Skier killed in avalanche in Boss Basin, first Colorado ski death of the season
Colorado rescue crews early Sunday found the body of a missing skier who was killed in a recent avalanche.
The skier was reported missing in the Boss Basin area in the upper portion of Resolution Creek on March 7. Summit County Rescue Group, Vail Mountain Rescue and the Summit and Eagle County sheriff's offices began searching the area and discovered the site of the avalanche. They noticed that nearby ski and snowmobile tracks led up to where it occurred.
The Colorado Avalanche Information Center says Flight for Life helped with the search. They found the body of the missing skier in the avalanche debris on Sunday, around sunrise.
This is the first person killed in an avalanche during the 2025-2026 ski season, according to CAIC data and deputy director Brian Lazar.
"It's unusual for us to make it into mid-March without any avalanche fatality. So we are grateful that that number isn't higher," Lazar said. "But this avalanche fatality, like all of them, does hit home pretty, pretty hard for us as avalanche forecasters. Our job is to promote and provide information for public safety, so anytime that goes awry, we take it hard."
Lazar said avalanche danger in some parts of the high country is considerable.
"Right now, we have dangerous avalanche conditions that are pretty tricky. So in this area, it's considerable avalanche danger, which is level three out of five, particularly on north- and east-facing slopes and on large open slopes just below ridgelines," said Lazar.
He said the warm winter combined with sudden snowfall can make avalanches more likely.
"Anytime we have a break in the snowfall, or we have these long dry periods or droughts, we develop weak layers on the surface of the snow pack," he said. "Then those weak layers get buried by subsequent snowfall, like what happened starting late last week, and those weak layers are so fragile because of how long our drought periods have been that they cannot handle much of a load at all, and so they're failing every time we load them. And that's exactly what happened this weekend."
Lazar said dedicated ski areas with ski patrols and snow safety teams have a much lower risk of avalanches. But the backcountry doesn't have the same level of mitigation, and skiers and boarders there face very different conditions.
"No one is doing that work in the back country. And so it is just Mother Nature's conditions as she presents them. And so it's as soon as you cross the rope line at a ski area, you are in the backcountry," he warned. "Doesn't matter if you can see chair lifts. It doesn't matter if you can see a road. If you're not inside a boundary, no one is doing avalanche mitigation work to reduce that threat."