avalanche fatalities

New Updates on Annual Avalanche Report Shows Colorado and Montana Have Highest Rates of Avalanche Fatalities

Natural avalanche slide on Crowne Butte

In an effort to provide you with the best information available, here’s an important follow-up on an article we published earlier in the week titled, Annual Avalanche Report Shows Colorado and Montana With Highest Rates of Avalanche Fatalities. The article discusses the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center’s annual report of fatalities from avalanches across states within the last 10 years. […]
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Ryan Kime |
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Annual Avalanche Report Shows Colorado and Montana Have the Highest Rates of Avalanche Fatalities

Natural avalanche slide on Crowne Butte

The Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center’s (GNFAC) annual avalanche report was recently released. It shows Colorado to have the highest number of avalanche fatalities over the last ten years (64). Montana was ranked 2nd with 33—still six higher than the national average of 27. Montana is an increasingly popular place to ski and snowboard in the United States. As GNFAC […]
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Ryan Kime |
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Lake Tahoe Ski Resort Facing Lawsuit After Skier is Killed By Avalanche

Ski Patrol 1982

Cole Comstock, 34, of California, was killed by an avalanche on January 17, 2020, on an Alpine Meadows ski run around 10:16 in the morning. His close friend, Kaley Bloom, was also swept by the avalanche and received serious injuries but somehow survived. Comstock was an experienced skier who skied both in-bound and out-bound areas of the resort depending on conditions. […]
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Nick Retterer |
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Former Avalanche Forecaster Discovers That Approximately ⅓ of Tourer Fatalities in the U.S. Occurred When Tourers Were Ascending

Are you traveling in the backcountry this year? Do you spend most of your time identifying avalanche terrain while traveling uphill or downhill? If you think that most avalanche fatalities occur when tourers are going downhill, then you are correct. BUT a shockingly high percentage of avalanche fatalities still occur when tourers are going uphill—32% percent to be exact, according […]
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AvyBrains |
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STUDY: 30% of All Avalanche Fatalities in Western USA Occurred During an Atmospheric River

  Research published by Benjamin Hatchet, Susan Burak, Jon Rutz, Nina Oakley, Edward Bair, and Michael Kaplan in the Journal of Hydrometerology suggests a strong link between Atmospheric River (AR) events and avalanche deaths. According to their research, 31% of avalanche fatalities between 1998 and 2014 occurred either during or shortly after an AR event. West Coast skiers got very […]
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Roger Romani |
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Only 12 Avalanche Fatalities in the USA in 2016/17 – The USA Averages 27 | We Asked 5 Experts Why This Year’s Total Was So Low?

There were only 12 Avalanche deaths this winter (2016/17) in the U.S. The annual average is 27. So, what happened? Record breaking snowfall characterized much of the western United States this year, with storm snowfall totals being recorded in feet instead of inches, massive avalanches closing roads all across the nation, and “weather events” that left us all saying “OH MY […]
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LadyBrains |
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