Oct 6, 2026 · 2 hr 7 min · 12 segments
Season 7, Episode 106 To start Season 7 of the Podcast, we are doing things a little differently. Today, Jeff Banks, IFMGA guide, avalanche course instructor, and CEO & Founder of AspectAvy, is going…
On the morning of February 17th, 2026, fifteen people were walking out of a backcountry hut near Castle Peak, about eight miles northwest of Truckee, California, just north of Donner Summit.
Eleven clients and four professional guides with Blackbird Mountain Guides, finishing the last day of a three-day hut trip out of the Frog Lake Huts.
At about 11:30 in the morning, in a whiteout storm, in the middle of one of the biggest storms the Sierra has seen in potentially fifty years, an avalanche released on a north-facing slope below Parry's Peak.
Three were guides, Andrew Alessandratos of Verde, Nevada, a friend of mine, Michael Henry of Soda Springs, California, Nicole Chu of South Lake Tahoe.
All three were AMGA-trained and certified, and all three were AARI instructors, avalanche instructors, essentially.
I need to say something before we go any further, 'cause again, Andrew is my friend.
We worked together in Alaska at Pulse Line Adventures, so I'm not a neutral party here, and I'm not gonna pretend to be one.
I'm gonna be-- try to be fair to the facts, control my emotions, and if I can't, I'll let you know.
Six of the folks who passed away were clients, Carrie Atkins, Elizabeth Kleebaugh, Danielle Keatley, Kate Morse, Caroline Secor, Katherine Vitt.
Their families put out a statement together, and I wanna use their words and not mine.
They said they were all mothers, wives, friends, all of whom had connected through a love of the outdoors.
Castle Peak is the deadliest avalanche accident involving skiers and snowboards, snowboarders in United States history, and it's tied for the deadliest in North American history, alongside a Canadian Mountain Holidays heli-ski avalanche in the Bugaboos of British Columbia, Canada, on March 12th, 1991, which also killed nine people.
So it's the deadliest avalanche of any kind in this country since 1981, when eleven climbers died on Mount Rainier in Washington, and is the deadliest avalanche in California history, passing the very well-known 1982 Alpine Meadows slide that killed seven, and they made that very good movie called Buried about that situation.
On the morning of February 17th, 2026, fifteen people were walking out of a backcountry hut near Castle Peak, about eight miles northwest of Truckee, California, just north of Donner Summit.
Eleven clients and four professional guides with Blackbird Mountain Guides, finishing the last day of a three-day hut trip out of the Frog Lake Huts.
At about 11:30 in the morning, in a whiteout storm, in the middle of one of the biggest storms the Sierra has seen in potentially fifty years, an avalanche released on a north-facing slope below Parry's Peak.
Three were guides, Andrew Alessandratos of Verde, Nevada, a friend of mine, Michael Henry of Soda Springs, California, Nicole Chu of South Lake Tahoe.
All three were AMGA-trained and certified, and all three were AARI instructors, avalanche instructors, essentially.
I need to say something before we go any further, 'cause again, Andrew is my friend.
We worked together in Alaska at Pulse Line Adventures, so I'm not a neutral party here, and I'm not gonna pretend to be one.
I'm gonna be-- try to be fair to the facts, control my emotions, and if I can't, I'll let you know.
Six of the folks who passed away were clients, Carrie Atkins, Elizabeth Kleebaugh, Danielle Keatley, Kate Morse, Caroline Secor, Katherine Vitt.
Their families put out a statement together, and I wanna use their words and not mine.
They said they were all mothers, wives, friends, all of whom had connected through a love of the outdoors.
Castle Peak is the deadliest avalanche accident involving skiers and snowboards, snowboarders in United States history, and it's tied for the deadliest in North American history, alongside a Canadian Mountain Holidays heli-ski avalanche in the Bugaboos of British Columbia, Canada, on March 12th, 1991, which also killed nine people.
So it's the deadliest avalanche of any kind in this country since 1981, when eleven climbers died on Mount Rainier in Washington, and is the deadliest avalanche in California history, passing the very well-known 1982 Alpine Meadows slide that killed seven, and they made that very good movie called Buried about that situation.
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