A 1,000′ slide ripped across South Diamond backcountry skiing area of Cameron Pass west of Fort Collins on Saturday afternoon leaving one man injured. The avalanche ran about 300 vertical feet but came to a halt before the flat bench below the steep main skiing and riding area. It is being reported that the slide is visible from the pass trailhead parking area on Colorado Highway 14.
“There’s definitely a couple of lucky folks who I hope went out and bought lottery tickets, because that’s not usually the kind of thing you walk away from,” said Scott Toepfer of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. “What I heard was that everybody headed back to their cars, probably with their tails between their legs.”
The Larimer County Sheriff’s Office said one man suffered a knee injury in the approximately 12:30 p.m. slide, but declined medical assistance.
“A lot of people are competitive, and powder is an addictive drug. The snowpack is just not set up well,” Toepfer said. “They go up there with the full intention of staying on mellower terrain, and there’s a lot of competition for that ‘safer’ terrain. And so it gets used up and tracked out. And so they start pushing more and more, deeper and deeper into more problematic terrain.”
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