Four skiers dead, four rescued from an avalanche in the backcountry of Utah

The Salt Lake City Unified Police Department got a hangup call Saturday around 11:40 a.m. and then received a report that there had been an avalanche in the Wilson Basin area with five people detained, Sgt. Melody Cutler, a police information officer.

Two groups of skiers, one group of three and another of five, started skiing on the mountain at the same time, and authorities believe the avalanche was caused by the group skiing, Cutler said.

“Four of those skiers were able to dig their way out,” Cutler said. “All four of the remaining ones have died.”

According to Cutler, skiers range in age from their early twenties to their late thirties. A Life Flight rescue service was called to transport the survivors from the area, and a flyover was carried out to determine if it is safe for rescuers to remove the deceased tonight, Cutler said.

The site where the avalanche took place is a “very popular backcountry ski area,” Cutler told CNN, adding that it was “recently under high-risk avalanche conditions.”

Wilson Basin is located at Mill Creek Canyon, about 20 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

The Utah Avalanche Center said in a tweet Saturday morning that there were “dangerous avalanche conditions”.

Utah government Spencer Cox responded to Saturday’s death on Twitter, calling it a “terrible tragedy”.

“We are grateful to the first responders and others involved in this rescue and recovery effort,” Cox said. “Now that the avalanche danger is high, you have to be extremely careful.”

Salt Lake City Mayor Jenny Wilson tweeted that she was “heartbroken”.

“We deeply mourn the loss of life as a result of this devastating incident,” said Wilson.

The four are the most recent in a series of avalanche deaths in three states, bringing the number of fatalities to nine.

A Utah man was killed a week ago when he was caught in an avalanche near the Park City Mountains Canyons Village resort, just a few miles from the site of Saturday’s avalanche. The Utah Avalanche Center has already published a report analyzing the avalanche.

Three other skiers, all of whom were local officials, were killed in an avalanche in Colorado on Monday. Their bodies were found on Wednesday.

In New Hampshire, a skier’s body was recovered on Wednesday after an avalanche in White Mountain National Forest.