Tahoe City, CA – A backcountry skier died in a Lake Tahoe area hospital on Thursday following an avalanche in the backcountry near Alpine Meadows Resort.
Benjamin Brackett, 29, of Olympic Valley, Calif., a food service worker at Squaw Valley, was pronounced dead Thursday night at Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee. He had been skiing on Stanford Rock in Ward Valley, a steep backcountry area just south of Alpine Meadows, when the slide struck on Thursday afternoon and carried Brackett for about 300 vertical feet. One of Brackett’s companions left to summon help while the other, who sustained a broken leg in the avalanche, stayed behind with Brackett.
Rescuers spent three hours traveling to the scene and evacuating Brackett, who was tangled in a stand of trees. He was transferred to the hospital before he was pronounced dead on Thursday evening. The cause of death has not yet been released.
“Ben Brackett was a valued member of Squaw’s culinary team since 2008 who had a smile and a friendly word for all his co-workers and our guests,” staffers at Squaw Valley said in a prepared statement. “Our heartfelt condolences go out to his family and friends. He will be truly missed by his friends, family and team members here at Squaw.”
The avalanche danger in the area was rated as “considerable” by the Sierra Avalanche Center at the time of the incident. Investigators from the Center indicate that the dry slab avalanche broke at 7,600 feet of elevation on a slope of 39 degrees. It had a two-foot crown 480 feet wide and ran for 1,235 feet.
“Three skiers skinned up towards Stanford Rocks,” the Avalanche Center’s report indicates. “When they reached this area where they wanted to ski, they dropped a small piece of cornice onto the slope as a test. This cornice drop released a slab a few inches deep that propagated widely across the slope. The first skier then started to ski the slope. On his third turn, he triggered a slab avalanche about one foot deep that failed within the storm snow. He grabbed onto a tree and was able to stop himself from being taken down slope. The avalanche then stepped down another 15-20 inches to a lower persistent weak layer and pulled this skier away from his tree and down the slope into the trees below. His partners skied down, saw a ski protruding from the snowpack, and used their beacons to locate the buried skier. The avalanche buried the skier about three feet deep and wrapped him around some trees. It took them about three minutes to get to their buried partner. This deep slab avalanche failed within a layer of faceted snow sandwiched between two crusts. This known persistent weak layer is located just below the old/new snow interface.
“Our thoughts and sincere condolences go out to the family and friends of this skier,” the report concluded.