No avalanche control performed on slope where Nevada teen died

LAS VEGAS - No avalanche control measures were taken on the slope where a 13-year-old snowboarder was swept off a lift to his death, a Southern Nevada ski resort administrator said Monday.

Explosive charges on another slope failed to release snow on the slope where the avalanche took place, said Brian Strait, general manager of the Las Vegas Ski & Snowboard Resort

"In our view, the resort was safe yesterday. That's why we chose to open," Strait said.

Strait attributed the avalanche that killed Allen Brett Hutchison, a Las Vegas eight-grader, to an unusual combination of circumstances during the latest in a series of powerful Western winter storms.

The storms have caused mudslides in California, massive snowdrifts and road closures in Northern Nevada, and some of the best skiing of the season in Southern Nevada mountains.

"The magnitude, the amount of snow and the amount of snow that was released at one time was unique to that chute in the 40 years of the resort," Strait said.

Avalanche control technicians spent Sunday morning detonating eight charges by cannon and four by hand on another slope. Strait said they did not work on the slope where snow gave way.

Reopening the resort will be delayed, a U.S. Forest Service official said until investigators determine why a wall of snow roared down a chute that Strait said was usually considered at low-risk for avalanche.

"It will remain closed until the cause is known and I can make absolutely certain that the area's safe for the public," Tim Short, district ranger for the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. The forest service lets the ski area operate by permit.

The agency had issued an "Extreme Avalanche Potential" from Friday to Monday for the region, but exempted the ski area, because of it's avalanche controls.

Strait said avalanches are common in the upper reaches of the ski area 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Sunday's was much lower - about one-third up the mountain.

Investigators will try to determine whether rushing snow or an "air blast" pushed ahead of it swept the boy off the 20-foot-high lift, Strait said. The lift travels a little more than a half-mile on a moderately difficult slope. Chairs have no safety restraining bars.

Strait said the lift was stopped as the avalanche rushed toward it.

"We had eyewitness accounts that this young man was taken off the lift by the force of the avalanche," Las Vegas police Sgt. Chris Jones said. "It caught him , and the force of it took him."

Other skiers yelled for help and those suspended in chairs watched while volunteers and Ski Patrol members started digging.

About six hours later, while searching a half-acre area downhill from the lift, a police dog led searchers to the boy's body buried beneath 6 to 10 feet of snow.

He died of asphyxia, but also had multiple blunt-force injuries, the Clark County coroner's office said Monday. Police were handling the case as an accident, Jones said.