An avalanche in Oregon left one person dead last week after carrying him over a cliff.
Thirty-three-year-old Erik Hefflefinger, a Bend resident, was snowboarding down a peak at the Newberry National Volcanic Monument with his two friends on Wednesday, March 15, when he was caught in an avalanche.
The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office (DCSO) released a statement saying they first received warning of the avalanche around 12:28 pm.
Witnesses told responding officers they watched from below as the avalanche carried Hefflefinger over a snow-covered cliff.
Hefflefinger’s friends, who had been skiing down the slope before his descent, were lucky not to have been buried by the fast-moving debris. They watched helplessly as he got crushed by the avalanche. They located him and immediately started life-saving efforts, according to the police.
Hefflefinger and his friends, only identified as 34 and 44-year-old males, had gotten to the top of the mountain with snowmobiles before skiing and snowboarding down the steep slopes. According to the sheriff’s office, his friends had already started going down when the avalanche began.
The group sent an SOS alarm from a device at around 12:45 pm and the International Emergency Response Coordination Center informed Deschutes County dispatchers shortly after.
The first to arrive at the scene were Oregon State Police troopers, but they could not reach Hefflefinger’s location because of the bad weather conditions.
Three search and rescue volunteers from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the scene at around 4 pm. The officer quickly located the injured man and found him with a faint pulse. However, after about an hour of trying to resuscitate him, they determined that he would not recover and called off life-saving efforts.
Hefflefinger’s body was recovered from the scene, transported to a snow park, and later released to a funeral home.
Investigators from the DCSO have no cause to believe that the friends caused the disaster. The police reported that all three friends were wearing safety gear.
So far this year, the sheriff’s office had already registered two fatalities from avalanches in January. They reminded people hiking in the backcountry to take extra precautions.
According to experts, avalanches happen swiftly and without warning. They can reach speeds up to 80 mph and can inadvertently be set off by skiers and hikers moving on steep slopes.
