Avalanche kills skier at Alpine Meadows
Plumas County man dies; second male in hospital
A 34yearold man was killed while skiing Friday morning and another skier was seriously injured when an avalanche unfurled a wave of snow on a run in the Alpine Meadows ski resort near Lake Tahoe, officials said.
Officials with Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows said the avalanche was reported around 10:16 a.m. within an open area of the resort between Scott Chute and Promised Land near Scott Chair. Placer County Sheriff’s Office deputies pronounced one skier dead and identified him as Cole Comstock of Blairsden (Plumas County).
The other skier, identified only as a male, suffered severe lowerbody injuries and was transported to a hospital. No one else was injured.
Officials from several agencies, with the help of technology and avalanche rescue dogs,
concluded a search for any unaccountedfor individuals at about 11:45 a.m. Witnesses said no other people were affected and nobody else was reported missing.
It was the second deadly avalanche in recent weeks at a U.S. ski resort. Two people were killed and several others were injured in a Jan. 7 slide at Idaho’s Silver Mountain Resort.
Inbounds deaths are relatively rare, in large part due to avalanche control measures. The National Ski Areas Association said that as of December, there had been seven inbounds avalanche deaths at U.S. resorts in the past 10 years, not including ski patrollers killed while doing mitigation work.
Officials said they did not know what caused the Alpine Meadows avalanche and were investigating. The slopes around the resort are notoriously prone to avalanches. The resort received about 2 feet of snow Thursday and Friday, and the resort had conducted avalanche mitigation work Friday morning. The area where the avalanche occurred is a broad bowl with steep, cliffed slopes, and is rated a singlediamond run.
“Sometimes that snow can loosen up and just roll down the hill,” said Angela Musallam, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office. “If you get buried under the snow, it is extensively tough to get out.”
Deputies and ski resort officials were working to learn more about what happened, Musallam said, and were treating the incident as an isolated event.
In a social media post, ski resort operations staff said the resort’s upper mountains received more than 2 feet of snow in 24 hours from early Thursday to Friday morning. Just before 7 a.m., the Sierra
Avalanche Center said that “significant drifting of new snow” was occuring near and above the treeline, resulting in snowpack instability. The center warned that there was considerable avalanche danger forecast for all elevations due to the new snow.
One of the causes of avalanches is when there is too much snow too fast, and it’s likely what happened in the case at Alpine Meadows, said Kelly Elder, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado.
“The best thing to do is to let snow set up over time,” Elder said. “Time is your best friend in terms of reducing avalanche hazard after a storm.”
Resort officials conducted avalanche control.
“The entire Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows team, including all of the first responders, extend their deepest sympathies to the family and friends of the deceased,” resort officials said in a statement. “We are working closely with the families of all the affected individuals to ensure their continued care.”
Ski resorts regularly conduct avalanche control on their peaks. Following the logic of igniting controlled burns in the woods to avoid catastrophic forest fires, management involves intentionally triggering slides in avalancheprone areas when skiers aren’t present. Conventional management involves sending ski patrollers to specific spots on a mountain to deposit explosive charges that cause slides.
Alpine Meadows was the site of one of the deadliest avalanches in U.S. history. A massive slide near the ski area in March 1982 killed seven people, including several employees. It struck several buildings, inclulding the main lodge and two chairlifts, and buried the resort’s parking lot.
Although several people have died at the resort in recent years, including a 42yearold ski patrol worker in 2017 who was doing avalanche control on a ridge above Squaw Valley, avalanche deaths are uncommon in the Sierra, where snowpack tends to be stable.
An avalancherelated death at Alpine Meadows occurred in 2012 when a ski patroller, who was part of a team inspecting the Sherwood Bowl area died. Another member of the team tossed an explosive charge onto the slope as part of a safety check, but the ensuing avalanche was much larger than expected and buried the worker, Bill Foster, a 28year veteran of the resort’s ski patrol.
In 2017, Squaw Alpine installed a new system to guard against avalancherelated deaths and injuries, called Gazex. It involves channeling propane gas through a network of large tubes that lead to 18 cannons, called exploders, strategically placed in avalancheprone areas on the resorts’ peaks. The resorts are able to remotely trigger gas explosions whenever they choose. Whether an exploder in the vicinity of Friday’s incident was triggered after the most recent snowfall wasn’t immediately clear.