NEVADA COUNTY, Calif. – A deadly avalanche killed eight skiers near Castle Peak in California's Sierra Nevada mountains in the morning hours of Feb. 17, marking the deadliest avalanche in the U.S. in over 40 years.
A group of 11 clients and four professional guides from Blackbird Mountain Guides were on the final leg of a three-day backcountry excursion when the avalanche struck around 11:30 a.m. PT Tuesday, officials said.
Six people in the group were rescued by emergency search and rescue groups after surviving the avalanche, and sheltering from dangerous winds after reporting the deadly slide. Officials announced that one skier remains missing as search and rescue teams continue looking through the rugged Sierra Nevada wilderness.
Officials described the deadly avalanche as a D2.5 on the Avalanche Destruction Scale, or a "large" avalanche.
These terms aren't just descriptive; they are part of the Destructive Force Scale (D-Scale), a standardized system used across North America and Europe to categorize the power and potential impact of an avalanche based on its mass and what it can destroy.
The deadliest U.S. avalanche occurred on June, 21 1981, when an avalanche killed 11 in Washington.
An immense avalanche of ice and snow claimed the lives of 10 mountain climbers and one guide climbing the Ingraham Glacier, attempting to summit Mount Rainier.
Tuesday's catastrophic avalanche marks the deadliest in California since the Alpine Meadows disaster in 1982 that killed seven near a Lake Tahoe ski resort.
SOLE SURVIVOR OF DEADLY 1982 ALPINE MEADOWS AVALANCHE RECALLS HOPE WHILE WAITING 5 DAYS FOR RESCUE
The avalanche occurred in an area now part of the Palisades Tahoe Ski Resort and left a lone survivor, Anna Conrad Allen, who was rescued five days after the deadly slide occurred.
In 1962, a monster, pre-dawn avalanche killed seven people after traveling over 9,000-feet and carving a widespread path of destruction that demolished seven buildings and a trailer.
The Twin Lakes avalanche crumpled two cars, three trucks, two pickup trucks and other equipment, and buried State Highway 82 in under 8 feet of packed snow and ripped telephone lines out 1,000 feet, according to a report from the Colorado Geological Survey.
The Castle Peak avalanche marks the deadliest in over a decade on U.S. soil, since six died at Mount Rainier in 2014, according to the National Avalanche Center.
Two guides and four clients were swept from their campsite high on Mount Rainier's Liberty Ridge.
The National Avalanche Center attributed the accident to an avalanche based on circumstantial evidence of terrain and weather conditions, as well as direct evidence observed in the runout zone.
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