‘Nightmare’ search for skier missing since Christmas Day continues at Northstar

Authorities mobilized a search for 43-year-old Rory Angelotta after friends reported to Northstar’s ski patrollers that he hadn’t shown up for Christmas dinner. Angelotta, an experienced mountaineer, had moved to Truckee from Colorado in October and worked as a manager at a ski shop in Northstar’s base village, according to authorities.

在圣诞节那天,在竞赛的暴风雪mately dump upwards of 5 feet of snow on some Tahoe mountaintops, Angelotta drove to Northstar alone, authorities said. He scanned his pass at a base chairlift at 11:30 a.m. Five minutes later, he attempted to make a phone call. Shortly thereafter, his phone shut off and searchers haven’t found a trace of him since.

“The last message I had from him was, ‘I’m closing up shop and going for a few runs,’” Kelsey Angelotta, Rory’s sister,told CBS Sacramento.

Dozens of first responders and volunteers have scoured the resort’s sprawling 3,170 acres of ski terrain. Because Angelotta scanned in at Comstock Express, Northstar’s premier chair that runs to the top of 8,610-foot Mount Pluto, searchers say he could be just about anywhere on the mountain, even out of bounds.

“It’s extremely easy to get lost in these whiteout storms because you lose all bearing of where you are,” said Logan Talbott, a Truckee mountain guide who assisted in the search for two days.

Calls about missing skiers in Tahoe are somewhat common, authorities say. In Powers’ jurisdiction, which includes four ski areas in North Tahoe, typically two or three missing-person calls come in during a busy ski weekend. Often they are found alive and rescued, but not always. For example, two years ago, Northstar ski patrollers recovered the body of a 40-year-old snowboarder from Vallejo who had fallen into a tree well and died.

Talbott got the call about Angelotta at 1 a.m. on Sunday. He is on the board of directors ofTahoe Nordic Search and Rescue, a local volunteer unit of about 80 mountain experts initially formed in the 1970s after a missing child died in the snow at Northstar.

Upon receiving the call early Sunday morning, Talbott and other searchers drove straight to Northstar to begin searching in the dark.

But the conditions were brutal.

“Wind gusts that knock you over. Snow so deep you can barely move. Temperatures in the single digits. High avalanche danger,” Talbott said. Operating chairlifts in those conditions is impossible, and responders mobilized snowcats and snowmobiles to carry them up the mountain. “Even our snowcat was struggling to get through the deep snow drifts,” Talbott said.

Without any information to narrow the search area, responders churned up the slopes and looked for obvious traces of Angelotta. But several feet of freshly fallen snow had blanketed the terrain in deep, treacherous powder, erasing any possible ski tracks or boot prints. Also, wind blasted the mountaintops with gusts up to 100 mph, and the relentless snow severely limited visibility.

“Logistically, it’s been an absolute nightmare,” Powers said.

Some searchers wore night vision goggles and dug into tree wells with avalanche probes, but found no signs. Foot patrols of the mountain were risky on Sunday and Monday, Powers said.

“The snow was so deep in places that skiers and snowshoers could potentially fall in over their heads. There was a suffocation issue,” he said. “These volunteers are tremendous people and we don’t want to put them at risk.”

Ski brands often equip jackets, pants and other pieces of gear with lightweight, passive transponders called RECCO reflectors that are designed to help locate lost or buried skiers and snowboarders. Searchers at Northstar wielded specialized detectors up and down the slopes but couldn’t find a ping.

The weekend’s storm had forced road closures in and out of Tahoe on Sunday and Monday, leaving locals to carry out the search without the aid of state agencies that might have offered more manpower and helicopter support. Over three days, dozens more from across the Truckee-Tahoe region had chipped in: Northstar ski patrollers and avalanche mitigation experts; Northstar Fire Department; Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue; Placer County Sheriff’s Office; and Nevada County Search and Rescue.

On Tuesday, 35 searchers and support staff were combing the ski area for Angelotta even as the resort reopened some of its lifts to skiers and riders. Vail Resorts, which operates Northstar, said in an email that it is assisting the search with ski patrollers and mountain operations staffers. Powers said guests on the slopes wouldn’t interfere with the search effort.

“Every area in bounds, and the borders of the ski area, have been thoroughly and repeatedly searched,” he said.

With the storm tapering off, authorities hoped for a weather window that would allow for helicopter flyovers above the mountain. They will also search the backcountry around Mount Pluto when conditions allow, Powers said.

The hope is that Angelotta is holed up alive in a snow cave. But the window on his safe return is narrowing quickly.

“Even if there’s a 1% chance, we want to give him that chance,” Powers said. “That’s why we’re still trying. But at some point, we can’t search indefinitely. Hard calls have to be made, and we’ll have to make it if we don’t find him very, very soon.”