It was tragedy on the slopes.

"The expert skiers wasted no time after an avalanche hit and swept their friends down a steep slope in Washington state. They immediately turned on their emergency beacons and began searching for signs of life," The Boston Globe reported. "Powder Magazine senior editor John Stifter, who witnessed the slide that killed three of his skiing companions Sunday, said one person survived by bear-hugging a tree and holding on as the snow barreled over him. Another skier who was caught in the slide was saved when she deployed an air bag designed to keep her afloat."

Avalanches are the bane of backcountry skiers. "During two deadly weeks this winter, avalanches swept away 14 lives in the heart of British Columbia's remote backcountry. Were these simply unpredictable, unstoppable acts of nature with a brutal cost?" Ted Kerasote wrote in a 2003 article for Outside. "Or did somebody make crucial mistakes? An exclusive report details what really happened—and unfolds the agony of a grieving guide who led his clients to their deaths."

Rob Buchanan explains why adventure seekers are keen on it anyway. "The roots of backcountry skiing lie in good old-fashioned puritanism," he wrote. "So what are the rewards for all that lung-searing labor? A few fast thrills, some glorious isolation, and mountains of smug satisfaction."

Of course, avalanches aren't the only occupational hazard for skiers. "Two decades ago in Sarajevo, Bill Johnson won America's first Olympic gold medal in the downhill with an astonishing kamikaze performance," Bill Donahue writes. "Now, in the wake of a comeback attempt that almost killed him, skiing's crash-course survivor struggles with the consequences of a life lived too fast."

And skiers aren't the only ones affected by avalanches. "Some years ago, on the day after Christmas, five climbers walked into Bob Frauson's ranger station in St. Mary, on the eastern side of Glacier National Park. The young men, all local boys, were prepared for a serious winter expedition, their packs heavy with skis, crampons, and ice axes. They also came equipped with a deep knowledge of the Glacier backcountry and extensive avalanche training at the hands of some of the West's finest mountaineers," McKay Jenkins wrote. "But their plan was audacious even by their own standards: an ascent of the north face of Mount Cleveland, one of the country's biggest vertical walls at 4,000 feet. It was the winter of 1969, and the face had never been climbed. For months, the boys had enjoyed one of the mildest climbing seasons in memory: warm, clear weather that had lasted deep into autumn. But despite that fall's run of good weather, winter conditions are notoriously unpredictable in Glacier's mountains, nowhere more so than on its highest peak, 10,448-foot Mount Cleveland. What the team needed to know was not Frauson's opinion about its north face—they had been studying that for years. They needed to know about its snowpack."