"We really don't know how it happened. By the time the center's staff were able to reach the site of the Feb. 17 slide, three days had passed and several feet of snow had blanketed the area. Helicopter crews that dumped water and dragged a large, heavy bucket through the snow to prevent body-recovery teams from getting hit by additional avalanches had further obscured evidence of the deadly slide."
"Normally we show up to an avalanche and we can do a bit of an investigation, we can see where it started. You can get a pretty good idea of where the avalanche started, where it ran, where it stopped. You can find what it failed on. With these conditions none of that is really possible."
"Historically, 90% of people that get killed in avalanche, themselves or someone in their group triggers it. Despite investigators' inability to pinpoint what triggered the slide, the two most probable explanations are that it started naturally, from the accumulating weight of falling and blowing snow, or that one or more of the ski party set it off."
A February 17 avalanche near Lake Tahoe killed nine of fifteen skiers on a guided backcountry tour. The Sierra Avalanche Center could not definitively determine the trigger due to delayed site access, subsequent snowfall, and helicopter operations that obscured evidence. The two most probable causes are natural triggering from accumulating snow or triggering by the skiers' weight and movements. Historically, ninety percent of avalanche fatalities result from the victims or their group triggering the slide. One skier self-rescued while others dug out buried companions.
Read at The Mercury News
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