8 OF 9 MISSING SKIERS FOUND DEAD FOLLOWING CALIFORNIA AVALANCHE
Six skiers were rescued on Tuesday in the Castle Peak area of the Sierra Nevada. Eight backcountry skiers have been found dead, and one remains missing following an avalanche in Californias Sierra Nevada Mountains, officials announced Wednesday. Search crews on Tuesday braved highly dangerous conditions to rescue six other skiers who were part of the same guided group, authorities said. The tragedy is the deadliest U.S. avalanche in 45 years, second only to an avalanche that killed 11 people on Washingtons Mt. Rainer in 1981. Crews were working on Wednesday to bring the remains of the eight dead skiers off the mountain as soon as possible to be reunited with their families after autopsies are performed to determine the cause of death, authorities said. Nevada County Sheriff Shannan Moon announced the deaths at a news conference on Wednesday and said the skier who remains missing is presumed to be deceased. Moon said that among the dead were three guides from the company Black Mountain Guides. Seven women and two men were among the deceased and missing skiers, the sheriffs office said. Placer County Sheriff Wayne Woo — whose agency participated in the search-and-rescue operation — said that among the dead was the spouse of one of the members of the search team deployed to the rescue operation. This incident has specifically struck our organization and that team hard, as one of the nine missing decedents is a spouse of our Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team member, Woo said at Wednesdays news conference. Perilous conditions near Donner Pass, where the avalanche occurred, continued on Wednesday morning. Rescuers faced a winter storm dumping more than 2 inches of snow an hour in the area, grounding rescue helicopters and hampering ground crews trying to reach the missing skiers, according to the Sierra Avalanche Center. Tuesdays avalanche was reported around 11:30 a.m. PT in the Castle Peak area at an elevation of 8,200 feet in the Sierra Nevada northwest of Lake Tahoe, according to the Nevada County Sheriffs Office. A group of 15 skiers — nine women and six men, including four guides from Blackbird Mountain Guides — encountered the avalanche, according to the sheriffs office. The group was in the process of returning to the trailhead at the conclusion of a three-day trip when the incident occurred, Blackbird Mountain Guides said in a statement. Based on the accounts of the survivors, Capt. Rusty Greene of the Nevada County Sheriffs Department said all 15 members of the group were together when the avalanche occurred. It was reported by the individuals that survived that they were attempting to go out as a group, that someone saw the avalanche, yelled avalanche — and then it overtook them rather quickly, Greene said. Greene said the bodies of the eight skiers were located near where the survivors were found. He said survivors of the incident had located three of the bodies before the rescue teams arrived. Preliminarily, the slide measured a D2.5 on the Destructive Force Scale, the avalanche version of the Enhanced Fujita Scale for rating tornadoes, meaning it was strong enough to injure, bury, or kill a person, according to the Sierra Avalanche Center. A D3 on the scale is strong enough to destroy a house. Six people were successfully rescued Tuesday evening by search-and-rescue teams with varying injuries, Moon said. The survivors, who range in age from 30 to 55, had been taking cover under a tarp when they were fou
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