3 presumed dead in Colchuck Peak avalanche | FOX 13 Seattle

Thank you. Three people are dead after an avalanche swept a group of climbers away. So this happened near Leavenworth on Sunday. Officials say that it happened on Colchuk Peak southwest of Leavenworth and according to the Shalane County Sheriff's Office, there was a group of six together and the lead climber triggered that avalanche. They say four of the climbers were caught in it getting swept 500 feet down. Only one of them survived. Now it's a waiting game.

Shalane County Sheriff's Office saying that it hasn't been safe enough to recover the three climbers. A major winter storm impacting the cascades that sort of started on Sunday night and is sort of still ongoing even right now. Oftentimes people are buried under three to four feet of snow. So digging these people out is no small task. You can easily move two to four thousand pounds of snow to get somebody out from under an avalanche. The victims are a 60-year-old woman from New York, 66-year-old man from New Jersey, a 53-year-old man from Connecticut. Now the fourth climber caught in that avalanche is a 56-year-old man from New York.

He was injured but able to hike back to base camp with the other two surviving members of the group. We do want you to see what those conditions look like in your neighborhood as well. You can download the Fox 13 weather app to do that. You can also submit photos and videos of the weather where you live. It is free to download on Google Play and the App Store.

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