The eight pals discovered pleasure within the mountains, snowboarding collectively throughout the untracked powder of the hushed, pristine wilderness of California’s Sierra Nevada – their shut friendship standing out in opposition to a rugged, unforgiving terrain.
The journey had been deliberate effectively prematurely: A 3-day expedition that started at Frog Lake Backcountry Huts – a hard-to-reach however cozy oasis 7,600 toes excessive within the Tahoe Nationwide Forest space, accessible solely by ski, snowboard or snowshoe.
The group – moms, wives and expert skiers – got here from totally different elements of the nation for a professionally guided backcountry tour over President’s Day weekend. With 4 guides and three different individuals accompanying them, they glided on skis close to the frozen lake and snow-capped cliffs, beneath the shadow of a ridge dotted with pink firs and Jeffrey pines.
The most important winter storm of the brand new 12 months loomed over the picturesque mountains, in the meantime, as dire warnings from forecasters echoed on social media.
Pine timber are coated in snow throughout a storm in Truckee, California, on February 17, 2026. – Brooke Hess-Homeier/AP
It was the final day of a deadly backcountry odyssey. And, as predicted, the blizzard arrived, delivering blankets of unstable powder. They have been headed house when the recent snow, gentle and delicate, all of the sudden descended from the slopes as one of the ferocious forces of nature.
“Avalanche!” one among them yelled.
Inside seconds, a tsunami of ice, snow and particles the scale of a soccer discipline careened downhill round them, thick sufficient to just about bury a home, authorities stated, citing the accounts of survivors.
“It overtook them reasonably rapidly,” Nevada County Sheriff’s Capt. Rusty Greene later informed reporters.
The primary name for assist was a silent textual content message from an emergency beacon, mobilizing a small military of rescuers dispatched from totally different instructions.
“Medical for avalanche within the space of Fortress Peak,” a voice on a fireplace division dispatch channel stated at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday.
“9 to 10 individuals buried, three others trying to dig them out,” somebody stated within the audio as emergency responders have been heard coordinating search and rescue efforts, noting no air help was obtainable due to the storm.
An hourslong combat for survival was starting. Some members of the group dug desperately into the snow for pals and companions because the powder started to show right into a freezing, concrete-like crust.
Six of the shut pals and three guides are among the many 9 individuals killed within the avalanche close to California’s Lake Tahoe – the nation’s deadliest in 45 years. Six skiers survived and have been rescued.
A grueling trek to succeed in survivors
Three guides from Blackbird Mountain Guides — Andrew Alissandratos, Nicole Choo and Michael Henry — have been amongst these killed, the Nevada County Sheriff’s Workplace stated Saturday.
Henry devoted his seasons to guiding and educating splitboarding, in accordance with his information profile, mixing a laid-back demeanor with a deep respect for avalanche training solid in demanding backcountry circumstances.
For Alissandratos, the Sierra was house and the place he felt most absolutely himself, his profile says, and he guided with a ardour for steep routes and passing alongside the hard-earned classes of climbing and snowboarding.
Sisters Liz Clabaugh and Caroline Sekar have been additionally among the many lifeless. The others have been recognized by their households as Carrie Atkin, Danielle Keatley, Kate Morse and Kate Vitt. A partner of a Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue staff member – who responded to the catastrophe – was additionally amongst these killed.
The households of six of the ladies who perished stated in an announcement that they nonetheless have “many unanswered questions.” The sheriff’s workplace stated it’s investigating whether or not prison negligence contributed to the incident.
“We’re devastated past phrases,” the households stated. “Our focus proper now’s supporting our youngsters via this unimaginable tragedy and honoring the lives of those extraordinary girls.”
Caroline Sekar (left) and Liz Clabaugh (proper) are amongst those that died within the avalanche, their households stated. – The Clabaugh household
The households requested for privateness as they grieve a “sudden and profound loss.” The chums – from Idaho, the Bay Space and the close by Truckee-Tahoe area – have been “passionate, expert skiers who cherished time collectively within the mountains.” They’d skilled for the backcountry, trusted their guides and carried and have been accustomed to avalanche security gear, in accordance with the assertion.
“We’re heartbroken and are doing our greatest to take care of each other and our households in the best way we all know these girls would have needed,” the households stated.
Solely two members of the chums’ group and one of many guides are among the many six who survived.
The our bodies of the 9 avalanche victims have been recovered Saturday, authorities introduced. “Whereas we want we might have saved all of them, we’re grateful that we will carry them house,” Nevada County Sheriff Shannan Moon stated.
In the long run, one man and 5 girls made it out, taking cowl for hours beneath a tarp – “doing the whole lot they’ll” till rescuers on snowcats and skies might attain them, in accordance with Greene.
Rescuers trudged via the heavy snow, combatting gale pressure winds beneath white-out circumstances and aware that one other avalanche might doubtlessly barrel down from above, Moon stated.
Rescuers have been 2 miles from the skiers when their equipment bought caught, forcing them to ski the remainder of the best way till they reached the avalanche website round 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, the sheriff stated. The survivors used avalanche beacons and iPhone Emergency SOS by way of satellite tv for pc to textual content emergency providers.
An emergency official communicated with a information for greater than 4 hours, relaying important info to sheriff’s deputies, in accordance with Don O’Keefe, chief of legislation enforcement at California’s Workplace of Emergency Companies.
Buried in an avalanche, few individuals are in a position to dig themselves out, in accordance with consultants. Inside minutes, respiratory creates an ice masks across the face. The snow ultimately hardens like a concrete entombment.
