TACOMA –A missing skier’s body was recovered Saturday at Mount Rainier National Park.
The woman was last heard from May 18 before she set out to ski above the Paradise area of the park. Park rangers initiated a search the next day as she was an overdue skier, according to a news release from the park.
“A ground team of two rangers searched Deadhorse Creek Basin, Panorama Face, and Alta Vista, looking for tracks over the Nisqually drainage,” the release said. “A team of two climbing rangers from Camp Muir looked over the Nisqually and Paradise glaciers and searched the Muir Snowfield to Pebble Creek and Panorama Point. A team of two volunteers conducted a visual search of the Nisqually drainage.”
The park’s helicopter located an unresponsive person who appeared to have fallen about 200 feet at the base of Pebble Creek’s Moraine Falls. A large, unstable snow moat that was subject to rock and ice fall surrounded the area. That posed too high of an immediate risk recovery teams, the release said.
Rangers recovered the body using traditional rescue methods during a period of favorable weather on June 8. A helicopter took the woman’s body to Kautz Creek Helibase where the Pierce County Medical Examiner will evaluate her.
