SUMMIT COUNTY - A pair of skiers who believe they may have taken the last run on Arapahoe Basin's Palivacinni face the day before an avalanche released there and killed a man, said snow conditions were so unstable that they were scared and concerned for their safety.

The pair took the run Thursday between 2:30 and 3 p.m. and got stuck in the trees for 45-50 minutes in snow that kept collapsing under them as they tried to dig out.

"Me and my buddy, Neal, we took the exact trail (where the avalanche released Friday) ... I was about 50 feet behind my buddy and I saw him get completely consumed by this mogul; I mean he completely disappeared," said Jon Wasserman, 23, an alpine skier from Breckenridge.

"At first I just laughed, but when I went down to help him it happened to me, as well," he added. "The snow beneath me completely collapsed and I fell about two-and-a-half to three-feet deep into it, to the point that I couldn't find my boot and ski for about 20 minutes."

Wasserman said he found his boot, unclipped it from the binding, then took another 10 minutes to dig out his ski from underneath the snow.

"The whole time, there's 3 feet of snow around me," he said, "and every time I try to take a step onto it, it completely collapses."

Meanwhile, his buddy, Neal Bartram, 24, struggled in the snow 15 feet away.

"We were really scared of an avalanche," Wasserman said. "There was no stability whatsoever."

It took the men about 45 to 50 minutes to get out of the trees and onto the main run. They both said they regret not speaking to ski patrollers about the conditions Thursday, but had to hustle to their car because they were late for work.

On Friday morning just before 10:30 a.m., a wet slab avalanche released near the trees on the skier's left side of the Palivacinni face, killing David Conway, 53, a Boulder man who had been skiing the terrain. Cause of death has not been determined, pending results of toxicology reports from the Summit County Coroner's Office.

Alan Henceroth, director of mountain operations, said during a press conference Friday afternoon that ski patrol had skied the terrain that morning.

The resort declined Tuesday to comment further because the incident is under investigation.

"I really wish I had time to say something on Thursday," Wasserman said Tuesday. "I don't know if it would have made a difference. They claimed they had scanned that part of the mountain. Maybe it was just that specific area - a 50-foot radius that the ski patrol didn't go by. I don't know."

Bartram said news of the avalanche on Friday was "a serious reality check."

The men were stuck Thursday afternoon in the same spot where the avalanche ran, Bartram said.

The 300-foot crown broke just above The Alleys, then ran 1,000 vertical feet through a cluster of trees.

"We were in the trees, that main trail coming off Palivacinni. Exactly pretty much there," Bartram said. "That's what freaked us out so much. You think about avalanches but you assume they all happen out of bounds. You never hear about it inbounds - you don't even think about it."

Friday's slide at A-Basin was the first avalanche fatality at a ski area since 1975 at Crested Butte, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.



Kim Marquis can be contacted at (970) 668-3998, ext. 249, or at kmarquis@summitdaily.com.