If pulled out inside quarter-hour, the Utah Avalanche Middle says, 93% of avalanche victims stay. After 45 minutes, solely 20% to 30% survive. Few make it after two hours beneath the snow.
Survivors assemble tent-pole-like probes and stick them into the snow in hopes of placing buried skiers, in accordance with consultants.
That Tuesday morning, they frantically poked via the hardening snow for his or her ski companions and pals. Ultimately they dug out three individuals who have been now not alive, the sheriff stated.
“Uncovering people who find themselves deceased, that they know and possibly cared about, is simply horrible,” Nevada County Undersheriff Sam Brown informed CBS Information.
“I don’t know anyone within the avalanche group or within the backcountry snowboarding and snowmobile group that hasn’t misplaced any individual they knew or cherished,” Sara Boilen, a medical psychologist and backcountry skier in Montana who makes a speciality of human elements in avalanche terrain, informed CNN.
“We don’t do that as a result of we love grief. We do that as a result of we love the mountains and we love spending time there with individuals we love, and we love who we’re within the mountains.”
A ‘magical place’ beset by tragedy
She added, “You may name that loopy. You may decide that and be like, ‘Nevertheless it’s so harmful.’ And possibly that’s true. We all know it’s true, however we’re nonetheless going to stay our lives.”
Kurt Gensheimer was on a three-night journey at Frog Lake Backcountry Huts and left Sunday, simply hours earlier than the mothers and the opposite skiers arrived. They by no means crossed paths.
He had been there 4 instances within the final 4 years and understood the pull of the harmful but stunning environment.
“It’s a magical place,” Gensheimer informed CNN affiliate KCRA. “It’s among the best locations to backcountry ski within the nation and Frog Lake Huts are the nicest facilities, probably in North America, for backcountry snowboarding.”
He thought of the huts a secure place to experience out a storm however his group determined to go away earlier than the blizzard.
“The dialogue within the huts was, it is a large storm coming… It’s going to be falling blizzard circumstances. You both ought to get out by Monday or plan to be there until Thursday, Friday,” Gensheimer stated.
The tour firm that organized the ill-fated journey, Blackbird Mountain Guides, stated the tour leaders have been extremely skilled and licensed in avalanche training.
A California Freeway Patrol helicopter lifts off from a discipline after a mission with a search and rescue crew in Truckee, California, on February 20, 2026. – Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Photographs
It was additionally conscious of the avalanche hazard.
On Sunday morning, the identical day the group launched into their journey, the corporate warned on Fb of a giant snow storm approaching and urged skiers to observe to the Sierra Avalanche Middle and “use further warning this week!”
That morning, the Sierra Avalanche Middle issued an avalanche watch that was elevated to a warning at 5 a.m. on Tuesday: “HIGH avalanche hazard exists within the backcountry.
Probably the most harmful time for avalanches is after a speedy snowfall, in accordance with consultants. Tuesday’s avalanche was categorized as a D2.5 on a five-level scale that measures the harmful potential of transferring particles, in accordance with Moon.
On Saturday, Moon and different officers confirmed at a information convention that 9 victims have been recovered by California Freeway Patrol and Nationwide Guard helicopters following avalanche mitigation efforts involving water drops.
5 victims have been hoisted by helicopter from the location on Friday and 4 on Saturday, in accordance with Nevada County Sheriff Lt. Dennis Haack. The physique of a ninth sufferer, who was lacking and presumed lifeless, was discovered close to the opposite victims.
“I’m not going to say our restoration mission is full till all of our responders … (are) house again on the workplace,” Moon stated Saturday.
The attract of backcountry snowboarding endures regardless of the dangers.
Nate Greenberg, who lives within the Japanese Sierra Mountains and stated he survived an avalanche in 2021, suggested in opposition to dashing to judgment. Backcountry snowboarding, he stated, entails a number of “micro selections.”
Ian McCammon, an engineer and avalanche researcher, additionally harassed the tough resolution making course of on the slopes.
“There’s normally much more than meets the attention to these accidents,” McCammon informed CNN. “When you begin entering into the specifics, you begin understanding. It’s simple to say that the individuals are silly, or it’s simple to say that individuals have taken a whole lot of dangers, however generally they’re in conditions the place it’s not apparent to see how they got here to the choice that they did.”
Boilen, the medical psychologist, stated: “We’re all determined to know what occurred.”
“As a researcher, I wish to perceive in order that we will deepen our sense of what’s laborious about resolution making within the backcountry,” she informed CNN. “As an educator, I wish to perceive so I may help others study. As a backcountry consumer, I wish to strengthen my very own resolution making by studying from others. And as a human I would like solutions – how might one thing like this occur? And we could by no means get all the solutions. That’s the factor a few depraved studying setting.”
She added, “Think about dropping any individual you’re keen on and concurrently dropping the connection it’s a must to the place you go to really feel higher. So, while you lose any individual in an avalanche and the mountains are the place that you simply really feel most complete, most alive, it’s the place you go for therapeutic, what do you do?”
CNN’s Nouran Salahieh, Elizabeth Wolfe, Chris Boyette, Cindy Von Quednow, Alisha Ebrahimji, Chris Dolce, Mary Gilbert, Martin Goillandeau, Chimaine Pouteau, Stephanie Elam, Diego Mendoza, Karina Tsui, Danya Gainor, Briana Waxman, Andi Babineau and Brad Parks contributed to this report.
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