RCMP identify two dead snowmobilers

REVELSTOKE – It’s a "small miracle" that more people did not die when a mountain of snow hurtled down on a group of snowmobilers and spectators gathered on Revelstoke’s Boulder Mountain Saturday, police said Sunday.

At least two men were killed and 31 injured in the avalanche that hit the Big Iron Shootout snowmobile rally.

Family identified the dead men as Shay Allan Snortland and Kurtis Reynolds, Calgary-based oilpatch workers.

Witnesses said the avalanche was triggered by a snowmobiler "high-marking" as part of a competition between riders on souped-up machines to see who could drive the highest up the mountain.

"It just completely wiped out a group of 150 or 200 snowmobilers," said Greg Blair, who saw the avalanche coming and fled on his snowmobile. "Everybody just disappeared — tossed, thrown, taken with the snow. The amount of snow that came down was unbelievable."

Searchers armed with radio beacons, long probes and dogs continued their efforts to find and dig out any survivors Sunday, but hope was fading.

"There are still two deceased, but it’s certainly a small miracle that we didn’t end up with a complete, massive group buried under the snow," said RCMP Cpl. Dan Moskaluk.

Moskaluk said by late Sunday afternoon police had found every one of the 45-odd snowmobilers from their missing-persons list, and are confident the large amount of deaths feared on Saturday will not be reached.

The avalanche left one person in critical condition and three others in serious condition in area hospitals.

But, "that’s not to say there are not more [deaths]," and a reduced search will continue," he said.

Mark Shaede, president of Revelstoke Snowmobile Tours, said the search was difficult.

"It was too deep to probe," he said. "It’s massively huge. We had steel probes we put together that were maybe three or four metres in length. We weren’t even close to getting to the bottom. We found some snowmobiles with our probes, and those were anywhere from three to seven metres down. And we couldn’t get to some of them."

Steve Langevin found one of the bodies buried in the snow. "There’s no word to describe this," he said.

He said one father was desperately yelling for his missing teenage son, who was found alive hundreds of metres away down a gully.

Conditions this month due to unusual weather were "unprecedented," prompting the issuance of special avalanche warnings each weekend for the past month.

"We’ve never done that before," said Greg Johnson, forecaster at the Canadian Avalanche Centre in Revelstoke.

Johnson said "time is running out if anyone is alive in the debris. The snow at the base of the mountain is 30 feet deep. There is all sorts of debris. Parts of trees. Parts of snowmobiles. It’s a mess."

Witness Colton Reay, 20, said the avalanche was triggered when one sledder got stuck, and another cut across the face above him to release a small sluff, in order to free the sled.

Then the whole mountain seemed to let go. "Time slowed down — it basically stopped," Reay said.

"It’s a big powder cloud. I was thinking, ‘This is the end, we’re dead.’ "

Riders jumped on their machines to out-race the charging wall of snow and, in the process, many drove over slower snowmobilers.

"The whole top of the mountain came down — it was pandemonium, people running around trying to find their buddies," said Revelstoke resident Mark Bolton.

Reay was knocked off his snowmobile by the slide and then went back into the scene of carnage.

He says he performed CPR for two hours, including mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, on one of the two snowmobilers confirmed to have died on Saturday.

"He just looked blue," Reay said. "I knew [he was dead] before the paramedic confirmed it. You can only do so much."

Police did not identify the dead on Sunday.

Brandon Chardonnes, 17, said the best sledders attend the annual snowmobiler gathering, where the best drivers show off powerful, souped-up machines to see who can climb highest up cliffs [called highmarking] and tackle the "gnarliest lines."

"The guy with the biggest balls wins," Chardonnes said. scooper@theprovince.com