PARK CITY, Utah - An avalanche outside a Utah ski resort on Friday trapped as many as five people beneath as much as 30 feet of snow, authorities said.
Based on eyewitness accounts of the slide, Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds estimated late Friday that between two and five people were trapped. He discounted earlier reports that as many as 15 people were buried.
No bodies or survivors had been found in the avalanche, which was about 500 yards wide and happened outside the boundary of The Canyons resort on federal land in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest.
About 100 search and rescue workers, rescue dog crews and members of ski patrols from Summit County resorts searched the area for victims, Edmunds said. The enormity of the slide was underscored when rescuers, working on 30-degree slopes, found that their 20-foot probes weren't going deep enough into the snow.
Before stopping for the day, authorities changed the focus of the operation from rescue to recovery.
"I think it's safe to say the odds of surviving are very, very low," Edmunds said.
The rescue effort was halted before sunset because of concerns over secondary slides, Edmunds said. The "slow and meticulous" search was to resume Saturday morning, he said.
Even before Friday, this had already been one of the deadliest winters for avalanches in Utah since records were first kept in 1951. Before Friday six people had died in slides; no previous winter had seen more than six deaths.
Jess Fleig, a skier who spoke to The Associated Press on a cell phone from a mountaintop while skiing at The Canyons, said he frequents the backcountry but stayed away from the popular Dutch Draw area Friday near where the slide took place.
"I looked at that ride probably 20 or 30 minutes before it went and what immediately came to mind is that's trouble waiting to happen," the 35-year-old disc jockey said. "It's a very popular area. You have to hike 10 or 15 minutes to get there, but it's marked with skull and crossbones and a warning that you could die," he said.
Fleig said debris from the slide went through the valley below and through the trees. He was riding up a resort chair lift with two resort employees and heard the initial radio communication in the moments after the avalanche.
At that time resort crews were not sure how many people might be in the slide, but said that through binoculars six or seven people could be seen scurrying about the rubble, Fleig said.
Bruce Tremper, director of the Utah Avalanche Center, said the area where the slide happened was out-of-bounds, but the resort "can't close it off. It would be like trying to close a city park," Tremper said.
The Utah Avalanche Center warned of considerable avalanche danger Friday, which means human triggered avalanches were probable.
A series of storms lasting over two weeks dropped 6-8 feet of wet, heavy snow on the Wasatch mountains, setting up prime avalanche conditions.
