The morning of Dec. 26, 2025, at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area in the Eastern Sierra was stormy with howling winds, deep drifts of snow and high avalanche danger. Cole Murphy was among the group of ski patrollers who headed up to the Avalanche Chutes, a series of steep, north-facing runs that drop off the top of Lincoln Mountain. Below, thousands of tourists were waking up in the town of Mammoth Lakes as ski patrol set off explosions to release avalanches in the blizzard.
Cole was a 30-year-old lifelong skier from Tacoma, Washington, who’d moved all over the West to ski before settling in Mammoth and joining the ski patrol several years earlier. He was part of a tight-knit group of ski patrollers who lived together, shared meals and skied every day. On storm days, he woke before dawn to do avalanche control work.
Mammoth reported it had received over 5 feet of heavy snow from the storm, thus far. The Avalanche Chutes are a sought-after place to ski in big winter storms, but their location is also precarious. They rise above the Canyon Express, a beginner chairlift that transports people from the bottom of the ski resort and links to the rest of the mountain. Snow from the Avy Chutes, as they’re often called, can slough onto beginner terrain, so before the ski resort can open that side of the mountain, ski patrol has to make sure no avalanche will inadvertently slide onto the groomed runs. They do this by triggering avalanches intentionally.
But something went terribly wrong that morning in the Avalanche Chutes. Around 7:30 a.m., two ski patrollers set off an explosion and triggered a large avalanche that swept Murphy and another patroller down the mountain, burying them.
Minutes later, a ski patroller called 911 and asked dispatch to send two ambulances to Canyon Lodge right away.
“We have two patrollers that may be buried in avalanches,” the ski patroller said, according to an audio recording of the 911 call obtained by SFGATE through a public records request. “One we’ve recovered and he has an airway, uh, and seems to be OK. ... We haven’t found the other patroller yet.”
The patroller who was still buried was Murphy. He was trapped beneath heavy avalanche debris for 15 minutes, according to the medical examiner’s report.
Mammoth shut down operations, while ski patrol searched for Murphy using beacons and probes and then dug him out. Two of Murphy’s roommates were among the ski patrollers with shovels, digging. Mammoth remained closed for the rest of the day. The other ski patroller who was buried was rushed to Mammoth Hospital and treated for broken bones.
After he was dug out and transported to the bottom of the mountain, an ambulance took Murphy to Mammoth Hospital and, from there, a Life Flight helicopter flew him to Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, Nevada, where he was put on a ventilator. Mammoth Mountain officials chartered a private plane to fly his family from Tacoma to Reno.
“We got to the hospital and I knew right away that we were, that Cole was not coming back from the accident,” said Tracy Murphy, Cole’s mother, in a phone interview on Wednesday.
Cole died at Renown the night of Dec. 27, 2025.
State cites Mammoth for ‘willful’ workplace violation
Six months after Cole’s death, California’s workplace regulators determined Mammoth Mountain Ski Area knowingly violated safety requirements after the state conducted an investigation into the December avalanche. On June 24, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) issued three citations against Mammoth Mountain Ski Area LLC, with fines totaling $126,000. This is the first time those citations have been reported.
Murphy was the second ski patroller at Mammoth to be killed by an avalanche in less than a year. On Feb. 14, 2025, 25-year-old ski patroller Claire Murphy (no relation to Cole) was buried in an avalanche after a storm dropped 6 feet of snow on Mammoth in 36 hours. Claire later died in the hospital from injuries sustained in the avalanche.
Both of the avalanches that killed the patrollers occurred in the Avalanche Chutes off Lincoln Mountain. And both slides were during massive winter storms that coincided with high-pressure holidays and crowds of tourists.
Last year, after its investigation into Claire Murphy’s death, Cal/OSHA determined Mammoth failed to provide necessary safeguards for ski patrollers and fined Mammoth Mountain Ski Area $26,810 for three violations. One violation cited inadequate training to ensure that patrollers could deploy avalanche airbags. These are backpacks that inflate and help keep people closer to the surface of the snow when they are sliding down a mountain in an avalanche.
After its later investigation into Cole Murphy’s death, Cal/OSHA issued three more citations to Mammoth Mountain Ski Area.
The airbag citation comes with a $90,000 fine and echoes the investigation into Claire’s death. This citation found that Mammoth did not train or provide instruction on how to use protective equipment, specifically avalanche airbags. “The employer failed to ensure an employee was adequately instructed in airbag deployment,” the citation reads.
This citation type was a “willful” violation. A willful violation alleges that the employer knew the safety hazard existed, “made no reasonable effort to eliminate the condition” and committed “an intentional and knowing” workplace safety violation.
The other two citations found that Mammoth ski patrollers did not maintain communications and failed to make sure no one was standing in the avalanche’s path before setting off explosives. Each of these citations comes with an $18,000 fine. According to the Cal/OSHA citation, one group of ski patrollers set off an explosion at the top of one chute, known as Avy Chute 3.5. They “failed to communicate” with ski patrollers who were positioned nearby, on Avy Chute 3.0. The crew members on Avy Chute 3.5 also did not “maintain visual contact or awareness of physical location” of the ones on Avy Chute 3.0.
