Cal/OSHA Fines Blackbird Mountain Guides $151,300 Over California's Deadliest Avalanche

More than six months after nine people died in the worst avalanche in California's modern history, state workplace safety regulators have handed down formal penalties against the guiding company that led the doomed backcountry ski trip — a first concrete regulatory finding in a tragedy that has drawn national scrutiny of guided ski touring and hut trips.

The fines

California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, issued $151,300 in fines against Blackbird Mountain Guides (BMG) across seven alleged violations. The citations, dated August 12 and made public August 20, mark the first formal regulatory findings against the Truckee-based guiding company. The largest single penalty, $81,000, was issued for "failing to correct the imminent hazard posed by traveling in avalanche terrain when the avalanche danger was rated high."

Cal/OSHA has classified the core violation as "willful" — the agency's most serious classification short of a criminal referral — meaning regulators believe the company knew about the hazard and proceeded regardless. The remaining five violations relate to broader workplace safety failures, including not providing employees with effective training and failing to report the deaths of three of the company's own employees to the agency in a timely manner. Investigators also found that Blackbird did not adequately remove "exposed employees" from the hazard area "in, near or below avalanche terrain," and failed to ensure its guides "did not make decisions contrary to forecast recommendation, until the existing conditions were corrected." As a result of these failures, Cal/OSHA concluded, three of the company's guides — identified in the citation as Alissandratos, Choo and Henry — were fatally injured.

What happened on February 17

The tragedy struck on February 17, 2026, when an avalanche hit a group of 15 backcountry skiers near the Frog Lake Huts in Tahoe National Forest, killing three Blackbird guides and six clients. The group had been on a three-day Blackbird hut trip when a major storm moved into the Sierra. On the morning of the avalanche, the Sierra Avalanche Center raised the regional danger rating from "considerable" to "high" — a rating that recommends avoiding travel in, near, or below avalanche terrain altogether. The skiers had made their way to remote huts at roughly 7,600 feet, carrying their own food and supplies, before attempting to ski down the mountain two days later when the slide hit near Castle Peak, trapping them. Six skiers, including one guide, were rescued after sheltering in place for hours as searchers battled blizzard conditions to reach them. The incident has since been described by investigators and outlets covering it as the deadliest ski or snowboard-related avalanche event in U.S. history.

An independent report, released just days before the fines

Notably, Cal/OSHA's citations landed just days after Blackbird itself released a preliminary, independently commissioned investigation into the disaster. That report — commissioned by BMG in April and completed at the end of July — was prepared by Don Sharaf, an avalanche professional with 35 years of field, education and consulting experience, including a stint running the American Avalanche Institute in Colorado. The 68-page preliminary report, made public on August 9 after first being shared with authorities on July 27 and with victims' families on August 4, assigns no explicit blame to the company but does not expressly clear it either.

Drawing on weather data, guide records, GPS tracks and firsthand interviews, Sharaf's findings indicated the group had repeatedly attempted to reach terrain farther from the avalanche runout zone, but was stymied by an uncrossable creek — with an alternate route said to have been available but avoided. A separate account, reported by the New York Times, held that Blackbird had established routes designed to skirt the most dangerous terrain during periods of elevated risk, and that location data from the day suggested the group had veered slightly off one of those planned routes when the slide hit. The Times did not identify the source of that location data, and it has not been made public. Sharaf's report notably says the guides decided to leave during a break in the storm and were surprised when their planned route was blocked — though the report does not directly address the underlying question of why the group departed the huts at all amid the storm and existing avalanche warnings.

Blackbird's response

The company has pushed back firmly on the state's findings. In a statement, Blackbird said it had filed a formal appeal of the citations, arguing that "the citations do not reflect the reality of our profession or the safety program we have built," and that it "believes Blackbird operated in full compliance with all applicable regulatory requirements and consistent with the established safety frameworks of the broader professional mountain guiding industry." The company has separately said it welcomes the chance to work with Cal/OSHA to help the agency better understand the operational realities of backcountry guiding. Blackbird also noted that the guides on the trip carried years of backcountry experience and certifications from the American Mountain Guides Association, which offers the highest level of training available in the industry; the company describes itself as an IFMGA-certified, guide-owned outfit that has run guided ski, splitboard, mountaineering and rock-climbing trips across California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and internationally.

Investigations still ongoing

The Cal/OSHA fines are unlikely to be the last word on the tragedy. A separate probe by Cal/OSHA's Bureau of Investigations, which reviews workplace deaths for potential criminal charges, remains ongoing. Meanwhile, the Nevada County Sheriff's Office has forwarded the results of its own criminal investigation to District Attorney Jesse Wilson's office for review of possible charges. With Blackbird's administrative appeal now filed and two separate criminal reviews still pending, the case remains far from resolved — six months on, still one of the most closely watched guiding-liability cases in recent U.S. backcountry skiing history.

A community still grieving

In the immediate aftermath, Blackbird founder Zeb Blais and the company mourned publicly, saying in a statement that those lost were "deeply loved family members, friends, partners, and valued members of the broader mountain community." The town of Truckee held a vigil for the nine victims in the days following the disaster, a reflection of how deeply the loss was felt within California's tight-knit backcountry and ski-guiding community — a community now watching closely as the regulatory and legal fallout from the Castle Peak avalanche continues to unfold.