A former Allegheny County man was killed this weekend by an avalanche in Wyoming.
Kenneth Goff, 36, was leading a group of skiers through the backcountry near Grand Teton National Park when they accidentally triggered a snow slide. He was buried under several feet of snow.
Authorities received an alert about the accident just before noon. It took rescuers almost four hours to reach the scene by skis after a helicopter tried to reach the site but had to turn around because of stormy weather.
The others in his group survived, but one person was hurt after being partially buried.
Goff was a native of Bell Acres, according to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. He worked as a nurse and had lengthy experience in the wilderness, including with Lander’s search and rescue team. Since 2017, he had been an instructor at the National Outdoor Leadership School, where Goff worked on climbing and mountaineering courses, a representative of the school said Sunday.
This is the fifth avalanche death in the United States this year.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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