A skier is dead after being caught up in an avalanche at Alaska's Denali National Park and Preserve, marking the second death there in less than a week.
Nicholas Vizzini, 29, of Washington State, and his climbing partner, a snowboarder, triggered the avalanche while descending a slope at Rescue Gully on Mt. McKinley's West Buttress Route Tuesday evening, according to a news release from the National Park Service.
Two mountaineering rangers also climbing in the area spotted the skiboarder, who sustained minor injuries, on top of the avalanche debris. The rangers were able to pick up a signal from an avalanche transceiver, also called a beacon, that Vizzini was carrying. They found him mostly buried in the debris and immediately began digging to establish an airway and perform CPR. They continued trying to revive Vizzini for 40 minutes but he had suffered traumatic injuries and had no pulse.
Vizzini's body was flown from the scene and transferred to the state medical examiner.
The incident comes less than a week after another climber from Washington died in the same area. Alex Chiu, 41, fell 3,000 feet from the West Buttress climbing route on to Peters Glacier on June 4.
The Denali climbing season typically runs from early May through early July. As of Wednesday, there were 500 climbers on the mountain, according to the park service.
The park has recorded more than a dozen avalanche-related deaths in its history. Most recently, reports tracked by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center show that a backcountry skier was killed by an avalanche near the park's Jenny Creek in 2023 and a climber was killed at Ruth Glacier in 2021.
Nationwide, an average of 27 people died in avalanches each winter over the past 10 years. The CAIC website offers several resources to learn more about avalanche safety and rescue, including links to classes and training available around the U.S.
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