Jan 25, 2008 11:00 pm US/Pacific
Wrightwood Mourns 3 Killed In Avalanches
Missing Snowboarder Found
BIG PINES (CBS) ―
The small tight-knit community of Wrightwood is in mourning Saturday as people remember friends who were called expert skiers who died doing what they loved.
Still, many people here are troubled by the deaths and were too emotional to talk about their friends on camera.
A third avalanche victim has died, but a missing snowboarder walked out of the steep, snow-crusted mountains of eastern Los Angeles County. Sheriff's deputies said the survivor approached searchers at the Mountain High Ski Area just after 9 a.m. Saturday.
The other missing person, believed to have been caught in an avalanche Friday, was located but died shortly afterward Saturday, a sheriff's deputy said.
One of the latest two victims may have been lost while skiing or snowboarding just outside the boundaries on the back side of the mountain ridge at Mountain High Friday, and he is the person who reportedly survived. The other was reportedly caught in an avalanche on the ridge's front side, but outside the ski trails at Mountain High East.
That was at least the third avalanche to catch skiers at the resort this week, officials said.
Avalanches are rare, but not unheard-of, in the San Gabriel Mountains. A large snow slide killed off-duty ski patrolman Michael McKay, 23, Friday afternoon.
A second avalanche, five minutes after the first, caught Darrin Coffey, 33, a veteran Mountain High ski patrol member. He was given cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the way down the mountain, but died at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center.
Rescuers Saturday were working in a known avalanche path in Sawmill Canyon, a gully on the outside the resort's groomed and patrolled areas. Other searchers searched for the missing skier south of the mountain top.
Mountain High operates three nearby-but-separate ski areas clustered in the Wrightwood area, at the far eastern edge of Los Angeles County about 80 road miles from the Civic Center. Most winter days there, skiers and snowboarders cavort on slopes that are significantly-bolstered by man-made snow.
But this month's snowfall in the Los Angeles County mountains, however, has been of mammoth proportions. As much a five feet of snow fell at Mountain High this week, most of it in a 48-hour period ending Friday.
Sunny skies were in the area Saturday, but clouds and are expected to move in this afternoon, and more snow predicted to fall Saturday night and Sunday.
A spokeswoman at the Mount Baldy Ski Area said workers there had cut into steep snow banks with their skis to trigger small, preemptive snow slides, and that the entire mountain was open with excellent conditions.
The director of marketing at Mountain High Resort in Wrightwood called the avalanche deaths of three people a tragedy, but hastened to remind the public that the people who died had willingly ventured outside of marked boundaries at the ski resort.
"We do have three fatalities and it's pretty tragic," said Mountain High marketing director John McColly. "But they all happened to be out-of bounds."
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
