Bear Creek Trail is closed until further notice by order of the Sheriff for the safety of rescuers searching for a missing backcountry skier who may have been injured or caught in an avalanche today (Tuesday). The Telluride man was reported overdue around 4:20pm Tuesday. (more) pic.twitter.com/ghbBBZNlBr
— San Miguel Sheriff (@SheriffAlert) February 20, 2019
“Someone was in the backcountry and got caught in an avalanche,” a dispatcher said Wednesday morning, when the search resumed.
Backcountry skiing is done on unmarked and usually unpatrolled areas inside or just outside a resort’s groomed runs. This has been a particularly dangerous winter, with 58 people known to have been caught in avalanches through the end of January, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. Two people were killed, Brian Lazar, deputy director of the center, told the Denver Post. By the same time last year, 13 people had been caught; during the winter of 2016-17 37 people were caught by the end of January.
More than two dozen SAR rescuers & 2 Telluride Ski Patrol Avalanche dog teams in Bear Creek area searching for missing backcountry skier. Telluride Helitrax is conducting an air search as well. Reminder to stay out of Bear Creek; it is closed until further notice. #SARBearCreek pic.twitter.com/kvPe5phnfY
— San Miguel Sheriff (@SheriffAlert) February 20, 2019
Over the weekend, two Aspen-area skiers died in an avalanche near Crested Butte, police there said Sunday. Owen Green, 27, of Aspen, and Michael Goerne, 37, of Carbondale, were training for the Grand Traverse, a 40-mile backcountry ski race across the Elk Mountains, friends said Sunday. “At approximately 10 p.m. tracks were discovered leading into a fresh avalanche field near the area known as Death Pass. No tracks exiting the slide were found and faint beacon signals were located in the slide area,” according to a news release (via the Aspen Times). “Shortly after midnight, it was determined conditions were too adverse to conduct a recovery operation.” In January, Aspen skier Arin Trook, 48, died in a backcountry avalanche near Ashcroft.
The center notes on its website that “Over the last 10 years, February is the single most dangerous month for avalanches in Colorado. Over a quarter of the fatal avalanche accidents happened during this month. In the past decade, there have been 15 fatal avalanche accidents in the month of February. Eight of those accidents occurred in the middle of the month, and four between Valentine’s Day and Presidents’ Day. Historically, this weekend has been a dangerous period for avalanche accidents. We would like to break the pattern.”
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