Update: Avalanche kills man near Canyons Ski Resort

PARK CITY — A 24-year-old Salt Lake City man was killed in an avalanche Thursday in Dutch Canyon near the Canyons Ski Resort.

Timothy Robert Baker was buried in the slide about 3 p.m. in an out-of-bounds area near the resort. He was located by rescue crews under about 3 feet of snow and flown by medical helicopter to an area hospital, where he later died, Summit County Sheriff's Sgt. Ron Bridge said.

No one else was injured in the slide.

Baker was skiing with a group of friends and was the first to travel down the mountain, Bridge said.

"His group of friends were able to observe exactly what happened," he said. "That's how we were able to determine there was only one individual in the slide."

Bridge called the area "extremely unstable." Rescue crews were unable to reach the man by snowmobile and had to ski down from the top of the mountain.

The avalanche occurred in the same area where a massive slide killed 27-year-old Shane Maxiner, of Sandpoint, Idaho, in 2005. That avalanche was estimated at 16 acres and 30 feet deep in some spots.

Thursday's slide was much smaller, estimated at 15 feet wide at the top of the mountain and about 90 feet wide at the bottom, Bridge said. The slide traveled roughly 900 feet down the mountainside, he said.

The area is an out-of-bounds bowl off the Ninety Nine 90 chair lift at the Canyons.

E-mail: jpage@desnews.com