An apocalyptic avalanche thatburied up to 10 backcountry skiersnorth of Lake Tahoe on Tuesday is only the latest tragedy during a deadly winter from hell in California’s vast mountain ranges.
A rescue effort to find survivors remained ongoing in the Central Sierra Nevada — the same area where another avalanche killed a snowmobiler in early January.
The season’s snowy trail of death hit the slopes of Mount Baldy — a 10,064-foot peak straddling Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties — in late December, asthree hikers perishedin extreme winter weather, including a 19-year-old Santa Clara University freshman who fell 500 feet, sheriff’s officials said.
Another two hikers were fortunately rescued.
The Dec. 29 search-and-rescue effort reinvigorated longstanding warnings about hiking on Mount Baldy, where 23 people had died between 2016 and 2025.
San Bernardino County’s sheriff’s officials even compared the peak’s deadliness to Mount Everest, SFGatefirst reported.
But other Golden State mountains also proved treacherous in the nearly two months since the Mount Baldy tragedy.
A hiker who staged his own search for four missing friends in Riverside County’s mountain region was founddead at the bottom of a 150-foot rock facein Anza on Jan. 17.
The quartet of hikers he had endeavored to find were eventually located by Riverside County sheriff’s deputies.
A few days later, another hiker on Mount Whitney — the 14,505-foot Sierra Nevada peak that’s the tallest mountain in the contiguous US —died within a few hundred feet of its summit.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
