Avalanche deaths in the winter of 2026 are growing, making this a very dark season for winter sports enthusiasts globally. And strangely, Old Moore warned this year to avoid ski holidays, predicting an “avalanche cluster” would be in the news.
A catastrophic convergence of volatile snowpack conditions and storms has made the 2025–26 ski season one of the deadliest for avalanches in modern history. Tragedies have unfolded from California’s Sierra Nevada, to the Swiss Alps, to the mountains of Utah, all within days of each other.
Avalanche Deaths: The Lake Tahoe Disaster
The incident that shocked the world came on Tuesday, 18 February 2026, near Castle Peak in California’s Sierra Nevada, close to the northern shores of Lake Tahoe. An avalanche swept through a group of 15 backcountry skiers on a three-day guided trip organised by Blackbird Mountain Guides, a company founded in 2020 that specialises in backcountry ski expeditions and avalanche education.
Nine people are presumed dead, making this the worst backcountry ski avalanche in American history. The group had been staying at the Frog Lake Backcountry Huts near Donner Summit since Sunday. They were in the process of returning to the trailhead, the final leg of their trip, when the avalanche, described as roughly the width of a football field, struck at approximately 11:30 a.m.
Six survivors, including one guide and five clients, managed to use emergency satellite messaging devices to remain in contact with authorities while rescue teams battled near-whiteout conditions to reach them.
Avalanche Deaths: The Tragic Skiers
Among the nine dead, at least six have been publicly named by their grieving families. They were all close friends, mothers, and wives who, according to a joint family statement, “cherished time together in the mountains.”
Experts confirm a weeks-long “snow drought” in the Sierra Nevada had created a weak, fragile base layer, and when a massive storm dumped heavy, dense snow on top of it, the conditions became a powder keg.
Tragedy in the Mont Blanc Massif: Rugby Captain
Just days before the Lake Tahoe catastrophe, on 15 February 2026, three skiers were killed by an avalanche in the Val Veny area of the Mont Blanc massif near Courmayeur, Italy, the host site for events at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.
Among them was Quentin Philippe, 29, captain of Annecy-le-Vieux Rugby Club, an amateur French rugby union team competing in the Fédérale 3 league in Haute-Savoie. His two companions, Hugo Neuville, 31, and Alexis Rassat, 35, also died. One man was found dead at the scene; a second died shortly after being transported to hospital; Philippe himself died on Monday 16 February after suffering a cardiac arrest linked to hypothermia.
The trio had taken to the slopes that Sunday because their league match had been postponed. All three were equipped with avalanche safety equipment, including transceivers, but were buried under more than 1.5 metres of snow, illustrating how even proper gear cannot guarantee survival in extreme slides.
Two British Skiers Dead in Val d’Isère Under Red Alert
Two days after the Courmayeur tragedy and on the same day as the Lake Tahoe disaster, on 17 February 2026, two British skiers died in an avalanche in Val d’Isère, France, while skiing off-piste with a professional instructor. A French skier also perished in that incident.
The victims were named as Stuart Leslie, 46, and Shaun Overy, 51. At the time of the avalanche, France’s national weather service had issued only its third-ever red avalanche alert, the highest possible warning level.
Avalanche Deaths: Utah
The same brutal week of avalanche deaths also struck the Wasatch Range in Utah. The Utah Avalanche Center (UAC) confirmed the first avalanche fatality of the season on 18 February 2026, when an adult male and his young son were navigating the Big Flat area west of Midway. An avalanche buried the father. In an agonising scene, his juvenile son used an avalanche beacon to locate him and dug him out with his own hands, but the father did not survive.
Less than 24 hours later, on 19 February, a young girl died in an avalanche in the Rock Garden zone just outside the boundary of Brighton Resort near Salt Lake City. Two deaths in two days in Utah alone marked the Wasatch Range’s most volatile avalanche cycle of the 2025–26 season, following a storm that deposited over three feet of snow on an already fragile snowpack.
The Bigger Picture: Europe’s Deadly Season
The toll is not limited to North America. Across Europe, avalanche deaths in the 2025–26 season have been tracking well above the recent average:
- Austria: 14 dead as of mid-February, with over 30 avalanches recorded in a single day on 19 February. A major search operation was also launched at St Anton on 20 February.
- France: 25 dead as of mid-February, including the Val d’Isère victims.
- Italy: 25 dead, including the Courmayeur trio.
- Switzerland: 13 dead this winter, including a 49-year-old man killed in Graubünden on 18 February while skiing with his 15-year-old son, and a 38-year-old snowboarder who died in the Parsenn area in Davos.
The European Avalanche Warning Services (EAWS) puts total European avalanche deaths at 95 so far this season.
Unfortunately, sometimes Old Moore makes tragic predictions that come true. Hopefully there are no more darker days ahead.
