Castle Peak Avalanche: California's Deadliest Slide Kills Nine Backcountry Skiers Near Lake Tahoe

California's Deadliest Avalanche: Nine Dead After Castle Peak Slide Kills Backcountry Group Near Lake Tahoe

I have been covering ski and snowboard topics for a while now, and this is something I genuinely hoped I would never have to write about. Avalanches are a fact of life in mountain terrain — but the events of February 17, 2026 near Castle Peak in the Sierra Nevada are in a different category entirely.

Nine people did not come home from that mountain. Six got out alive. It is, according to California records, the deadliest avalanche in the state's history.

This article goes through everything we know: who was out there, what the snowpack looked like, what the forecasters had warned, how the rescue unfolded, and what questions are now being asked.

Who Was Out There

The fifteen people caught in the slide were part of a guided three-day backcountry ski touring trip run by Blackbird Mountain Guides, a guiding company based in Truckee, California. The trip — called the Frog Lake Backcountry Huts experience — was a multi-day package priced between USD $1,165 and $1,795 per person, taking small groups into a network of huts within the Tahoe National Forest.

The group consisted of four Blackbird guides and eleven clients. Nine women, six men, ranging in age from roughly 30 to 55. One person had been booked but didn't make the trip. Had they gone, the total would have been sixteen.

They entered the backcountry on Sunday, February 15. After two nights at the huts, the group set out on Tuesday morning to return to the Castle Peak trailhead near Boreal Mountain Resort — a route of approximately three and a half miles. The Truckee Donner Land Trust, which owns the huts, describes the route as passing through numerous avalanche hazards.

We now know the names of all nine who died. The six clients were Carrie Atkin, 46, from the Soda Springs and Truckee area; Liz Clabaugh, 52; Danielle Keatley, 44, of Soda Springs and Larkspur; Kate Morse, 45, of Soda Springs and Tiburon; Caroline Sekar, 45, of Soda Springs and San Francisco; and Katherine Vitt, 43, of Greenbrae. According to reports, Sekar and Clabaugh were sisters. The three guides who died were Andrew Alissandratos, 34, of Verdi, Nevada; Nicole Choo, 42, of South Lake Tahoe; and Michael Henry, 30.

In a joint statement, their families described the women as mothers, wives and friends — connected through a shared love of the outdoors and passionate skiers who valued time in the mountains. They deserve to be acknowledged as people, not statistics.

The Avalanche Itself

At approximately 11:30 in the morning, the slope gave way.

The slide released on a north-facing aspect at around 8,200 feet elevation, below a feature called Perry's Point, northeast of Castle Peak. According to survivor accounts relayed by Nevada County Sheriff Captain Rusty Greene, someone in the group spotted the avalanche and called a warning — but it overtook them within seconds.

Sierra Avalanche Center forecaster Steve Reynaud rated the slide at D2.5 on the destructive scale — sitting between a D2, which is capable of burying and killing a person, and a D3, which is capable of destroying a car or a house. Tahoe National Forest Supervisor Christopher Feutrier described the debris field as roughly the length of a football field. Slab avalanches of this type can accelerate to between 95 and 110 kilometres per hour.

All eight of the initially recovered victims were found wearing avalanche beacons. Their bodies were located in close proximity to each other, suggesting the group was moving together as a single unit when the slide hit.

One detail from Placer County Sheriff Wayne Woo put the scale of the tragedy in particularly stark terms: one of the deceased was the spouse of a Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue team member — the same organisation that would later participate in the rescue effort that afternoon.

Survivor accounts also revealed something significant about why the group was moving that Tuesday morning. They had made a deliberate decision to leave the huts early — specifically to try to get ahead of the incoming storm and avoid deteriorating conditions. They were aware of the weather. They were trying to outrun it. That detail adds a painful layer of complexity to everything that followed.

The Snowpack — and What Forecasters Knew

The conditions that created this avalanche had been building for weeks.

A prolonged warm and dry period through January and into early February had created a weak, faceted layer deep in the snowpack — a sugary, unstable shelf sitting on a hard, refrozen base. UC climate scientist Daniel Swain described it as particularly pronounced on northwest-to-northeast aspects above 7,500 feet elevation.

When a major storm then arrived over the weekend of February 15 and 16, dumping between 90 centimetres and 150 centimetres of new snow at the highest elevations, that heavy load came down directly on top of this fragile foundation.

The Sierra Avalanche Center had been tracking this setup closely. At 6:49 a.m. on Sunday, February 15 — the same morning the Blackbird group entered the backcountry — the Centre issued an avalanche watch, warning that large slides were likely within 24 to 48 hours. By 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, that watch had been upgraded to a full avalanche warning: HIGH danger, level 4 out of 5. The warning explicitly stated that large avalanches were expected and advised against travel in, near, or below avalanche terrain.

The storm was severe enough that Interstate 80 through the Sierra was closed in both directions. Multiple ski resorts in the immediate area had shut down operations entirely. Nearby Soda Springs Mountain Resort recorded over 75 centimetres of snow in 24 hours.

What makes this particularly difficult to process is that Blackbird Mountain Guides themselves appeared to understand the danger. On Monday, February 16 — the day before the avalanche — the company posted a video to Instagram noting what they described as atypical layering and a particularly weak layer present on many northerly aspects. The caption urged followers to use extra caution that week.

