A backcountry avalanche that killed a skier and injured another was triggered by skiers above the two men who were swept down the mountain, investigators said.
The avalanche on Thursday claimed the life of Kellen Sams, 26, of Manitou Springs, said Stephen Lance, Ouray County’s deputy coroner.
Sams died of multiple traumatic injuries suffered after “being caught in an avalanche and hitting a tree.”
The coroner’s office is ruling his death accidental.
The survivor was flown by helicopter to Montrose Memorial Hospital with a dislocated hip, said Joel Burk, an investigator with the Ouray County Sheriff’s Office.
The group uncovered Dominic Franz Muth, 24, of Breckenridge, from about 2 feet of snow, The Associated Press reported.
The other skiers were from Colorado Springs, Buena Vista and Salida, the AP said.
Sams is a 2006 graduate of Green Mountain College, a four-year liberal arts college in Poultney, Vt., with about 800 students.
Staff members of the school, who knew Sams as a talented student, were shaken by his death.
“Kellen was a great person: smart, funny, kind and generous,” said Tom Mauhs-Pugh, the college’s dean of the faculty. “It’s a sobering loss of a fine person.”
The avalanche occurred about 3 p.m. on 13,686-foot Cirque Mountain, in the San Juan Mountain Range, in rugged, remote country about 8 miles southwest of Ridgway, Burk said.
A party of seven skiers was using a backcountry hut system in Uncompahgre National Forest and were skiing at an elevation of about 11,500 feet when the avalanche occurred.
Burk said the party had split up and that some skiers were crossing the mountain above others when the snow broke loose.
“Part of the group had gone above where the victims were,” Burk said. “The avalanche was triggered by the group who had gone above, up on a ridge.”
Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.com
