Man dies in avalanche while remembering another slide victim
Posted March 25, 2013 6:35 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
KIMBERLEY (NEWS1130) – Crews have recovered the body of a man buried under three metres of snow after getting caught in a large avalanche near Kimberley on Saturday.
Kimberley Search and Rescue was unable to to go in right away to recover the man’s body because the avalanche debris field was so big.
“It was too unsafe for the rescuers even to be there. The Canadian Avalanche Centre and the Search and Rescue specialists with the avalanche specialists had to go in and actually do some blasting to make it safe,” says BC Coroner Barb McLintock.
As for why the man was in the area, McLintock says “the gentleman and some other people who were at the edge of the avalanche, and didn’t luckily get caught up in the centre of it, were actually out on a memorial trip because this is exactly the same site where there was another avalanche death about two years ago.”
McLintock encourages people to be very careful right now in the back country of mountains, after the Canadian Avalanche Centre issued a special warning for the area earlier this week.
The man’s name, age and residence has not yet been released.
