Teen Who Set Off Avalanche Is Fourth Person Killed on Alaska Slopes This Month

An Alaska teenager who was riding a snowmobile was killed on Saturday when he set off an avalanche and was buried, becoming the fourth person in the state to lose their life in a mountain slide this month, the authorities said.

The number is high for Alaska, which forecasters say in recent years has been averaging three avalanche deaths annually.

The 16-year-old, whose body was recovered on Sunday, was identified by the Alaska State Troopers as Tucker Challan of Soldotna, Alaska. He was buried under about 10 feet of snow while riding in Turnagain Pass in the Kenai Mountains, about 60 miles south of Anchorage.

The avalanche occurred on the backside of Seattle Ridge, in a popular recreation area known as Warmup Bowl, the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Information Center said.

At the time, the center reported, there was a weak layer of frost about two to three feet beneath the snow surface, which experts say can easily collapse and cause an avalanche. The layers form when the weather is clear and present a hidden danger with each new winter storm.

“It’s like a layer cake,” Wendy Wagner, the center’s director, said in a phone interview on Monday. “It has been causing many avalanches.”

According to the center, a group of people who were riding snow machines — often referred to as snowmobiles outside Alaska — dug Tucker out of the snow in about an hour, but he had died from his injuries.

On the afternoon of his death, the center held an avalanche awareness program in a parking lot on the other side of the ridge, which it said was a coincidence. It is continuing to warn that people should avoid traveling on or below steep terrain.

Noting that avalanches can reach speeds over 60 miles per hour, Ms. Wagner said that snowmobile riders and skiers should not assume that the snowpack is stable because other people have crossed it.

“There can be a sense that if you trigger something that you can outrun it,” she said. “Just because there have been tracks on a slope doesn’t mean that slope is safe.”

On March 4, three people who were part of a helicopter skiing excursion were killed when they were swept away in an avalanche near Girdwood, Alaska, about 20 miles from where Saturday’s slide happened.

The authorities identified the three men as David Linder, 39, of Florida; Charles Eppard, 39, of Montana; and Jeremy Leif, 38, of Minnesota.

Despite deploying their avalanche airbags, according to the helicopter skiing company that the skiers had hired, they were buried beneath 40 to 100 feet of snow and could not be reached.

Ms. Wagner said this year had been particularly treacherous in Alaska.

“It’s been an unusual year,” she said, “tragically.”