Snowboarding Accidents Kill 2 at Lake Tahoe

The snowiest December in the Lake Tahoe area in years got the mountain snowpack off to a good start, but it also is believed to have contributed to the deaths of two snowboarders in separate incidents, authorities said Sunday.

The victims, both guests at Ski Homewood, a resort on the California shore of the lake, fell into extremely deep snow off trails in wooded areas. They died of hypothermia and suffocation when they apparently could not free themselves, officials said.

The resort had received nearly 10 feet of new snow in the previous six days--the most snow in a week since 1986, the year before California’s drought began.

The dead were identified as Christopher Zider, 15, of Portola Valley in San Mateo County and Isaac Goodkind, 22, of the Santa Cruz area.

Both snowboarders apparently “catapulted forward and the snow caved in around them,” said Dr. Kenneth Kizer of the Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee.

Officials said Zider’s body was found by a ski patrol on Wednesday during a routine check. He had a cut on his head, indicating that he might have been knocked unconscious before he died.

Goodkind’s body was found Saturday after he failed to rejoin friends. Only an inch of his snowboard was visible to searchers in the snow.

Snowboarding is a sport in which a person glides over--and sometimes sails above--snow on a single wide ski attached to the feet. The sport has been around since the late 1960s, but has become increasingly popular only in recent years.

The Tahoe Forest Hospital treats hundreds of snowboarders each winter for injuries ranging from bruises to broken bones, hospital officials said, but last week was the first time that deaths were reported.

The incidents prompted the Ski Homewood resort to post signs at ski lifts warning guests of the hazards of deep snow. The signs encouraged people not to ski or snowboard alone and to remain on groomed trails.

John James, a Nevada climatologist said the Tahoe area received about twice its normal precipitation in December.

Another expert, Stan Boltz of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, said the combined snowpack of the Truckee River and the Tahoe basins was 154% of normal as of Wednesday, the day Zider’s body was found.

James said the current snowfalls are only relatively spectacular.

“They were big in context of the drought,” he said. “You have to remember that this was typical of the storms we got before the drought. It’s not all that unusual.”