The founder of a ski guiding group caught up in Tahoe’s deadly mess knows tragedy
The founder of a guiding company facing a criminal investigation after a deadly Lake Tahoe avalanche is a professional skier and double-peaked mountaineer of Mt. Everest under his belt.
Zeb Blais, who founded Truckee, Calif.-based Blackbird Mountain Guides in 2020, has been a mountain guide for more than two decades.
His company led a tour group that saw eight members killed and one suspected dead in Tuesday’s massacre at Castle Peak, including six “big mothers” and three guides.
State and local police are investigating Blackbird for any negligence after the team ventured out in dangerous conditions, even warning on the eve of a “MAJOR storm” in a social media clip featuring a guide sifting through a weak layer of ice that may have been hit by giants.
Blais himself knows the tragedy.
He said he was trapped in an avalanche in Tajikistan after he and his team got impatient crossing what they knew was “unstable,” he explained in a 2021 podcast interview.
Blais said his team showed poor judgment and called it “one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my career” after the snow buried the fun-seeker in need of rescue.
“I don’t care where you are, you just don’t want to get caught in real snow. Yeah, it was a big change, and just like, yeah, this could happen to you,” he said.
Blais has scaled some of the world’s tallest and most dangerous peaks, including Everest, Cho Oyu and Lobuche in the Himalayas, according to his bio on the Blackbird website. He has covered other famous mountains, from Argentina’s Aconcagua and Alaska’s Denali to Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn in the Alps, as well as skiing six of the seven continents.
Blais is also a licensed “avalanche blaster,” meaning he is authorized to detonate explosives to remove unstable snow that may lead to avalanches, according to his LinkedIn page.
He also has other qualifications related to avalanche safety and teaches courses on this subject.
Blais founded Blackbird to “help his clients achieve their lofty mountain goals in style,” his bio says.
“Whether it’s his scrubbing powder, climbing on granite or snowboarding equipment, Zeb loves to take people to the mountains and share his knowledge with his clients. What he loves most about coaching is seeing his clients progress and helping his clients reach their goals.”
Blais called Castle Peak a “major disaster” and “the saddest incident our group has ever experienced” in a statement Wednesday, adding that the company lost three “highly experienced” guides in the avalanche.
No guide identified.
The ski group reportedly took the most dangerous route to escape the mountain, choosing a “difficult” slope of 60 degrees that was given the second highest rating on the avalanche danger scale.
There was a long, flat route the group could take that was set up as a secondary low snow slide hazard.
A statement from the families of the mothers who died in the massacre said they “trusted their professional guides” on this trip.
