Montana Avalanche Kills Snowmobiler

A Minnesota snowmobiler spending the winter as a tour guide in the Montana mountains was killed in a freak avalanche Sunday, the man who dug him out of the snow said Monday.

Chad Dennis Daniels, 24, of Hutchinson, Minn., was killed early Sunday afternoon in an avalanche at the foot of Lion’s Head Mountain on the Montana-Idaho border about 10 miles west of West Yellowstone. Two Minnesota friends also were hit but not seriously hurt, said Kent Swanson, Daniels’ employer at Ace Snowmobile Rentals in West Yellowstone.

Gallatin County Coroner Rob Myers said Daniels died of asphyxiation. The avalanche occurred about 12:30 p.m., and Daniels’ body was recovered about 8 p.m.

Lion’s Head is a popular area for snowmobilers, but it is dangerous because of frequent small snowslides, Swanson said. However, slides the size of the one Sunday are unheard of there, he added.

“This slide took out trees that had been growing there 50 or 60 years,” he said. He estimated the snow mass slid 1,500 to 2,000 feet down the mountain into the foothills where numerous snowmobilers were riding.

“There were people all over the slope,” he said. “A lot of people saw it happen.”

Daniels and his friends did nothing wrong, Swanson said. “They were, for one minute’s time, beneath a very, very large face that’s just going to let go once this year.”

Swanson, a volunteer fireman who was summoned to help search for Daniels, said he found Daniels’ snowmobile under about a foot of snow. Daniels’ body was buried about 4 feet deep.

Daniels came to Montana last fall and worked for Swanson as a snowmobile tour guide, though he was on a private outing with friends when the fatal accident occurred.

“He was a very avid snowmobiler,” Swanson said. “He went through an avalanche training course, and he called that morning to get the avalanche reports because of the area he was heading into.”