Officials at the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Center have confirmed that three skiers on a heli-skiing tour died in an avalanche near Girdwood, Alaska, southeast of Anchorage, this week.
The avalanche occurred on March 4 at about 3:30 pm.
The skiers were traveling with Chugach Powder Guides, and the guides with them immediately attempted to save the victims. A spokesperson from the company told the Anchorage Daily News that the slide started at an altitude of about 1,070m and continued all the way down to 200m, giving some perspective of how massive the avalanche was.
One victim under 14 meters of snow
Guides were able to locate signals from avalanche beacons, with the lowest signal coming around 14 meters deep. An hour later, it was determined “the victims were clearly unrecoverable” given guides’ resources.
“We are sorry to report an avalanche resulting in multiple fatalities in the west fork of the Twentymile River yesterday afternoon,” the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Information Center said on Wednesday. “Details on this accident are still emerging, and we will share more information as it becomes available.”
According to the National Avalanche Center, this accident raises the total of avalanche fatalities in the U.S. this winter to 18. That’s already higher than last winter’s 13 recorded avalanche deaths. A study published in late 2024 found that avalanche survival rates have increased notably over the past four decades.
“Up until 1990, 43.5 percent of buried victims survived; now, it’s 53.5 percent,” said Simon Rauch, the study’s lead author and an emergency physician at Eurac Research, based in the northern Italian town of Bolzano, crediting faster response times for the improvement. “Time is the critical factor, and 10 minutes is not long. Therefore, it’s essential to understand that the survival chances in an avalanche burial are three times higher when excursion companions are able to dig out the victims, rather than when organized rescue teams are involved.”
The original version of this article first appeared in The Inertia.
