Berkeley company Deep Isolation, which aims to develop solutions to the challenges of nuclear waste disposal. He was happy there as a senior technical and product analyst, and he was passionate about the work, Keith Moffat said.
“He cared deeply about other people’s well-being and was always thinking about how to support people in the ways that were most unique to them,” Corey Moffat said. “He was like a big kid, in the best way possible. He was happy, he was joyous, he brought a lot of life to his groups, his friends, his family, and was always down for a good time with a big smile.”