As friends and family desperately wait to hear the fate of backcountry skiers lost in an avalanche north of Lake Tahoe Tuesday, some are wondering why they ventured out into the storm in the first place.
The storm, which has dumped several feet of unstable fresh snow on the high Sierra in recent days – closing highways and ski resorts – was predicted about a week ago.
Still, a group of 15 — including four professional ski guides and their clients — set out Sunday for a three-day backcountry adventure at the famous but remote Frog Lake area.
On Tuesday, as the group made the perilous trek back from the huts due to a powerful storm, heavy rains hit, according to the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office.
After a massive search effort involving dozens of first responders, six skiers were rescued with “various injuries” Tuesday evening, the sheriff’s office posted on Facebook. Two were taken to the hospital.
The search for the other nine is ongoing “pending weather conditions,” the sheriff’s office wrote.
While the fate of the skiers is unknown, Tuesday’s avalanche may go down as one of the worst in modern California history.
In 1982, seven people were killed at the Alpine Meadows resort in North Lake Tahoe. In 2008, three men were killed by an avalanche near Wrightwood, in the San Gabriel Mountains, while they were skiing out of bounds near the Mountain High resort.
Cross-country skiing is always more dangerous than in resorts, where skiers work hard — and at great risk to themselves — to remove dangerous accumulations of snow from high peaks and troughs so that they do not collide with paying customers surfing below.
But in the back country, you are completely alone.
The website for the Frog Lake cabins, managed by the Truckee Donner Land Trust, warns that the hike from the trailhead to the cabins takes several hours and passes through dangerous snow terrain.
Blackbird Mountain Guidesa well-known guide service based in Truckee that also teaches avalanche safety courses, conducted the disaster trip that began Sunday.
Blackbird executives did not respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday night. A statement posted on their website said the group was “in the process of returning to the track” when “the incident occurred.”
The severe winter storm that hit the area earlier this week was predicted before the trip began. Last Wednesday, meteorologists were predicting a tropical storm that will dump five meters of snow in a few days from Sunday.
Those predictions turned out to be true – prompting criticism on social media of the guides for going ahead with the tour.
“Anyone with basic knowledge or weather forecasting skills should know what they’re getting into,” Erica Eng, the Nevada County Sheriff’s Department, wrote in a Facebook post about the massive search and rescue effort for the missing skiers.
Others accused Blackbird of negligence and profit-seeking and demanded the company reimburse taxpayers for the cost of the rescue operations.
Dave Miller is the owner of International Alpine Guides at June Lake, another professional service that runs trips to the Frog Lake huts. Until more is known, he declined to speculate on Blackbird’s decision to conduct the trip during the storm.
But he said the allure of backcountry skiing was undeniable and that customers paid for access to clean, uncrowded terrain and comfortable European mountain lodges.
Going out is expensive. Blackbird charges more than $1,000 for its three-day trip — more than the cost of a full season pass that includes many of California’s most popular ski areas. But the sense of adventure is worth it for a growing number of well-heeled clients.
“Fresh powder is a thing of the past at ski resorts,” which are now so crowded that all good snow is scooped up by other skiers by 9 a.m. after a big storm, Miller said.
“I remember having fresh powder at Palisades Tahoe back in the ’80s during the day, but that’s gone,” he said.
Then there are the Frog Lake cabins themselves, which are modern and cozy, with heat, electricity, beds, bathrooms and a full kitchen.
“It’s like the slum system in Europe,” Miller said. “California has no other places like that. It’s incredibly comfortable — better than snow camping.”
Unless things go wrong.
On Tuesday, the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office reported that a group of 16 skiers (later revised to 15) were hit by an avalanche around 11:30 a.m. in the area north of Donner Pass.
Highly skilled snow rescue teams – including 46 first responders – have been dispatched from Boreal Mountain Ski Resort and Tahoe Donner’s Alder Creek Adventure Center to target six known survivors, according to sheriff’s officials.
But the weather remained severe, and the avalanche danger remained dangerously high.
I Sierra Avalanche Centerbased in Truckee, issued the dire warning at 6:29 a.m. Tuesday morning.
“Walking in, near, or under the avalanche zone is not recommended today,” the agency wrote. “A widespread natural avalanche cycle is expected in the next 24 hours. Large tornadoes may pass through tree-lined areas. If you are attempting to travel today in non-avalanche areas, make sure there are no ridges connected to the area you are traveling, either up or to the side.”
That warning was still in effect as rescuers raced to the scene to try and rescue the missing skiers.
The storm was very bad Interstate 80 it should have been covered by the Donner Pass. Even local Sierra resorts, such as Palisades Tahoe, were closed Tuesday because dozens of professional rangers couldn’t keep up with the rapidly accumulating snow and keep visitors safe on the islands.
Even before Tuesday, this was a dangerous avalanche season in the high Sierra.
In early January, 42-year-old Chris Scott Thomason was snowmobiling buried under the snow in another avalanche near Castle Peak. Despite having all the latest safety gear and being in a group of other experienced riders, and despite the efforts of an off-duty Truckee fire department who performed CPR on him, Thomason did not survive.
In late December, a 30-year-old skier at Mammoth Mountain named Cole Murphy was killed in an avalanche that was deliberately started by his colleagues trying to remove heavy snow from the expert area.
Murphy was swept up the slide and dragged hundreds of feet down the slope. It took his desperate colleagues 18 minutes to find him and get him out. At that time, his skin was green and he was not breathing.
He was then airlifted to a hospital in Reno, where he was pronounced dead days later.
