Eight backcountry skiers are dead, one more is presumed dead, and bodies remain on a mountainside near Lake Tahoe after an avalanche swept through a group of 15 people on a guided hut trip in California's Sierra Nevada. Six were rescued. Search and rescue operations have been suspended due to hazardous conditions, with no timeline for safe recovery.
Gov. Gavin Newsom disclosed Thursday that the tragedy struck close to home. Speaking at an unrelated press conference, Newsom said the victims included people from his personal circle:
It turns out, a lot of mutual friends in Marin County — I'm just learning some of my wife's old family friends.
The group, all between 30 and 55, had set out on a two-night backcountry hut trip led by Blackbird Mountain Guides. By late Thursday, six of the dead had been publicly identified, all women: Caroline Sekar, 45; her sister Liz Clabaugh, 52; Kate Vitt, a mother of two and former vice president at SiriusXM; Carrie Atkin; Danielle Keatley; and Kate Morse. Three of the dead and the missing skier remain unidentified to the public.
The Nevada County Sheriff's Office confirmed Thursday morning that the fallen cannot yet be brought home. The office stated that the avalanche victims "cannot be safely extracted off the mountain today" and that recovery efforts were expected to carry into the weekend.
According to the New York Post, nearly 100 first responders were involved in the search effort, a figure Newsom cited in a post on X the day before the recovery was suspended. The scale of the response underscores what law enforcement has described as the deadliest incident on Castle Peak in modern history.
For the families, the wait is its own cruelty. A spokesperson stated on their behalf:
We are heartbroken. And are doing our best to care for one another and our families in the way we know these women would have wanted.
That line tells you something about who these women were. Even in grief, the people they left behind are trying to honor how they lived.
Blackbird Mountain Guides, the outfit that organized and led the trip, released a statement acknowledging the loss while offering little in the way of specifics. The company said it lost three "highly experienced members" in the avalanche, though it remains unclear whether those were guides or participants.
This was an enormous tragedy, and the saddest event our team has ever experienced.
On the question of what went wrong, the company was careful:
There is still a lot that we're learning about what happened. It's too soon to draw conclusions, but investigations are underway.
Blackbird has suspended its field operations at a minimum through February 22, with a possible extension of one to two weeks. Law enforcement confirmed they are "looking into" the company, though no agency has specified whether that means a criminal investigation, a regulatory review, or something else entirely.
These are fair questions to ask, and they will be asked. Backcountry guiding operations carry enormous responsibility. Fifteen people trusted Blackbird with their lives on a Sierra Nevada mountainside in winter. Nine of those people will not come home. The public deserves a thorough accounting of the decisions made before and during that trip: the avalanche conditions assessed, the route chosen, the contingency plans in place.
Newsom called it "the most devastating avalanche in terms of loss of life we have ever experienced." That is not political rhetoric. It is a factual description of what California is now processing.
The mountains do not care about press conferences or timelines. The weather that buried these skiers is now preventing their recovery. Authorities have not indicated when conditions will permit safe extraction, and the families are left to endure a grief compounded by the unbearable reality that their loved ones are still out there.
There will be time for investigations, for accountability, for policy discussions about backcountry guiding standards and avalanche risk protocols. Right now, there are families in Marin County and beyond holding each other together, waiting for the Sierra to relent.
Eight confirmed dead. One presumed. Six survivors carrying a weight no rescue helicopter can lift.
