"It was the storm of the year in the Sierras, he would write that day. Yet something felt off. The wind was picking up. The temperature seemed odd. Townsend is a professional backcountry skier who learned the sport around Tahoe, and 'it was just the consistency of the snowfall, the way that the flakes were coming down, the winds that were coming through, that had just something different, something I wasn't used to.'"
"When he got home, Townsend posted on Instagram, warning his followers to be wary: 'It's fun out there for sure but definitely not time for full-send mode.' The light powder was piling up on a crust that had melted and refrozen, creating slabs of unstable snow."
On the morning of California's deadliest modern avalanche, professional backcountry skier Cody Townsend was skiing near Lake Tahoe during an exceptional snowstorm. Despite the appealing powder conditions, Townsend noticed unusual atmospheric conditions—odd wind patterns and temperature anomalies—that felt different from normal. He and his wife, herself a survivor of a previous fatal avalanche, decided to leave the area. Townsend posted warnings on social media about unstable snow conditions, noting that light powder was accumulating on a refrozen crust, creating dangerous slabs. Meanwhile, a separate group of 15 skiers from the Frog Lake Backcountry Huts, including accomplished mothers from the Bay Area, ventured into the same storm with four guides.
Read at The Atlantic
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]