Inbounds avalanche Feb 26, 2026 at Stevens Pass, WA

[EMSC]

For me the mind blowing part of this story is that a significant resort had an in-bounds avalanche big enough to bury someone under several feet of snow for several hours and apparently not a single person noticed - neither pubic nor patrol or etc... The wife (who was sitting at home in Bothell) of the buried guy started to get very worried when his iPhone stayed in the same spot on the mountain for multiple hours.

How many people check on the exact location of someone else (even a spouse) on a regular basis? I guess I am too old school. In my family we never called back home while on a school or ski race trip or etc... growing up. Unless I expected or had know issues with someone it would never occur to me to ever check something like that.

A skier vanished on Stevens Pass. 4 hours later, rescuers dug him out alive.

Michael Harris was trapped beneath snow at Stevens Pass, unable to move and fearing he would never see his wife and children again.

www.king5.com

 

[MarzNC]

From the description on the GoFundMe campaign set up by his daughter:

" . . .
She [mother of poster, wife of skier] proceeded to explain to me that my dad had gone up to Stevens pass by himself for a powder day and that his location on find my iPhone had not moved for the past 3 hours. She let me know that she was going to be driving up the pass in an effort to find him and that she had not been successful in trying to get in contact with ski patrol up on the mountain. I got off the phone with her and made the effort to get ahold of ski patrol to inform them of a missing person. After some time I was finally able to get ahold of dispatch. I was able to give identifying factors and made them aware my mom was heading up to show them the location on her phone of where it said he was. Per my mom, ski patrol was waiting and ready for her when she arrived and acted quickly to locate my dad. After what felt like an eternity, ski patrol radioed overhead that he had been located and they would be bringing him down on the sled. Per ski patrol and EMS medics, my dad had been struck by an avalanche that was inbounds of the resort. He had been down and covered by the avalanche for 4 hours. He was hypothermic with a temp in the high 70s/ very low 80s. Warm IV fluids were started and was quickly taken to the ER. A full trauma was called. After various labs and imaging, my dad only sustained a contusion of his lung, pneumonia, injuries to his kidneys and a right tibial plateau fracture. He is currently in the hospital and has surgery scheduled for his broken leg. The ortho provider that talked with him explained that the recovery time for him will be about 14-16 weeks if everything goes well. It is a true miracle that he survived and didn’t sustain life altering or life threatening injuries.
. . ."

The questions being discussed on another ski forum are related to why the wife couldn't contact ski patrol and felt the need to drive up in person. The daughter did get in touch with ski patrol before her mother made it to the resort.