Searchers Seek Skiers' Bodies

Searchers returned to the site of a massive avalanche near a Utah ski resort on Saturday, hoping to find the bodies of five people feared dead under 30 feet of snow.

The rescue effort was halted before sunset Friday because of concerns over secondary slides, but avalanche charges were dropped from helicopters overnight to make the area safer.

Crews returned around 8 a.m. local time to search an area 500 yards wide outside the boundary of The Canyons resort on federal land in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest.

The exact number of people caught in the Friday afternoon slide was not yet known, but Summit County Sheriff's Capt. Alan Siddoway said officials knew of five unaccounted for skiers and had descriptions of clothing and equipment for some of them.

Authorities changed the focus of the operation from rescue to recovery before suspending the search Friday.

"I think it's safe to say the odds of surviving are very, very low," Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds said Friday night.

The area where the avalanche occurred was marked with a skull and crossbones to discourage thrill-seekers. Skier Jess Fleig, a 35-year-old disc jockey, said he frequents the backcountry but stayed away from that area Friday.

"What immediately came to mind is that's trouble waiting to happen," said Fleig, speaking on a mobile phone from a mountaintop.

About 100 search and rescue workers, rescue dog crews and members of ski patrols from Summit County resorts searched the area for victims, Edmunds said. The enormity of the slide was underscored when rescuers, working on 30-degree slopes, found that their 6-meter (20-foot) probes weren't going deep enough into the snow.

Even before Friday, this had already been one of the deadliest winters for avalanches in Utah since records were first kept in 1951. Before Friday six people had died in slides; no previous winter had seen more than six deaths.

Bruce Tremper, director of the Utah Avalanche Center, said the area where the slide happened was out-of-bounds, but the resort "can't close it off. It would be like trying to close a city park," Tremper said.

A series of storms lasting over two weeks dropped about six to eight feet of wet, heavy snow on the Wasatch mountains, setting up prime avalanche conditions.