California avalanche was among U.S.’s deadliest events, AP roundup says

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Eight backcountry skiers were found dead and one person remained missing after an avalanche near Lake Tahoe in Northern California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, authorities said Wednesday, Feb. 18. The AP described the slide as one of the deadliest avalanches in U.S. history.

AP’s roundup also traced the Tahoe region’s links to other major avalanche disasters, including older ski-area tragedies and earlier historical events. The list highlighted how avalanches have repeatedly produced large casualty counts across different eras, from frontier trail traffic to passenger trains and mountaineering expeditions.

The roundup placed the Wellington, Washington disaster among the deadliest in U.S. history. In 1910, a “massive wall of snow swept two Great Northern passenger trains into a gorge,” killing 96 people, according to AP’s description, and AP said the trains had been stuck on the tracks for days before the slides.

Another event in the AP list was the Chilkoot Trail avalanche in Alaska in 1898. AP said it was the deadliest event connected to the Klondike Gold Rush, when a series of snow slides in April 1898 killed around 65 people on the Chilkoot Trail.

AP also cited mountaineering and other Western disasters. In 1981, AP said 10 climbers and a guide were killed by a massive ice avalanche on the Ingraham Glacier on Mount Rainier, which AP described as the most deadly mountaineering accident in U.S. history.

For the Rocky Mountain U.S., the AP roundup included a 1962 tragedy in Twin Lakes, Colorado. AP said an avalanche wiped out several homes near Independence Pass and killed seven residents, including five children.

AP’s Tahoe-region history section also included a major ski resort disaster in 1982. The AP roundup said an avalanche crashed into Alpine Meadows Ski Resort near Lake Tahoe, killing seven people, including four resort employees who remained on site even though the resort had been closed for the day due to dangerous conditions.

In the same 1982 account, AP said a 22-year-old chairlift operator was rescued five days later after a specially trained dog found her in the remains of the ski chalet.