David Dzenawagis was fatally injured in an avalanche in Haines on Wednesday. He was backcountry snowboarding with two friends when he was caught in the slide. 

Haines residents Dave Dzenawagis, Ted Cheney, and Ted Hart went out for a day of skiing and snowboarding above the Takshanuk Mountain Trail. They were attempting a chute they’d ridden before.

Hart says everything seemed like a normal day. Nothing stood out to him as particularly dangerous.

“Dave went down first, he went to a presumably safe spot, that would usually be safe. And then I was behind my friend Ted Cheney,” Hart said. “All of a sudden I hear this loud noise and I look around and this  huge massive avalanche went down in front of me. And I yelled out, ‘Avalanche avalanche.'”

Hart said the avalanche was at least a few hundred feet wide. The crowns, that’s the places where the snow cracked off, were higher than his head.

He says that at first he thought Dzenawagis was in a safe spot. The snow was passing him by. But the avalanche kept propagating. That means it was expanding laterally across the mountain.

“It propagated across multiple fall lines and all the way through the trees and all the way to the next chute and then a whole entire chute ripped out. And it cracked all the way over to above where David was. And then he got caught in the avalanche there.”

Cheney and Hart made their way to where they saw Dzenawagis go down. It took them fewer than ten minutes to get there. Hart says the snow was hard and icy, like it had been rained on.

All three men had beacons probes and shovels. Cheney located Dzenawagis by searching with his beacon and probe. Dzenawagis was buried under 3-5 feet of snow. Cheney and Hart dug him out with shovels. They performed CPR and called 911, but Dzenawagis succumbed to his injuries.

Haines Police department got the call at about a quarter to one in the afternoon. Haines Volunteer Fire Department ambulance crew took a helicopter to their location at about 1,400 feet of elevation. They transported Dzenwagis off the mountain in the helicopter; Cheney and Hart descended on their own without injuries.

Hart and Dzenawagis met snowboarding. They rode together all season.

“He had an infectious personality, he always has a positive attitude, he was grateful,” remembers Hart. “I feel like he was up there for the right reasons.”

He says his thoughts are with Dzenawagis’ family.

“I spoke with his mother this morning. She’s a lovely lady. And it goes to show, because she raised a very thoughtful and kind young man. It seems like she said: that he had a heart of gold,” Hart said.

David Dzenawagis’ death is the second avalanche fatality in Alaska this season.