West Marin man killed in avalanche at Palisades Tahoe ski resort

LAKE TAHOE — An avalanche as wide as half a football field hurtled down a famous Lake Tahoe ski slope Wednesday morning, killing one person and injuring another just a half hour after the area opened for the season.

The Placer County Sheriff’s Office said late Wednesday evening that 66-year-old Kenneth Kidd, a resident of both Point Reyes Station and the Truckee area, died Wednesday after the avalanche hit in an expert skiing and snowboarding area at the Palisades Tahoe ski resort. “Our heart felt condolences go out to the family and friends of Mr. Kidd,” the office said in its statement.

Kidd and the injured person were resort guests, authorities said. Two other people were caught in the avalanche but appeared unhurt.

The injured person’s injuries were minor, according to Sgt. David Smith of the Placer County Sheriff’s Office.

In a statement, the sheriff’s office said the avalanche occurred at 9:30 a.m. beneath KT-22, a chairlift that accesses black-diamond and double-black-diamond advanced and expert terrain. The avalanche was estimated to be 150 feet wide and 10 feet deep.

A video shared with the Bay Area News Group by a Tahoe-area resident appeared to show a chaotic scene in which a group attempted to dig a trapped skier out of snow. People in the video described the trapped person as injured.

At a brief news conference Wednesday afternoon, Smith said the search for other possible victims had ended. “We have come to the conclusion … that there is nobody else up on the mountain as a result of the avalanche,” Smith said.

Michael Gross, vice president of mountain operations at Palisades Tahoe, said the slide caught two other people. “One of them was, I think, extracted by her partner, and the other one was assisted by other guests,” Gross said.

The resort’s ski patrollers had been up on KT-22 since Sunday doing avalanche control work and assessments as they typically do in the wake of significant snowfall, Gross said.

“We’ll evaluate the conditions, and based on our expertise and our experience and the history, if we deem the conditions safe, we’ll open,” Gross said.

Professional skier Andy Hays told the Bay Area News Group that he had skied KT-22 twice Wednesday and was on his way up the chairlift again when he spotted a group of people tending to someone in the snow, and soon after he saw the path the avalanche had left near the top of the mountain, he said.

“It was windy and stormy and the visibility was tough,” said Hayes, 42, of Olympic Valley near the resort. He descended to find ski patrollers handing out metal avalanche probes and six- to seven-foot bamboo sections — typically used for marking hazards — being repurposed as makeshift probes.

The patrollers were shouting directions to about 100 people who had come onto the scene to help, and the volunteers were organized into lines, probing the snow for buried people or gear, said Hays, who grabbed a piece of bamboo and joined the operation.

“It was a very challenging place to search because it had kind of different elements to it,” Hays said. “The ski patrol did an absolutely amazing job.”

The slide appeared to have ripped down a slope, poured through rocks, then spread out again, he said. Police estimated its length — the distance from where the avalanche started to the end of the debris field at the bottom — to be 450 feet.

“It was different sections that people were trying to search for any possible people,” Hays said.

Both the injured and deceased victims were found near the bottom of the slide, with the latter buried deep before he was dug out, Hays said. Ski patrol performed CPR, but it was unsuccessful, Hays said.

He said he believes the resort took the necessary measures to try to ensure safety. “Even when you’re skiing in a resort, you cannot possibly mitigate all risks,” he said. “This just has all the marks of just a tragic event. It’s a reminder that you can’t control everything.”

The mountain, west of Tahoe City, was closed after the avalanche. There was no word Wednesday afternoon on when the mountain might be reopened.

In a post to social media, the office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom said that the state was “monitoring and standing by to assist” with the response to the avalanche.

Palisades is on the western side of Lake Tahoe, about 40 miles from Reno, Nevada. The resort was host site for the 1960 Winter Olympics.

Winds gusted in excess of 100 mph over ridgetops around Lake Tahoe late Tuesday ahead of a powerful storm expected to bring as much as 2 feet of snow to the highest elevations by early Thursday. The National Weather Service in Reno said 2 inches per hour could fall Wednesday around the lake.

A 110 mph gust was recorded Tuesday afternoon at the summit of Alpine Meadows, the neighboring sister resort of Palisades south of Truckee, California, the service said.

Snow conditions are currently risky due to a fragile and unstable layer of snow, called a “hoar layer,” according to the Sierra Avalanche Center. This weak layer,  buried one to two feet below the snow surface, is being loaded with fresh snow from Wednesday’s fierce winter storm and gale force winds. Avalanche danger was predicted to quickly increase on Wednesday, with avalanches possible in a variety of areas in the Central Sierras by afternoon and evening.

KT-22 is a sacred site in Lake Tahoe’s storied ski culture, a mountain summit with 1,800-vertical feet of steep terrain that has served as the proving ground for many of the nation’s finest winter athletes. On powder days like Wednesday, locals line up at dawn for the first ride up the KT chairlift.

“KT-22 is kind of the heart and soul of the mountain, and it’s been a rough snow year so far, and people were excited,” Hays said of the lift’s opening Wednesday. “People were pretty fired up.”

The lift and the runs it serves are known for crowds, but it had not been clear on Tuesday that it would open Wednesday, and the stormy weather probably also kept skiers and snowboarders from heading to the resort, Hays said.

“It was good that there weren’t way more people on the slope,” he said. “It could have been far worse. The fact that only a few people were swept up in it is very, very fortunate.”

The snow slid near the famed peak that holds the metal eagle that memorializes the late, legendary skier Shane McConkey, who called KT “the greatest lift in America.”

A 2020 avalanche at Alpine Meadows killed one skier and seriously injured another a day after a major storm. An avalanche at Alpine Meadows in March 1982 killed seven people, including several employees of the ski resort.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.