Skiing

‘It could have turned into a disaster pretty quick’: Skier digs out man buried by avalanche at Maine resort

Nik Krueger leaped into action after seeing a fellow skier get “swallowed” in an avalanche on Sugarloaf Mountain.

By Abby Patkin

March 28, 2024

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Nik Krueger’s birthday trip to Sugarloaf Mountain turned into a rescue mission Sunday after the Maine man freed a fellow skier who was caught in a freak avalanche.

“The whole thing was just a blur,” said Krueger, a former Sugarloaf ski instructor who was on the slopes with a friend when disaster struck. 

According to Krueger, skiers faced heavy winds and a blanketing of light and fluffy snow Sunday, making for some tricky terrain.

“At that point you knew, ‘Hey, this is kind of experts-only stuff,’” Krueger said. “The people that are going up there had a purpose. They had a reason for going up there and kind of knew where they were going.”

Heading up to the top, “the wind is just screaming across the mountain, it’s blowing snow, but you look up and it’s a crystal clear blue sky,” he said. “So kind of just a perfect storm and perfect conditions, I guess.” 

Soon, he and his friend were at the top of a trail alongside a man they didn’t know. The stranger went first, then Krueger, followed by his friend. 

“Within three to five turns, I look up behind me and my friend is buried,” Krueger said, explaining that his buddy was stuck in a couple feet of snow. “And then I look below me. I turn my head back around looking down the trail, and I watch this random guy ski over this big pile of snow and the whole thing collapsed underneath him and basically swallowed him right up.”

In a statement, Sugarloaf said Sunday’s wind slab avalanche happened inbounds, on open wooded terrain.

“Sugarloaf is not considered avalanche terrain nor designated as such,” the resort said in a statement. “Although events like these are not common, they can happen when the snowpack becomes unstable. The 37 inches we received over the course of [four days] presented the perfect environment and conditions for a wind slab of this type.”

The skier who triggered the avalanche ended up uninjured but partially buried in the snow, the resort said.

After checking on both skiers and making sure his friend was able to free himself, Krueger slid down to dig out the trapped stranger — a process he said lasted about five to 10 minutes. 

He waited for his friend to finish up first, he said, “because I didn’t want him to trigger another avalanche and ski patrol [to] now have two people they need to dig out. That was my biggest concern there, was trying to mitigate how many people got involved, because it could have turned into a disaster pretty quick.”

Krueger chatted briefly with the man he’d just freed, and “after that, we all went on our separate ways and just kept on skiing and had a magnificent day,” he said.

To other skiers who may find themselves in a similar situation someday, Krueger recommended keeping tabs on the weather, maintaining situational awareness, and sticking with a buddy.

“This was a best case scenario, right? Kind of the perfect situation of a good learning moment for everybody,” he said.