<\/p>\n
The two backcountry skiers killed Saturday in an avalanche southeast of Ophir Pass have been identified as Dr. Jeff Paffendorf, 51, and Albert Perry, 55, both of Durango.<\/p>\n
A news release issued Sunday evening from San Juan County, Colorado, Office of Emergency Management by DeAnne Gallegos, public information officer with the county, stated a rescue team reached the bodies about 2:15 p.m. Sunday.<\/p>\n
San Juan County Coroner Keri Metzler identified the bodies.<\/p>\n
The rescue team included participation from San Juan County Search and Rescue, San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office, La Plata County Search and Rescue, and Flight for Life.<\/p>\n
Gallegos said a search began for the two backcountry skiers shortly after 8 p.m. Saturday when the two were reported overdue.<\/p>\n
A Flight for Life helicopter spotted an avalanche on the northwest side of Ophir Pass, near the Battleship avalanche path at 9:30 p.m. Saturday.<\/p>\n
At 11:30 p.m. Saturday, a separate party of skiers located the bodies of the two skiers.<\/p>\n
At 2 a.m. Sunday, the rescue team decided to conduct the recovery mission later in the morning, after sunrise.<\/p>\n
The recover mission began at 8 a.m. Sunday. At noon, teams reached the site and discovered the bodies.<\/p>\n
According to a preliminary report from the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, the skiers were near the Battleship avalanche slide area near Ophir Pass.<\/p>\n
The CAIC report states the two skiers were fully buried in the avalanche. The time of Saturday\u2019s slide was listed as unknown.<\/p>\n
According to CAIC, men had planned to ski the Battleship area.<\/p>\n
CAIC lists the avalanche danger in the northern San Juan Mountains as \u201cconsiderable.\u201d<\/p>\n
parmijo @durangoherald.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paffendorf, 51, and Albert Perry, 55, perish in Saturday slide<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[377,13,28,1807,1562],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-49771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-avalanche-landslide","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-county-search-and-rescue","tag-san-juan-county-colorado"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87639,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49771\/revisions\/87639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49771"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=49771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}