At about 1 pm on Saturday afternoon, a 23 year old male snowboarder was separated from his two buddies while riding the trees between the Powderhorn and Horsetail runs, in the West Bowl area of Sierra at Tahoe. The victim was reported to have fallen early in the run and his friends continued down, assuming that he would rejoin them at the bottom of the run. This was the last time he was seen alive.

We received a call-out to a mutual aid search for El Dorado Co. shortly after 5 am on Sunday morning. 5 skiers from TNSAR and Rick & Carmel, the dog team, responded for Placer Co. We arrived at the resort to find an extensive search effort already underway involving 60 searchers on snowshoes, skis, snowmobiles, a snow cat and CHP helicopter. The Sierra at Tahoe ski patrol had done several large, hasty sweeps through the resort the previous afternoon and into the night with no results. On Sunday morning, the search effort expanded to included detailed probes in bounds and to likely out of bounds locations.

Our assignment was to conduct a fine probe through a ¼ mile band of trees directly below the point the victim was last seen. At about 11:30 am, we heard a report over ski patrol radio that a body had been found just below our search area.

Sierra at Tahoe ski patrollers spotted the mans snowboard while searching a tree well, no more that 20 feet off of the Horsetail run. The victim was still attached to the board. Just as his friends had predicted, the victim likely took the fall line, cutting diagonally through these bands of trees towards the bottom of the lift. The ski patrol handled the scene and the body recovery.

We have all undoubtedly experienced the phenomena of probing a small tree or bush buried below the snow surface only to discover a big open cavity lurking underneath. While probing our area, we discovered many such traps. The stands of trees in this area of the resort are populated mainly of medium sized white and red fir. Their downward swooping, fan shaped branches are densely clustered with needles. In new snow events, the cone shape of the tree canopy becomes buried, “tenting” the new snow away from the trunk of the tree and produce fairly deep holes. Outside of the tree wells, the snow pack generally held a couple of wind packed layers near the surface, then several feet of loosely consolidated snow below. It was not difficult to drive a skip pole full length into the snow up to wrist or elbow.

The family of the victim was back at the lodge when we returned to check out. The brother and his friend (the two riding with him the day before) briefly introduced themselves individually to us and to other searches in the lodge IC.