‘They were mothers, wives, friends’: how a ski trip turned deadly in the California mountains | California

The sound of a telephone rang through the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office in California just before noon on February 17.

The 911 call brought devastating news: An avalanche had occurred near Castle Peak, a 9,110-foot (2,780-meter) mountain north of Donner Summit in the Lake Tahoe area. A group of backcountry skiers were on a mountainside, returning from a three-day expedition, during a severe winter storm. While six people had survived, more than half the group was missing.

The ensuing rescue mission in appalling conditions would bring these six people home. In the days after the disaster, family and friends shared glimpses of the tight-knit group of women, all experienced skiers, whose backcountry excursion took a deadly turn, becoming one of the worst avalanches in U.S. history.

After receiving the emergency call, the sheriff’s office quickly mobilized a team of 46 first responders. But conditions outside remained dangerous. The Central Sierra Snow Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, near Donner Pass, reported 28 inches of snow that day, with an additional 3 feet expected in the next two days. The risk of another avalanche occurring during rescue operations was high.

At first, the sheriff’s office thought 16 people were among the group stuck on the mountainside: 12 clients and four guides from an expedition group called Blackbird Mountain Guides. But when they arrived at the scene, Blackbird told them that a person had decided to pull out of the trip “at the last minute,” according to Nevada County Sheriff Shannan Moon. Among the missing was the spouse of one of the search and rescue volunteers.

The Blackbird group was on a backcountry ski trip and slept two nights at the Frog Lake ski huts — upscale cabins equipped with heaters, wall outlets and bathrooms — before returning to the trailhead on the third day, when the avalanche struck.

Amid the ongoing storm, ski rescue teams took to the field in a Sno-Cat, a truck-sized vehicle equipped with tank-like tracks that allow it to navigate polar conditions. Around 5:30 p.m., the rescue team had reached a place about 3 km from where beacons indicated that the surviving skiers were sheltering. First responders skied the remaining 2 miles of mountainous terrain until they reached the six survivors.

In the hours following the avalanche, survivors built a shelter with tarpaulins and managed to discover the bodies of three members of their group. First responders found five additional bodies. The remains of one person are still missing.

It took several more hours to get the group down the mountain. At a news conference the next day, Placer County Sheriff Wayne Woo implored the public to stay away from the Sierras as the storm continued. “Please allow us to focus all our resources on continuing to recover these bodies for the family and bring them home,” he said. The recovery is expected to last until the weekend.

“They loved spending time together in the mountains”

With eight skiers confirmed dead and one still missing, the Castle Peak avalanche is now the fourth deadliest in U.S. history. In the aftermath, details begin to emerge about the deceased – the majority, a group of mothers and close friends from the Bay Area.

In a statement, the families of six of the deceased identified them as Carrie Atkin, Liz Clabaugh, Danielle Keatley, Kate Morse, Caroline Sekar and Kate Vitt, from the Bay Area, Idaho and Lake Tahoe area. Two of the women – Sekar and Clabaugh – were sisters.

“They were passionate and talented skiers who loved spending time together in the mountains,” the families said.

The families added that the six people were part of a group of eight friends, indicating that two of the survivors were part of the group that went on the trip. They were experienced skiers “fully equipped with avalanche safety equipment,” the families said.

Max Perrey, mayor of Mill Valley, a city north of San Francisco, acknowledged that some of the women resided in the city in a statement to the Marin Independent Journal, calling it a “huge tragedy and enormous loss.”

School district officials said authorities were preparing to support students whose mothers may be among the victims. At least one of the victims was the mother of two children from the Kentfield school district, according to local media.

Three of the people who died were guides with Blackbird Mountain Guides. Zeb Blais, the company’s founder, released a statement calling it “a huge tragedy and the saddest event our team has ever experienced,” adding that the guides had all been trained or certified in ski touring by the American Mountain Guides Association and were instructors with the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education.

Blackbird Mountain Guides referred additional questions from the Guardian to the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office.

Information about what happened on the mountainside is still available, including why the group decided to leave the cabins where they had sheltered the night before. An analysis by the San Francisco Chronicle shows that the group took a route Tuesday that passed through terrain with a higher avalanche risk than a longer, slower alternative exit, although the reasons for this choice are not yet clear.

The Nevada County Sheriff’s Office and Cal/Osha have initiated standard investigations into the incident to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.

A mountain range with a history of avalanches

Avalanches are not uncommon in the Sierras, although Tuesday’s was the most devastating in modern California history.

“Natural avalanches are relatively common in mountainous areas that receive snow, such as the greater Tahoe area covered by our daily avalanche forecasts,” said David Reichel, executive director of the Sierra Avalanche Center. “Whenever a major storm hits the area, it is reasonable to assume that many avalanches occur. »

The Sierra Avalanche Center, which provides forecasts for the region, has observed at least 50 avalanches in the area near Lake Tahoe since September 2025, and people have died in avalanches in the Lake Tahoe region in six of the last ten years. Most recently, a snowmobiler was killed earlier this year when an avalanche occurred in the same area, near Castle Peak.

Perhaps the most well-known avalanche in the area is the 1982 Alpine Meadows Avalanche, which killed seven people and was memorialized in the film Buried: The 1982 Alpine Meadows Avalanche and the book A Wall of White by Jennifer Woodlief.

Exactly what caused the thick layer of snow to break off and cascade down the slopes remains unclear. But a series of conditions set the stage, and forecasters had warned that the risks of an event like this were dangerously high.

Before this week’s storms blanketed the Sierra in dense, heavy snow, the mountains were worryingly bare. During an extremely warm winter, when precipitation fell more often along with rain and more rapid melting was likely, brown spots could be seen piercing the thin layer of ice at altitudes usually shrouded in white during the first months of the year.

This created a dangerous base for further snowfall, which could not easily integrate with frozen landscapes. It also meant that hidden hazards – rocks, gravel and fallen trees – could slip in layers close to the surface, increasing the hazards.

This one-two punch — a devastating snow drought that produced a thin layer of ice followed by a large and rapid accumulation of snow — “fits the pattern of major avalanche events we’ve seen in this part of California in the past,” said climatologist Daniel Swain. Swain has long warned of the growing threats posed by these extremes and how the climate crisis will fuel even more damaging fluctuations between the extremes.

The storm at the center of this tragedy was not extraordinary by Sierra standards, where furious winter elements can quickly become turbulent, but it was intense. More than 66 inches fell in three days, UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab reported Wednesday morning, the day after the avalanche. Whiteout conditions and high winds added to the threats facing skiers and complicated rescue efforts.

Before Tuesday’s avalanche, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center had recorded six avalanche deaths in the United States so far this season. It says avalanches have caused an average of 27 deaths per year over the past decade in the United States.

The communities affected by this particular disaster are just beginning to come into the spotlight, as family members mourn their loss.

“Our focus at this time is to support our children through this incredible tragedy and honor the lives of these extraordinary women,” the families said in their statement. “They were all mothers, wives and friends, all bonded by a love of the outdoors. »

Gabrielle Canon contributed to this report