Nine backcountry skiers remain buried or lost somewhere near Castle Peak in California's Sierra Nevada after an avalanche tore through a guided tour group on Tuesday morning. Six backcountry skiers survived but nine remain missing, with the Nevada County Sheriff's Office reporting the avalanche near Castle Peak around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday amid a heavy snowstorm.
The group of 15 skiers, including four guides from the company Blackbird Mountain Guides, was returning to the trailhead at the conclusion of a three-day trip when the avalanche struck. They never made it out.
Rescue crews on skis and snowcats battled blizzard conditions to reach the six survivors, who were still alive but trapped. Two of the rescued skiers were hospitalized for treatment. As of Wednesday morning, no contact has been made with the nine who vanished.
According to The U.S Sun, here is the fact that will define the investigation into this disaster: the Sierra Avalanche Center had issued an avalanche warning for the central Sierra Nevada, including the Castle Peak area, at 5 a.m. Tuesday, running until 5 a.m. Wednesday, rating avalanche risk in the region "high," the second-most-dangerous level below extreme.
The center said rapidly accumulating snowfall, weak layers of existing snowpack, and gale-force winds "have created dangerous avalanche conditions in the mountains," adding that "natural avalanches are likely, and human-triggered avalanches large enough to bury or injure people are very likely."
The Sierra Avalanche Center said there was "high" avalanche danger in the backcountry on Tuesday, raising questions of why the group was in the rugged area. Those questions are not rhetorical. Families of the nine missing people deserve answers.
The warning was not vague. It was not ambiguous. It was not issued after the group departed. The Sierra Avalanche Center previously issued an avalanche warning. The avalanche struck six and a half hours later.
On Monday, Blackbird Mountain Guides posted a video on Instagram showing what it described as "atypical layering from our normal mid-season snowpack," with a company employee noting "the result is a particularly weak layer in many northerly aspects, across various elevation bands."
So the company itself identified dangerous snowpack conditions the day before the avalanche. Its own guides documented fragile terrain. And the next morning, they led 11 paying clients into it.
The group had been staying at the Frog Lake Backcountry Huts, which the company describes in online advertisements as "luxury-dormitories," since Sunday. A three- to four-day stay at the huts typically costs $1,795, according to the company's website.
Avalanche forecaster Steve Reynaud noted that routes to and from the lodge have "some degree of avalanche hazard," and that the 3.5-mile route to the trailhead passes through "numerous avalanche hazards." The path out was the danger zone. Everyone who studies this terrain knew it.
Captain Russell Greene of the sheriff's office said authorities were notified about the avalanche by the mountain guide service and, separately, through an emergency beacon device. The sheriff's office was in touch with the surviving skiers through an emergency satellite messaging service, which allowed them to send text messages.
Late Tuesday evening, search and rescue teams successfully rescued the six survivors, though the effort took several hours due to extreme weather conditions. Nearly twelve hours passed between the avalanche report and the moment those six reached safety.
Rescue efforts involved 46 emergency first responders, including skilled rescue ski teams from Boreal Mountain Ski Resort and Tahoe Donner's Alder Creek Adventure Center. Every one of those responders risked their own lives entering active avalanche terrain during a storm that was dropping snow at a staggering rate.
Greene acknowledged the danger, saying, "It's just going to be slow going so we don't trigger any other avalanches, because that is definitely a possibility," adding the risk was significant enough that "we're hesitant to send anybody in on a snowmobile."
In January, a snowmobiler was caught in an avalanche near Johnson and Castle Peak and died. The snowmobiler was identified as 42-year-old Bend, Oregon, resident Chris Scott Thomason. Castle Peak had already claimed a life this winter. The terrain's lethality was not theoretical.
In an initial report, the avalanche forecasting center said Tuesday's slide took place on a north-facing aspect at around 8,200 feet elevation, below a feature called Perry's Point, about a half-mile from the Frog Lake Backcountry Huts and about 2.5 miles from a trailhead along I-80.
Reynaud put the scale of the event in perspective: "An avalanche burying seven to 10 people would be a very large avalanche, or a group being in a bad location, or potentially both."
According to long-term avalanche records, California has recorded just 13 backcountry avalanche fatalities over the past 76 years. If the nine missing skiers are not found alive, this single incident could nearly double that figure in one storm cycle.
The conditions surrounding this disaster were not subtle. The Boreal Mountain Ski Resort, which is near Castle Peak, reported about 30 inches of snow over the past 24 hours. Due to the extreme conditions, some ski resorts suspended operations for the day, including Boreal Mountain, which was experiencing high wind and zero-visibility conditions.
Commercial resorts shuttered their lifts. I-80 closed. Interstate 80 was closed from Colfax to the Nevada state line with no estimated reopening time. The infrastructure of civilization retreated from the storm. And a guided tour group walked into it.
Blackbird Mountain Guides issued its first public statement at 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday, roughly eight hours after the avalanche. The Nevada County Sheriff's Office informed Blackbird Mountain Guides they would be taking the lead on all direct communications and status updates from that point to ensure families rapidly received the most current details. The sheriff's office, not the company, assumed the public-facing role.
No explanation of the decision to travel under an active avalanche warning. No acknowledgment of the Instagram video posted the day before identifying weak snowpack. No accounting for why 11 clients paying nearly $1,800 each were led into terrain that the company's own forecasters flagged as dangerously unstable.
Search crews are hoping to fly an aircraft on Wednesday to search for those last nine people. The Sierra Avalanche Center's updated statement on Wednesday morning said "HIGH avalanche danger continues" and that "travel in, near, or below avalanche terrain not recommended." The window for finding anyone alive narrows with every hour.
Avalanches typically occur in terrain with a slope angle between 30 and 45 degrees, with roughly 38 degrees considered the riskiest. The incident location was in low-angle terrain, which would have been safer to travel in during high-risk conditions, but higher-angle terrain loomed above. The mountain did not care about their route plan.
There will be investigations. There will be lawsuits. The Truckee Donner Land Trust itself warns that all winter routes to the Frog Lake huts "have some degree of avalanche hazard" and that each person should carry a beacon, probe, and shovel. The question is not whether the danger existed. The question is why a professional guide service decided the danger was acceptable.
Each winter, 25 to 30 people die in avalanches in the U.S., according to the National Avalanche Center. If the worst outcome materializes at Castle Peak, a single guided tour on a single Tuesday morning would account for nearly a third of a typical year's toll.
Nine families are waiting. Forty-six first responders are digging. And a company that teaches avalanche safety courses is the one that led its clients into a slide.
