After avalanche warnings, a Sierra Nevada tragedy

A snow-covered trail leading to Castle Peak, near Soda Springs, Calif., late Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026. Eight skiers were killed and one other was presumed dead following an avalanche on Tuesday, the deadliest snow disaster in modern California history. Six were found alive. (Max Whittaker/The New York Times)

By THOMAS FULLER and JILL COWAN

It was announced as the first big blizzard of the year in California, and the warnings were stark. The National Weather Service posted Sunday that avalanche danger was “high” — it rated the danger 4 out of 5 — and said travel to avalanche-prone areas was “not recommended.”

As many families cut short their Presidents Day weekends and rushed home to beat the storm, 15 intrepid skiers, including four professional guides, ventured out Sunday for a three-day trek into a remote part of the Sierra Nevada where just a few weeks earlier a man had been buried in an avalanche.

Another one struck at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, as the group was finishing up its trip in the middle of the blizzard.

“Avalanche!” someone yelled just before the group was buried, according to survivors’ accounts relayed to Capt. Rusty Greene of the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office.

“It overtook them rather quickly,” Greene said.

Wednesday, officials announced that eight of the skiers had been found dead after being overcome by the avalanche, which was the size of a football field. Another skier was missing and presumed killed. It was the worst snow disaster in modern California history.

Six members of the group, one man and five women, were rescued after they contacted the authorities Tuesday afternoon by using avalanche beacons and their iPhones’ SOS satellite functions. They sheltered under a tarp until rescuers reached them.

Rescue teams used a snowcat, a vehicle with tanklike treads, and traveled hours over rugged terrain before making contact with the six survivors at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, said Sheriff Shannan Moon of Nevada County. The survivors led them to three people they had found, who were all dead, she said. The rescue team then located five other people who had also been killed.

It took several hours for the rescuers and survivors to leave the mountain in the dark. Two of the six survivors were taken to a hospital for treatment.

The power of Tuesday’s avalanche was rated 2.5 out of 5.0 on the Destructive Force Scale by the Sierra Avalanche Center, a nonprofit organization that works with the U.S. Forest Service. A 2.0 avalanche on the scale displaces enough snow to bury a person; a 3.0 is large enough to bury a car.

The authorities did not immediately identify the dead, but the Placer County sheriff, Wayne Woo, said that one of the people who had died was the spouse of a member of the rescue team that rushed to find survivors. In a separate statement, Sugar Bowl Academy, a ski-focused school near the avalanche site, said multiple victims had ties to its community. Because of the hazardous conditions, the eight bodies had not been brought down as of Wednesday evening. Of the nine dead or presumed dead, seven were women and two men.

The avalanche struck Tuesday morning near Castle Peak, a backwoods area near Truckee, California, that is cherished for its beauty. It was not far from the site of one of California’s most notorious disasters, the decimation of the Donner Party in winter 1847, when three dozen settlers died of starvation and exposure during a fierce winter, and some survivors resorted to cannibalism. The area is now a major ski destination for the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento region.

Mountain guides and backcountry skiers said Wednesday that they were struggling to understand why the 15 skiers had gone out in such treacherous conditions. But they empathized that the thrill of backcountry skiing, the joys of slicing through powder away from groomed ski resort slopes, makes it inherently dangerous.

The 15 skiers caught in Tuesday’s avalanche had been staying at the Frog Lake Backcountry Huts, according to a statement from Blackbird Mountain Guides, the company responsible for the tour group. The huts are in a remote valley connected to the outside world by only a dirt trail. But they are less than 2 miles, as the crow flies, from Interstate 80, the highway that bisects the Sierra. The highway was closed during the height of the storm, deemed too dangerous to use by authorities.

In an email, Blackbird staff members referred all questions about the avalanche to the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office.

As the storm approached, experts saw a specific danger inherent in the pattern of this year’s snowfall, one that Blackbird staff members appeared to be aware of. In a video posted by the company Sunday, a staff member pointed out that fresh snow on top of a “weak layer” from the preceding months could lead to “unpredictable avalanches.” The video was filmed on Mount Rose, about an hour drive from Castle Peak, where the avalanche struck.

On Sunday, when the group set off, the Reno, Nevada, office of the weather service posted on social media that avalanche danger was “high” for Sunday through Tuesday, rating it as 4 out of 5 in danger. The post said travel into avalanche terrain was “not recommended.”

Warnings of avalanche danger in the backcountry of the Tahoe Basin are not uncommon and happen several times a year during big storms. The Sierra Avalanche Center had most recently issued a high danger warning on Christmas Day of last year; it was one of 10 days with such a warning in 2025.

Tuesday morning, the weather service issued avalanche warnings across the region, including the greater Lake Tahoe area, through at least early Wednesday. “Large avalanches are expected across backcountry terrain,” the warning said.

The warning, which echoed what the Blackbird staff member had posted in his Sunday video, explained that rapidly accumulating snowfall was piling on top of “weak layers in the existing snowpack.” The danger was compounded by gale-force winds causing snow to blow and drift. “Natural avalanches are likely, and human-triggered avalanches large enough to bury or injure people are very likely,” the weather service said.

Ryan Ochoa, a spokesperson for the Truckee Fire Protection District, said Tuesday that rescuers from the department had tried to make it to the skiers soon after the initial call for help late Tuesday morning but could not reach their remote area. The storm had also ruled out efforts to use a helicopter to rescue the stranded skiers, Ochoa said.

Heinz Mueller, a mountain guide in the village of Andermatt, Switzerland, said that few people who are buried in avalanches survive longer than half an hour.

Mueller, who was rescued from an avalanche in the Alps in 1993 after being buried for 2 1/2 hours, said the two main dangers are suffocation and the possibility that the body’s temperature will fall too low for too long.

“If you are buried in an avalanche and you are still breathing, the hole you are breathing in starts to form ice, and then it’s the same like you are breathing in a plastic bag,” he said.

He said when he was trapped, he had managed to make a larger breathing hole, but that by the time he was rescued, he had been close to death, as his body temperature had fallen precipitously.

The avalanche was the deadliest in the United States since one in 1981 on Mount Rainier in Washington state killed 11 people, according to data compiled by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. A 1982 avalanche in Alpine Meadows, a Sierra Nevada ski resort, killed seven people and was considered the deadliest in modern California history until Tuesday’s disaster.

Across the United States, an average of 27 people have died in avalanches annually over the last 10 winters, according to the avalanche information center. So far this season, there have been six reported deaths.