YOUR AD HERE »

Skier killed in Colorado avalanche while taking advanced avalanche safety course

ELISE SCHMELZER | The Denver Post
This image released by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, annotated with red lines, shows the site of two avalanches at Upper Senator Beck Basin, northwest of Red Mountain Pass in the San Juan Mountains. A group of skiers triggered the avalanche on the right and the avalanche on the left released sympathetically, adding to the debris pile of the first slide. A skier who died Saturday after being buried in the debris from both avalanches was participating in an advanced avalanche safety course at the time he was killed.
Image courtesy of Colorado Avalanche Information Center

The skier who died Saturday after being buried in an avalanche near Red Mountain Pass in the San Juan Mountains was participating in an advanced avalanche safety course at the time he was killed.

All six skiers in the Silverton Avalanche School class were swept away by an avalanche they triggered in Upper Senator Beck Basin northwest of Silverton, according to a preliminary report released by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. The first avalanche triggered a second one, burying one of the skiers in more than 8 feet of snow.

The others found the buried skier and dug him out, but he already was dead.

The skier, whom The Durango Herald identified as 40-year-old Peter Marshall, of Longmont, was the first avalanche fatality this winter, according to the center.

Read the full story via The Denver Post.


Support Local Journalism