Exclusive: How one backcountry guiding company owner narrowly missed being part of group hit by deadly Tahoe avalanche

A Truckee backcountry educator and her family were supposed to go on a ski-touring trip to Frog Lake at the same time as the ski group struck by Tuesday’s deadly avalanche.

“We would’ve been with that group,” Sarah Reynaud said Thursday.

Instead, one of her teen daughters got sick, and the family canceled the trip. Reynaud and her husband own backcountry-education and guiding company Tahoe Mountain School; her husband, Steve Reynaud, is a forecaster with the Sierra Avalanche Center.

Now she is watching the tragedy send shudders of grief through Northern California’s devoted skiing community.

Reynaud had never visited Frog Lake, which opened to the public five years ago after nearly a century of private ownership. The lake and surrounding terrain are described by the Truckee Donner Land Trust, which manages the huts, as “one of the snowiest places in the western hemisphere.”

In partnership with the Trust for Public Land and The Nature Conservancy, the land trust purchased Frog Lake and its surroundings in 2020 for $15 million. It built three huts featuring heat, flush toilets, hot and cold water and assistance from an on-site “hutmaster.” A communal lodge offers a fireplace and full kitchen.

“I was excited to go,” Reynaud said. “It’s a beautiful place that the land trust has put together.”

Like many in Tahoe’s tight-knit backcountry community, Reynaud is waiting for answers about the circumstances of the slide, which occurred during a period of high avalanche danger.

Authorities have said eight skiers were killed and one person is presumed dead. Three guides from Truckee-based Blackbird Mountain Guides were among those who did not survive.

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Reynaud said Blackbird’s guides are widely regarded as among the most experienced in the region.

“It’s a really tight community, and it’s really devastating,” she said. “It’s just a horrific situation.”

She compared the reverberating grief to what followed the massive avalanche that killed seven people at Alpine Meadows near Lake Tahoe in 1982.

“It just affected so many people,” Reynaud said.

Her neighbors, like others in the region, are struggling to understand what happened.

“My neighbor was just asking, ‘Why were they out there?” Reynaud said. “I can’t answer that.”

Those answers may provide important insights into travel to and from the huts, she said.

Backcountry skiers have been traveling to the nearby Peter Grubb Hut for more than 80 years, building decades of knowledge about its terrain and avalanche history. But winter travelers have only been visiting Frog Lake for a few years, Reynaud said.

The land trust notes on its website that all three routes it recommends for accessing and exiting Frog Lake carry “some degree” of avalanche risk.

“On a high avalanche day, maybe there isn’t a safe way to go in and out of there,” Reynaud said.