STEVENS PASS, Wash. – Three skiers were killed Sunday when an avalanche swept them about a quarter-mile down an out-of-bounds canyon at a popular resort.
A fourth skier caught up in the slide was saved by a safety device, authorities said.
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The four were among three groups of skiers — about a dozen people in all — making their way through a foot and a half of fresh snow on the back side of Stevens Pass when the avalanche hit. Stevens Pass is in the Cascade Mountains, about 80 miles northeast of Seattle.
All were buried to some extent, but the men who died were swept about 1,500 feet down a chute in the Tunnel Creek Canyon area, King County Sheriff’s Sgt. Katie Larson said.
Most of the other skiers, all well-equipped, were able to free themselves and rushed to dig out the victims. They performed CPR on the three men to no avail, Larson said. The men who died were believed to be in their 30s and 40s.
The fourth skier who was swept down the mountain, a woman, appeared to avoid a similar fate because of the avalanche safety device she was wearing, Larson said.
Such devices include wearable airbags that can be deployed to help a person float atop an avalanche rather than being buried underneath it, or inflatable bags that create space between a person’s mouth and the snow. It wasn’t immediately known which kind the woman had, said Deputy Chris Bedker of the sheriff’s search-and-rescue unit.
The Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center on Sunday issued a warning for high avalanche danger for areas above 5,000 feet, saying warmer weather could loosen surface snow and trigger a slide on steeper slopes.
At midafternoon, the temperature at the base of the Stevens Pass ski resort was 24 degrees. The temperature at the top of the mountain was 22 degrees, according to the resort’s website. John Gifford, the ski area’s general manager, said Sunday that the resort had received 19 inches of snow in the past 24 hours.
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