One man is dead after he and two other skiers were caught in an avalanche in Colorado on Friday, the Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Sunday.
The body of 36-year-old Joel Shute of Glenwood Springs was recovered Saturday afternoon, authorities said.
An avalanche that fell 2,400 feet down a mountainside caught Shute, another skier and a snowboarder in upper Rapid Creek, southwest of the town of Marble on Friday, authorities said.
The avalanche was two to three feet deep and up to 500 feet wide, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
First responders were first notified of the avalanche Friday at 5:52 p.m, according to the International Emergency Response Coordination Center.
By Saturday, rescuers extradited two men who were injured in the incident for medical treatment — the skier via helicopter and the snowboarder by ambulance after he was able to work his way out of the slide area, the sheriff’s office said.
Then Search and Rescue teams located Shute buried about four feet deep in avalanche debris, authorities said.
Shute is the eighth person to die in an avalanche in Colorado this season, CBS News Colorado reported.
On Thursday, skiers triggered two “very large” avalanches in the area near Marble after 15 inches of colder storm snow capped 10 inches of very dense snow that fell during the day on Wednesday, according to a CAIC report. No one was caught in those slides.
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