Mount Hood, OR – A 25-year-old snowboarder died on Saturday after being buried alive when an ice cave collapsed on top of him.

Collin Backowski, of Pines, Colo., was one of a group of six snowboarders ranging in age from 24 to 29 who had been out looking for areas to snowboard and film. The men found an area where the White River Glacier meets a rock talus slope at the 8,100-foot level of Mt. Hood and had melted a tunnel into the ice and snow. Backowski was slightly ahead of the rest of his group when the ice cave collapsed unexpectedly on Saturday afternoon, burying him beneath a chunk of glacial ice and snow the size of a school bus.

Backowski’s body was recovered by rescuers at 8:45 a.m. on Sunday. The victim was an off-duty summer employee of High Cascade Snowboard Camp on Mount Hood. The camp trains on the Palmer Snowfield at the Timberline Ski Area on Mount Hood, but the area in which Backowski was killed was well outside of the ski area boundary.