Hugh Carey/ Special to The Colorado Sun
As 17 men and women bored into the cement-like snow, even using chainsaws to grind into the ice, an avalanche released behind them, burying their exit road.
“That really showed us how reactive the snowpack was just riddled with uncertainty and you really just didn’t know,” said Leo Lloyd, a 36-year veteran of La Plata County Search and Rescue who joined his San Juan County colleagues on a grim mission last month to recover the bodies of three men buried in an avalanche near Ophir Pass.
It took two more days of digging to recover the men. Six weeks earlier, and a few hundred yards away, the team had recovered the bodies of two skiers killed in an avalanche.
A final Colorado Avalanche Information Center report on the slide near Ophic Pass released Sunday provides details on the deadliest Colorado avalanche since 2013 capping a week where 15 backcountry travelers have died in slides across the U.S.
Communication challenges in a large group and a “terrain trap” were contributing factors in the deadliest avalanche in the state since 2013, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center’s report on the massive slide that…