An Avalanche Catastrophe as a Psychological Event

A preliminary analysis of the Castle Peak ski disaster.

Updated March 7, 2026 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

In the past, avalanche tragedies were viewed mainly as natural events, with postmortem analysis focused mainly on physical factors such as snow load, slope angle, and weather conditions. As a result of an influential 2002 paper by avalanche writer Ian McCammon, it is now accepted that multifatality avalanche accidents are social phenomena, with the outcome (human deaths) attributable less to natural forces and more to bad decisions. The recent Castle Peak (California) ski tragedy, in which nine people lost their lives, offers an opportunity to test the validity of McCammon’s theory.

The Event and Its Decision Points

According to a New York Times interview with two male survivors, there were two parties: an all-female group of eight friends with two guides, and a male group of three strangers, also with two guides. Three of the guides were male, and one was female. The guides for both groups worked for a respected firm: Blackbird Mountain Guides, and the 11 customers paid around $1,500 each for a two-night stay at the Frog Lake ski "huts" (a misnomer, as they are almost luxurious, according to my wife, who has stayed there twice). The women customers were mostly moms whose children were on the ski team for Sugar Bowl (an older resort just south of I-80 and adjoining Donner Pass). The female get-together was an annual happening during "ski week,” when schools in California are on break. Many of the women lived in Mill Valley, an affluent Bay Area community three hours away, but some of them also owned homes near Sugar Bowl. Most of the customers, from both groups, were successful professionals.

The two parties assembled separately on Sunday, February 15, at a trailhead on the north side of I-80, and skied up the 2,000 feet of additional elevation to the hut, a trip of around 2.5 miles that takes three or four hours, depending on customer skill and fitness. The plan was to head back down to the trailhead after a ski outing on the morning of Tuesday, February 17. Based on the deteriorating weather, the guides called off the Tuesday morning ski outing and set off as one combined large group back toward the trailhead. Around 11:30 a.m., the group encountered a massive snow slide. Reports have been somewhat conflicting, but it appears that all but three skiers were buried. The survivors were able to dig out six more skiers, three of whom lived and three who were already dead. So, there were nine fatalities: three guides and six customers.

It had been a very bad ski season, and the snow was hard-packed and far from ideal. The weather forecasts all called for a major snowstorm with blizzard-like conditions to start on Sunday afternoon. So, the first decision point involved whether to call off the trip, a decision that most commentators feel should have been made. The weather was supposed to be very bad on Tuesday, the day planned for the return trip, so the second decision point was whether to spend an extra night in the hut and delay the return to Wednesday. (Another aspect is that the highway was shut down on Tuesday, so where were they planning on driving to?) The third decision point concerned the route followed on the return trip. After the storm started, there were urgent warnings (according to the survivors, these were received) about severe avalanche dangers in the back country on Tuesday, a result of heavy new snow resting on top of a hard bottom layer, with the possibility of slab slides on north-facing slopes over 30 degrees.

According to the survivors, the guides started them on a supposedly safer route back down, but they still had to cross a lateral stretch, which was below a north-facing steep slope with definite avalanche exposure. However, there were other route options that avoided that spot, so the third question was why they chose a route that required the crossing of an obvious danger zone during a time of high avalanche danger. Finally, the skiers all crossed the danger zone as a group, rather than following the well-established practice of crossing one at a time (which reduces the chance of triggering a slide and lessens the number of people in the path of a possible avalanche). So, the fourth decision-point was whether to have more spacing, rather than, as was apparently the case, to all ski out close together. (One of the two interviewed male customers encountered an equipment problem, and he fell back, which was how he avoided being buried.)

According to the two interviewed clients, the guides made all their decisions out of earshot of the customers and never raised the possibility of other options. One thing to keep in mind, when pondering these questions, is that the trip down was in extreme whiteout conditions with almost zero visibility and wind gusts approaching 50 miles an hour. So this "fog of snowstorm" (analogous to von Clausewitz's "fog of war") should be considered when asking why experienced backcountry guides made such questionable decisions. A full report on the tragedy, not yet disseminated, will hopefully shed light on the four decisions. But a preliminary analysis, focusing only on the first question (Why did they go ahead with the trip?), is undertaken here, using McCammon's analytic framework.

Analysis Using McCammon’s Four Heuristics

McCammon’s theory, derived largely from social and cognitive psychology, is based on the idea that most decisions are not fully rational but rely on heuristics (cognitive shortcuts), which substitute for, or undermine, actual thinking. In terms of avalanche accidents, McCammon identified four “heuristic traps” that he believed helped to explain the bad decisions underlying most avalanche disasters. He termed these traps: (1) the familiarity hypothesis, (2) the social proof hypothesis, (3) the commitment hypothesis, and (4) the scarcity hypothesis. To repeat, I am applying this framework only to the first question—namely, why the trip was not called off in the face of very serious storm warnings.

McCammon’s model of heuristic traps that contribute to bad avalanche decisions helps to explain why the trip proceeded as planned, even after the huge size of the impending storm was announced. Full analysis of all four questionable decisions must await public release of more information.

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Stephen Greenspan, Ph.D. , is a professor emeritus of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut and clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado.

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.