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An apocalyptic avalanche that buried up to 10 backcountry skiers north of Lake Tahoe on Tuesday is only the latest tragedy during a deadly winter from hell in California’s vast mountain ranges.
A rescue effort to find survivors remained ongoing in the Central Sierra Nevada — the same area where another avalanche killed a snowmobiler in early January.
The season’s snowy trail of death hit the slopes of Mount Baldy — a 10,064-foot peak straddling Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties — in late December, as three hikers perished in extreme winter weather, including a 19-year-old Santa Clara University freshman who fell 500 feet, sheriff’s officials said.
Another two hikers were fortunately rescued.
The Dec. 29 search-and-rescue effort reinvigorated longstanding warnings about hiking on Mount Baldy, where 23 people had died between 2016 and 2025.
San Bernardino County’s sheriff’s officials even compared the peak’s deadliness to Mount Everest, SFGate first reported.
But other Golden State mountains also proved treacherous in the nearly two months since the Mount Baldy tragedy.
A hiker who staged his own search for four missing friends in Riverside County’s mountain region was found dead at the bottom of a 150-foot rock face in Anza on Jan. 17.
The quartet of hikers he had endeavored to find were eventually located by Riverside County sheriff’s deputies.
A few days later, another hiker on Mount Whitney — the 14,505-foot Sierra Nevada peak that’s the tallest mountain in the contiguous US — died within a few hundred feet of its summit.
Tragically, the hiker had set off alone after his partner turned back.
The popular ski slopes along 11,000-foot Mammoth Mountain experienced four deaths this season — including Raymond John Albert Jr., a 71-year-old whose penchant for skiing nearly every day earned him the nickname “Every Day Ray.”
He died on Christmas Day.
A day later, ski patroller Cole Murphy, 30, was swept up and injured in an avalanche on Lincoln Mountain. He died a few days later.
The next fatal incident unfolded Jan. 14, when Sebastian Celaya Salcido, 25, suffered a catastrophic snowboarding accident on Mammoth Mountain. He died two days later after he was airlifted to Reno with irreversible brain damage.
Another thrill-seeking skier — Robert Carroll, 40 — died Feb. 5 as he attempted Dropout 2, a notorious expert run plunging about 1,200 feet.
As one witness posted in a chilling Reddit thread, Carroll slid headlong down the slope and into rocks after losing his skis.
His body continued the headfirst slide for another 150 yards, leaving a trail of blood in the snow, the witness wrote.
“Worst thing I’ve ever seen on the mountain,” the post states.
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