Veteran skier found buried in avalanche on desolate trail by wife using transceiver

A Colorado woman learned her husband was buried by an avalanche after he never checked in as planned, and she began searching for him under the snow. 

Donald Moden Jr., a 57-year-old veteran skier who was once a member of the Ouray Mountain Rescue Team, was killed on Jan. 7 in an area off Red Mountain Pass known as “Bollywood,” the Ouray County Plaindealer reported. 

The Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC) wrote in a report that the 57-year-old was likely buried for more than four hours before he was found. 

The avalanche was 800 feet wide and traveled 400 feet vertically, the agency wrote. 

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Moden’s wife contacted the Ouray County Sheriff’s Office when her husband didn’t check in as planned, then went to the trailhead herself. She turned on her avalanche transceiver and immediately got a response from her husband’s transceiver, The Colorado Sun reported. She immediately found him with an avalanche probe and called out to surrounding skiers for help. 

In addition to his transceiver, the outlet reported, Moden was wearing an avalanche airbag backpack that never deployed. 

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He was likely skiing downhill when he was engulfed by the snowslide, the CAIC said, and was on his seventh run of the day. He was buried too deeply to rescue himself, they wrote.

“He had skied on Red Mountain Pass for 16 years and knew the terrain on Red Number 3 well,” the report read. “He chose his terrain as appropriate for the day based on his previous experience of the slope and the snowpack.”

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Moden skied on an adjacent slope a day earlier and probably did not see signs of dangerous snowpack, the CAIC said. 

Moden’s death is the first reported avalanche fatality in Colorado this ski season. Since Nov. 9, the CAIC has reported 25 backcountry skiiers and travelers caught in 23 different avalanches.

Seven of those victims were buried in snow and debris. According to the Colorado Sun, those numbers are not notably higher than those in previous seasons.