A snowboarder died in an avalanche after leaving the Snowbasin Ski Resort鈥檚 boundaries Wednesday, .
Twenty-one-year-old Blake Ford was snowboarding with a friend when they accessed an avalanche-prone area near the resort called Hell鈥檚 Canyon. They were traversing back to the resort when Ford triggered the slide.
Neither snowboarder was equipped with beacons or other avalanche safety equipment. Ford鈥檚 body was found by one of the Snowbasin ski patrol鈥檚 rescue dogs. He had been buried under about three feet of snow, and rescuers estimate he had been carried about 1,800 feet in the slide.
A series of big storms has created dangerous avalanche conditions in much of the West. 鈥淚t鈥檚 considerably dangerous,鈥 Lt. Brandon Toll of the Weber County Sheriff鈥檚 Office told the Standard-Examiner. 鈥淎 few days ago, conditions were stable. With that big snow that came in and put two to three feet of snow on that hard pack, it really caused unstable conditions.鈥
This was the first avalanche death of the season in Utah.