(NEVADA COUNTY, Calif.) — Eight backcountry skiers have been found dead, and one remains missing following an avalanche in California’s 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.
Crews were working on Wednesday to bring the remains of the eight dead skiers off the mountain to be reunited with their families after autopsies are performed to determine the cause of death, authorities said.
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.
Tuesday’s 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 Sheriff’s Office.
A group of 15 skiers, including four guides from the company Blackbird Mountain Guides, encountered the avalanche, according to the sheriff’s 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.
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, authorities said. The survivors had been taking cover under a tarp when they were found alive, a source who communicated with the group told ABC News.
The survivors made a 911 call using an iPhone satellite SOS message, the sheriff’s officer said. Emergency beacons also helped rescuers find the stranded skiers, the sheriff’s office said.
“Due to extreme weather conditions, it took several hours for rescue personnel to safely reach the skiers and transport them to safety where they were medically evaluated by Truckee Fire,” the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “Two of the six skiers have been transported to a hospital for treatment.”
Authorities initially said 16 skiers were in the group, and 10 were missing.
Rescuers faced very difficult conditions, including avalanche danger themselves, according to Brandon Schwartz, director of the Sierra Avalanche Center, which forecasts avalanche conditions in the area around Lake Tahoe. The area saw 2 to 3 feet of new snow in the last 36 hours and more was still falling at 2 to 4 inches per hour, Schwartz told ABC News.
The Blackbird Mountain Guides said the avalanche happened near the Frog Lake Backcountry Huts in the Castle Peak area, northwest of Truckee.
The group of skiers had been staying at the huts — which the company describes in online advertisements as “luxury-dormitories” — since Sunday. A 3-to-4-day stay at the huts normally costs $1,795, according to the company’s website.
The company lists prerequisites for customers, including requiring skiers to be “adept with their backcountry touring skills and have a solid foundation of touring before the trip.” Customers are also required to be in good physical shape, according to the company, “able to hike 4-6 miles and climb 1,500-2,500 vertical feet throughout the course of a day.”
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.
On Monday, Blackbird Mountain Guides posted a video on Instagram showing what it described as “atypical layering from our normal mid season snowpack.”
“The result is a particularly weak layer in many northerly aspects, across various elevation bands,” a company employee said in the video. “As we move into a large storm cycle this week, pay close attention to places where faceting has been particularly strong — avalanches could behave abnormally and hazards could last longer than normal.”
The Sierra Avalanche Center said rapidly accumulating snowfall, weak layers of existing snowpack and gale-force winds that blow and drift snow “have created dangerous avalanche conditions in the mountains.”
“Natural avalanches are likely, and human-triggered avalanches large enough to bury or injure people are very likely,” the center said.
The center has issued an avalanche warning for the Central Sierra Nevada Mountains between Yuba Pass on the north and Ebbetts Pass on the south, including the greater Lake Tahoe area, through Wednesday morning.
In an updated statement on Wednesday morning, the center said, “HIGH avalanche danger continues,” and added, “travel in, near, or below avalanche terrain not recommended.”
“Increased uncertainty exists with ongoing reactivity of these buried weak layers under this large storm snow load. The potential continues for large to very large avalanches occurring in the backcountry today.”
Whiteout conditions have been reported in the region where the avalanche occurred.
The California Highway Patrol’s Truckee office warned that high winds are “creating full whiteout conditions” across the Donner Summit.
Interstate 80 over Donner Summit was closed in both directions on Tuesday and remained closed on Wednesday morning due to whiteout conditions and poor visibility.
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