Tahoe residents help rescue snowmobiler in Mono County avalanche
LAKE TAHOE, Calif./Nev. — Two Lake Tahoe residents were among those who helped rescue a snowmobiler caught in an avalanche Saturday morning near Sonora Pass.
“I turned the corner and saw this scene of devastation,” said Peter Harrison, one of the Lake Tahoe locals at the scene. “I know the U.S. Marine Corps has an Arctic warfare training center there, so my first thought was, ‘They’ve bombed the hell out of this landscape. What happened here?'”
Moments later, Harrison said, it became clear what had occurred.
The avalanche was triggered around 11 a.m. Dec. 27 in the Bridgeport Winter Recreation Area, a popular backcountry destination less than two hours from South Lake Tahoe. Rescue teams were paged after receiving reports of a large slide, estimated to be a D3 avalanche, involving a group of snowmobilers.
Harrison and Bryan Schorr, both Lake Tahoe residents, were riding snowmobiles in the area with three other individuals when they encountered the avalanche site.
As Schorr, Harrison and the others surveyed the scene, they noticed a man about 100 yards away who had been caught in the slide.
“We decided to check it out,” Harrison said. “We saw they were a party of three, and one had ended up buried with water up to his waist and his leg trapped under a snowmobile.”
The group spent approximately 30 minutes attempting to free the snowmobile from above the injured man. Concerned about the risk of hypothermia — as he was buried in ice, snow and water — they ultimately decided to pull him from beneath the machine.
Two helicopters were dispatched to the scene. A Battle Born Medevac helicopter from Carson City, Nev., arrived first and transported the injured snowmobiler to Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, a Level II trauma center, for further treatment.
The remaining members of the snowmobiling group were able to leave the area on their own and returned safely to the Bridgeport Winter Recreation Area parking lot.
Rescue officials are using the incident as a reminder that avalanche danger remains elevated throughout the region.
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