Overview
- Search teams report eight confirmed fatalities and continue looking for one missing skier who is presumed dead, with recovery paused by ongoing storm hazards.
- Six members of the party were rescued hours after the slide, and two of them were hospitalized with injuries that are not life-threatening.
- The group of 15—four guides and 11 clients on a Blackbird Mountain Guides trip—was returning from the remote Frog Lake huts at the end of a three-day tour.
- The avalanche struck near Castle Peak/Perry Peak around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday during a powerful winter storm that prompted avalanche warnings across the Sierra Nevada.
- Nevada County officials say their inquiry will review the decision-making that led the guided outing to continue despite forecasts calling for high avalanche danger.