Two Alaskan snowboarders died on a snowboarding trip on Monday due to an avalanche in a remote area of Canada’s British Columbia.
Royal Canadian Mountain Police received an SOS signal from an emergency locator at 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 30 about 6 miles west of the Three Guardsmen mountain in Haines Pass.
Canadian officials then sent a rescue operation including a helicopter, emergency support, and the Haines Junction Search and Rescue team to only find one person alive and two others dead.
The three men aged 21, 21, and 16 were friends from Alaska climbing the Haines Summit in Tatshenshini-Alsek Park near the Alaskan border to snowboard, according to the Daily Mail.
Avalanche Canada reported that the men were climbing on foot on a slope and were about two-thirds of the way up the mountain when the avalanche of about 5 feet deep and 160-300 feet wide was triggered.
The sliding snow hit the three men, burying two of the snowboarders and partially burying the other person.
The survivor told Daniel Dreiseitl, a local who attempted to rescue the men, that the three had seen cracks in the snow but didn’t pay them any attention.
“He mentioned that he saw some cracks in the snow but they didn’t pay attention to that. Then when they were standing and chatting and looking around, it was at that time that they triggered the avalanche,” Dreiseitl told CBC.
Dreiseitl said that he noticed a man waving his hands about 200 meters (218 yards) from the road when he was heading home from a day of skiing.
“We clearly saw that an avalanche was triggered, that there was a pile of snow beneath the hill and one man trying to dig in the snow,” he said. “When we looked in those holes we saw two bodies.”
According to Dreiseitl, their heads were down and their legs were up, buried under the snow.
“We checked the pulse of one of the bodies and the temperature and it was already cold and no pulse at all,” he said.
Haines Borough officials later named the two men as Zane Durr and Matthew Green, both 21 years old.
Canadian authorities are making arrangements to transport the deceased back to the United States, according to the fire department.
“Our prayers are with all members of their families and ours [sic] hearts are broken in their loss,” the Haines Volunteer Fire Department said in a statement.
According to James Minifie, Avalanche Canada’s Yukon spokesman, the avalanche risk had been increasing since Christmas Eve.
“We’ve had a lot of snow and wind and temperatures have come up to toward zero on multiple occasions,” he said. “So all these things combined have caused a spike in avalanche danger.”
According to Global News, another pacific storm is rolling into the province and the avalanche danger is currently high in most parts of the province.
