The lone survivor of an avalanche that killed two men near Aspen last week inadvertently set off a series of events that triggered the fatal slide, according to a report by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
Jason Luck, 34, of Arvada was in the lead as the group of college friends ascended 12,300-foot Mount Shimer on Tuesday. Near the top of a sparsely treed slope, Luck, by accident, remotely triggered a large avalanche in an adjacent bowl several hundred feet away, sending shock waves across the entire slope. Moments later, the snow on which the men were climbing fractured, sweeping the three away, according to the report.
“Probably what happened is when you’re on your skis and you get on a weak spot in the snowpack, that snow can collapse,” said John Snook, a forecaster with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. “That may not trigger an avalanche where you’re at, but that collapse can change the whole characteristics of the slope.”
Simon Ozanne, a 35-year-old management consultant from New Jersey, and Alexis Dodin, a 32-year-old Frenchman who most recently was living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, died in the slide. The three men had attended college together at Colorado School of Mines. The trip was a reunion for the friends, and also a Christmas gift to Ozanne from his wife, who is expecting the couple’s first child.
Ozanne’s funeral was Sunday, and a man who answered the phone at Ozanne’s home said Ozanne’s wife did not wish to comment. Efforts to reach Luck were unsuccessful.
According to the report, the three came prepared for avalanche danger. They checked the CAIC’s website the day before the trip, and each carried avalanche beacons, probes and shovels. Before they started up the slope, they dug a snow pit to assess the avalanche danger.
“They were pretty much as well prepared as anybody,” said Pitkin County sheriff’s patrol director Jeff Lumsden. “They dug their test pit. They had the most current equipment. I think time of day might be the only issue.”
The avalanche happened about 1:50 p.m. Lumsden said backcountry skiers, especially at this time of year when warming daytime temperatures can create instability in the snowpack, are encouraged to be down by noon.
The CAIC listed avalanche danger for the day as “moderate” with a special warning to beware instability on steep, north- facing slopes above tree line, according to the report. The slope where the fatal slide happened is north-facing, near tree line and as steep as 40 degrees.
The fatal avalanche was smaller than the remotely triggered one, about 165 feet wide, and it carried Luck about 100 feet down the mountain. Luck searched and dug for an hour to uncover his two friends buried below him, then called 911 from a cellphone found in the second victim’s pack, according to the report. But by the time rescue crews arrived, both men were dead.
Including Ozanne and Dodin, five people have died in avalanches in Colorado this winter.
“This is pretty close to average for this time of year,” Snook said.
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