The Rescue Operation

The 911 call came in to the Nevada County Sheriff's Office at around 11:30 a.m. Authorities were also alerted directly by Blackbird Mountain Guides and by emergency beacon signals. What followed was one of the largest backcountry rescue operations in the region's history.

Between 46 and 50 rescuers from at least eight agencies mobilised from two staging points — Boreal Mountain Resort and the Tahoe Donner Alder Creek Adventure Centre. Helicopter rescue was not possible. The storm conditions made it impossible. Teams instead used snowcats to get within roughly three kilometres of the site, then skied in carefully — all while the surrounding slopes remained dangerously unstable and the risk of a secondary slide was real.

The six survivors — four men and two women — had sheltered in a treed area and constructed a makeshift windbreak using a tarp, against temperatures well below zero and blizzard conditions. Before rescuers arrived, the survivors had already located three of their deceased companions nearby.

Critically, they communicated with rescue coordinators for more than four hours using Apple's Emergency SOS via satellite feature — exchanging text messages with Don O'Keefe of the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, who later confirmed the communication publicly. That satellite messaging capability played a direct role in coordinating the response.

Rescuers reached the survivors at approximately 5:30 in the evening — roughly six hours after the initial call. Two survivors were hospitalised with non-life-threatening injuries. The remaining four were assessed on-scene and able to move under their own power. All six were confirmed safe by 10:40 that night.

The Recovery

The following morning, during a brief break in the weather, search teams located eight of the nine victims. The operation transitioned from rescue to recovery. The ninth person was declared presumed dead by Sheriff Shannan Moon.

What came next was a multi-day effort under extraordinary conditions. The snowpack had been loaded with a further 90 centimetres of new snow. Winds were severe. The avalanche danger across the broader area remained high. Recovery crews were unable to safely enter the site for days.

On Thursday, the Tahoe National Forest issued a formal closure order for National Forest lands and trails in the Castle Peak area, effective through March 15, to protect both the public and the recovery personnel. Officials conducted controlled explosions to reduce avalanche hazard before crews could safely move in.

Five bodies were recovered on Friday. On Saturday morning, helicopters from the California National Guard and the California Highway Patrol hoisted the final four from the mountainside using ropes — working through severe wind conditions that forced multiple trips. The ninth victim was found close to the rest of the group.

On Saturday, February 21, the Nevada County Sheriff's Office confirmed that all nine victims had been recovered.

Sheriff Moon said at the press conference: "There are no words that truly capture the significance of this loss and our hearts mourn alongside the families of those affected by this catastrophic event."

The Investigation

The Nevada County Sheriff's Office has confirmed the incident is under active investigation, and the scope of that investigation has grown significantly in the days since.

On Friday, February 20, the Sheriff's Office confirmed that investigators are examining whether criminal negligence was involved in the decision to proceed with the trip. Separately, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health — Cal/OSHA — confirmed it has opened its own workplace safety investigation into Blackbird Mountain Guides LLC. Cal/OSHA has up to six months to complete that process and issue citations if any workplace safety violations are identified.

The central question is the same one that has been there from the beginning: at what point did the guides know the Sierra Avalanche Center warning had been upgraded to HIGH, and what happened between that moment and when the group departed the huts on Tuesday morning? The group had entered the backcountry on Sunday when a watch was already active. The upgrade to a full HIGH danger warning came at 5:00 a.m. Tuesday — approximately six and a half hours before the slide. Whether that information reached the guides in the field before they set out is not yet publicly confirmed.

Blackbird Mountain Guides has been described by authorities as cooperative with the investigation. Company founder Zeb Blais confirmed in a statement that all four guides on the trip were trained or certified by the American Mountain Guides Association in backcountry skiing, and were instructors with the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education. Guides in the field were also in communication with senior guides at the company's base about conditions and routing decisions.

That context matters — not to condemn or to exonerate, simply to state where things stand. These were not inexperienced people operating blindly. Which is precisely why Governor Gavin Newsom, commenting publicly on the tragedy, noted: "That's what's even more concerning and disturbing about this." Newsom, who has personal connections to those affected, called it "the most devastating avalanche, in terms of loss of life, we've ever experienced" in California.

Backcountry experts outside the investigation have also weighed in. Kurt Gensheimer, an experienced backcountry traveller who had been part of a separate group that left Frog Lake on Sunday — specifically to get ahead of the incoming storm — told reporters that entering that terrain in those conditions was, in his words, a recipe for disaster. Avalanche safety equipment supplier Anthony Pavlantos noted that snowfall rates exceeding 30 centimetres in 24 hours represent a significant red flag for anyone considering backcountry travel.

What This Means for the Rest of Us

Nine people went into the Sierra Nevada and didn't come home. They have now been brought off that mountain — after days of dangerous, exhausting work by rescue and recovery personnel who put themselves at real risk to do it. The Truckee community held a vigil on Sunday to honour those who were lost.

The full picture of what happened that morning — what decisions were made, what information was available, and why the group moved through that terrain despite the warnings — will emerge through the investigations. That process may take months. And until it runs its course, rushing to judgement doesn't serve anyone.

What is fair to say, and what this incident makes clear in the most devastating way possible, is that the backcountry does not offer second chances. The Sierra Avalanche Center issues danger ratings for a reason. The language in Tuesday morning's warning was not ambiguous. When a forecast states that large avalanches are expected and that travel in avalanche terrain is not recommended, that language carries real weight.

If you're planning any backcountry travel this season, please sit with that for a moment before you head out.

Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those who were lost, and with the six survivors who will carry this with them for the rest of their lives.