Not to speak ill of the dead but I don't know WTF these people were thinking. I was skiing at Crystal (~80 miles away) the same day. IIRC we had about 14-16" of freshies that day. It was GORGEOUS in bounds, why go out? I had checked the avalanche data for a side project that day and it was as bad as you can get. And they were skiing in a known serious avalanche hazard zone. Just showing off to out of town bigwigs IMHO. Someone died at Alpental (in the backcountry area), one pass over, that day as well when a slide pushed him off of a cliff.