Avalanche feared in hours before deadly slide at California’s Alpine Meadows, forecasts show
Sierra avalanche forecasters predicted the possibility of a deadly avalanche in the hours before the slide that killed one and seriously injured another skier Friday at Alpine Meadows Ski Resort.
Officials at the Sierra Avalanche Center early Friday expected a D-2-size slide — large enough to “bury, injure, or kill a person.” Other scenarios suggested even greater damage.
The snow began falling on the Alpine Meadows area early Thursday afternoon and didn’t stop until the early morning hours Friday. One to two feet worth of new snow is typical for a Sierra storm this time of year, but forecasters in the high country were worried. The new snowfall had settled in heavy, piling drifts along and above the treeline.
Word of trouble came early Friday.
“There is a high degree of uncertainty today in regards to snowpack instability near and below treeline,” said forecasters at the Sierra Avalanche Center just before 7 a.m. “Significant drifting of new snow has occurred near treeline and above treeline. CONSIDERABLE avalanche danger is forecast for all elevations.”
Hours later, those fears were realized when a deadly avalanche near the popular Sierra ski resort’s Subway run killed one person, seriously injured another and for a time left others missing. By 12:50 p.m., Friday, Placer County Sheriff’s officials had called off the search.
“We believe all victims have been recovered,” Placer officials said via Twitter. The Sheriff’s Office later identified the man who died as 34-year-old Cole Comstock of Blairsden in Plumas County.
Friday’s slide came less than 48 hours after a winter storm moved into the Sierra late Wednesday dropping snow levels as low as Colfax at 2,425 feet ahead of the heaviest Sierra snow on Thursday.
A smaller slide near the north bowl of Signal Peak early Wednesday afternoon hinted at the dangers ahead. A skier posted notes of the experience on the Sierra Avalanche Center’s website. The skier found a foot of new snow and a heavy wind slab – dense layers of wind-deposited snow — that came loose at the end of the skier’s run.
The slab was “an estimated 90 feet behind me and ten feet in front of me,” the skier wrote.
The skier’s first descent down the north bowl of Signal Peak Wednesday was incident-free; but trouble struck when the skier took a second, different route under a rock outcropping to the bowl’s main ridge line. The avalanche sent the skier sliding 800 feet before stopping, the skier said in his notes to the center.
“The avalanche brought me through a small tree grouping and over a small rock section before I was able to self-arrest above another small cliff ban,” the skier wrote on the site. “Snow covered to the base of my knees and I was able to free my feet without much difficulty. I estimate that I was taken down 800 ft in this incident.”
By Friday morning, Sierra Avalanche Center forecasters had identified two potential but very real problems: wind-drifted snow as with Wednesday’s slide on Signal Peak; and storm slab - the piles of fast-falling new snow that unloaded Thursday into the overnight hours Friday.
Friday’s avalanche was not the first such tragedy to reach the resort. An avalanche struck the Summit Chairlift Terminal building in March 1982 killing seven people after it hit the main ski lodge, two chairlifts and several outbuildings.
This story was originally published January 17, 2020 at 3:35 PM with the headline "Avalanche feared in hours before deadly slide at California’s Alpine Meadows, forecasts show."
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