On February 17th, around 11:30 am, a devastating avalanche in the Tahoe National Forest killed nine skiers out of fifteen in a group. There were four guides and eleven clients. According to CNN, this has now been recorded as the deadliest avalanche in the state’s history. The unfortunate deaths include Andrew Alissandratos, Michael Henry, Nichole Choo, Carrie Attkin, Liz Clabaugh, Danielle Keatley, Kate Morse, Caroline Sekar, and Kate Vitt. 
According to The New York Times, wind gusts reached up to 50 miles per hour. Two survivors, Anton Auzans and Jim Hamilton, were able to describe their experience. According to activenorcal.com, “Auzans was near the back when he heard the warning. He looked uphill and saw what he described to the Times as a wall of white crashing down, mixed with flashes of bright jackets and tumbling skis. He tried to dive behind a tree, but the force of the slide swept him away.” Auzans then states, “‘I remember thinking about my 3-year-old son,” Auzans told the Times. “I knew I had to get out.’” These two pieces of evidence alone tell how serious and catastrophic this event was. The article then describes Hamilton’s view. “Hamilton, delayed by a malfunctioning binding, had been far enough behind to escape the slide. When he reached the debris field, the ski track simply ended in a wall of compacted snow.” The guides who survived, along with two other men, began digging to find anyone else. They found a couple of people who were alive. Soon, the minutes turned into hours, and hope of finding any more potential survivors was gone. 
The bodies weren’t recovered until days later, on February 20th and 21st, due to the dangerous weather conditions for rescue teams. Since February 15th, the National Weather Service has warned of heavy snow in the region, but Hamilton recalls the experienced guides telling him not to worry about it and that they knew how to navigate safely.
The guides planned to skip a ski trip to avoid worsening conditions. The group decided to go back the way they came to their vehicles, and doing so, they went behind Perry’s Peak, because they figured it was safer than Frog Lake Notch. The group did make it to their vehicles, and that’s when the avalanche happened. According to People.com, “All Auzans remembered hearing was a single word: ‘Avalanche!” When he looked up, the rest of his group had been buried by the snow, which went on to swallow him up as well.” Another avalanche was imminent, so after digging for about thirty minutes, the survivors had to make the difficult decision to escape to a safer area with whoever they could find. Auzan states, “We were all in danger. We did as much as we could. We pushed until we started finding people that were deceased…Deciding to stop the search was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” he continued, but added, “We had to save the people we knew were alive.”
