MARCH 2026 – On Feb. 28 the NYT published a lengthy report on the Feb. 17 avalanche in Lake Tahoe back country that took the lives of nine skiers – paying guests and their guides. It was the worst avalanche-skiing disaster in the region in decades, perhaps ever. Four NYT reporters – Dave Philipps, Bora Erden, Marco Hernandez and Amy Graff – constructed not simply a chronology of events leading up to the disaster, but also explored the psychology of the group pressure to take the risks to ski in a major storm, something that, given the conditions, others might not have elected to do. After all, this group of backcountry skiers was understandably eager to head out just as several feet of fresh snow was still falling – and 50 mph winds were raging. The report also gets into the harrowing post-avalanche decisions that the survivors had to make – to abandon those buried in the snow, likely already dead, because of the severe conditions. Nearly 500 reader comments lauded the reporting and the prose. The work is also notable because of its remarkably fast turnaround – the reporters wove together a re-telling – and got key interviews – only 11 days after the tragedy itself took place. Such are the pressures to publish ASAP these days.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/02/28/us/tahoe-avalanche-survivors.html