Five snowboarders were killed yesterday afternoon after apparently setting off an avalanche at Colorado's Loveland Pass, a popular spot for backcountry enthusiasts.
Sheriff Don Krueger of Clear Creek County, a rural, mountainous area about 100km west of Denver, said six snowboarders were ascending the pass together at when the slope broke away, releasing a deadly plume of snow 150m wide and three metres deep.
One of the snowboarders was able to extract himself, descend to a nearby roadand flag down a truck from the state's Transportation Department.
It took rescuers four hours to recover the bodies of the other five.
Sheriff Krueger said all the snowboarders had been equipped with avalanche gear, including beacons designed to transmit their location through thick layers of snow.
Yesterday’s incident was the deadliest all season across the country, and brings the number of avalanche deaths nationwide to 24. Eleven of those deaths have occurred in Colorado, according to figures from the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
Colorado has been blanketed with heaps of spring snow recently, drawing late-season skiers to the backcountry but also increasing the risk of deadly slides.
On Thursday, a 38-year-old snowboarder died in an avalanche south of Vail Pass. Eagle County sheriff’s officials said the man and another snowboarder probably triggered the slide after a friend on a snowmobile dropped them off at the top of Avalanche Bowl.
Avalanche forecasters recently rated the danger around Colorado's Front Range mountains as considerable, and warned that although slides were hard to set off, "once they break, they are very large and destructive."
US avalanche deaths climbed steeply around 1990 to an average of around 24 a year as new gear became available for off-piste skiing and snowboarding. Until then, avalanches rarely claimed more than a handful of lives each season in records going back to 1950.