SNOWBLOG GROK

Aspen Skier Dies in Snow Slide

By Bob Berwyn, 12-22-06

An Aspen skier died in an avalanche Thursday afternoon, The Aspen Times reports. According to the Times, 25-year-old Nicholas Blake Davidson jumped off a cliff band in a closed area known as the lower Ladder section of the Hanging Valley Wall, visible in this trail map.

One witness quoted in the Times said the slab avalanche fractured four feet deep and about 50 feet across, and ran about 150 feet downhill. Davidson, who competed in big air and extreme skiing competitions, was carried into a timbered area by the slide. The slide happened sometime around 1 p.m. and rescuers dug him out of the debris by 1:32 p.m. An autopsy will be performed to determine whether Davidson suffocated or died of trauma.

According to the Times, Davidson worked at an Aspen sushi restaurant and was well-liked, and that co-workers remembered him as caring and giving.

The last in-bounds avalanche fatality in Colorado occurred at Arapahoe Basin in May 2005, when a 52-year-old Boulder man was caught in a huge wet snow slide in the area’s black-diamond Pallavicini terrain. The area was open for skiing at the time. The Forest Service subsequently investigated the accident and found no fault with the ski area, reporting that Arapahoe Basin had fulfilled the spirit and intent of its snow safety plan. The 2005 A-Basin death was the first in-bounds avalanche death in 30 years.

The A-Basin death prompted an overhaul of ski resort snow safety plans, with Forest Service snow rangers asking resorts to specifically address wet slab conditions. One of the consequences could be earlier terrain closures, the Summit Daily News reported in an in-depth story on the aftermath of the A-Basin slide.

Several resorts around the west are participating in a long-term follow-up study of wet snow slides, the Summit Daily reported in another follow-up story.

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