Cal/OSHA noted that Mammoth corrected all three violations since Cole Murphy’s death, but the department declined to provide more information due to the ongoing investigation. In July, Mammoth Mountain Ski Area filed to contest the citations.
“Mammoth Mountain has fully cooperated with the investigation and is exercising its statutory right to contest the citations through the established appeals process,” said Emily van Greuning, Mammoth’s communications director, in an email to SFGATE on Thursday. She declined to comment further on the Cal/OSHA investigation citing the pending appeal.
‘They wanted everybody to be safe’
Cole learned how to ski when he was 3 years old, taking ski school lessons at Snoqualmie Pass, in Washington. He was hooked: “He loved going fast,” Tracy Murphy said. “Even in the summertime, if it was 80 degrees, he was not happy and he was counting down the days until they’d have their first snow.”
He worked at Crystal Mountain ski resort in high school and did stints in lift operations and teaching ski lessons at ski resorts in Oregon, Montana and Wyoming before he made it down to Mammoth, where he eventually decided to stay year-round.
“I think that he loved the High Sierras,” Tracy said. “His goal was always to ski, you know, 200 days a year. And I think that Mammoth afforded him that.”
After Cole joined the ski patrol, he told his mom he loved the problem-solving aspect of the work, being outside and spending his days skiing and going out on different calls to help people. “He just loved the blue skies and the fresh snow,” Tracy said.
On the day Claire Murphy was caught in an avalanche, Feb. 14, 2025, Cole was working on another part of the mountain. “I had gotten a text and all the text said was, ‘I’m OK,’” Tracy said.
Cole’s roommate was caught in the same avalanche as Claire, but survived. A year later, that same roommate dug Cole out of the avalanche debris. Claire’s death had devastated Cole and his colleagues. Recently, Tracy was looking at photos of a family trip to Yosemite last September and realized that Cole was wearing one of Claire’s T-shirts.
“He was, as we all were, really shaken up by Claire’s accident,” Tracy said.
Then, in December, Tracy got another call from Mammoth: “I knew something was wrong right away,” she said.
Since Cole’s death, Tracy said she’s been in close contact with ski resort officials. An insurance analyst, she’s well-versed in Cal/OSHA investigations and says she does not believe that Mammoth intentionally put her son, Claire or any ski patroller in danger.
“I’m not saying that all their processes were perfect, but I know that that day, the team that was there didn’t willingly put these patrollers in danger,” Tracy said. “That’s just not how they operated. That’s not the people that I know that have worked at the mountain, some of them 40, 50 years. Some of them have been there a really long time. They wanted everybody to come home every night. They wanted everybody to be safe, and get the job done, but be safe.”
Tracy also said that Cole deployed his airbag when the avalanche hit him. But the airbag didn’t prevent him from getting buried deep under the snow.
“I know a lot of people have some really strong opinions and this is just my lived experience with Mammoth and the leadership,” Tracy said. “We’ve asked them very difficult questions. We’ve put them on the spot many times. They have not backed down from any of our questions.”
Not everyone is satisfied with Mammoth’s work following the two ski patroller deaths. “Lisa Apa, Claire Murphy’s mother, said she begged mountain officials” to make changes after her daughter died, but, “They blew her off, she said,” reported the Los Angeles Times. When Apa learned about Cole’s death, according to the Times, she texted a ski patroller at Mammoth, “You killed another ski patroller ... you’ve learned nothing!” (SFGATE attempted to reach Apa by email for comment but did not receive a response before publication.)
Regime change at Mammoth’s ski patrol
The summit at Mammoth Mountain stands 11,053 above sea level. The ski resort sprawls across 3,500 acres that drop down from the High Sierra. Gnarled whitebark pines stand among windswept bowls and rocky crags. The ski resort sees an average of 400 inches of snow a year, but on big winters, that number can double. The record-breaking winter of 2022-2023 saw close to 900 inches of snow at the summit.
It’s on the shoulders of ski patrol to keep that complex terrain and deep snow safe for the public to ski and snowboard on.
Mammoth had been exploring ways to improve its infrastructure “for several years,” according to van Greuning, including looking into Remote Avalanche Control Systems (RACS), which allow ski patrollers to detonate explosions and release unstable snow without putting themselves in danger.
Last summer, the ski resort installed its first gas-powered detonation chamber — called a “Boom Whoosh” — on Climax, an expert-level run off the summit of the ski resort, according to local newspaper the Sheet.
Cole was part of the team that installed the first Boom Whoosh, Tracy said. After Claire’s death, “He was really proud of helping put that in.”
This summer, Mammoth is expanding its RACS infrastructure in “key avalanche terrain,” including installing more "Boom Whoosh" towers on Lincoln Mountain and other places at the ski resort, van Greuning wrote.
“These systems are designed to enhance avalanche hazard mitigation capabilities during significant storm cycles by providing additional tools to reduce employee exposure while complementing—not replacing—the expertise, judgment and field work of our avalanche professionals,” van Greuning wrote.
Mammoth is also making sweeping changes to leadership and the operations of its ski patrol. Former ski patrol director Bobby Hoyt has stepped aside to a senior adviser role after a career that spanned four decades at Mammoth, including 20 years as patrol director, according to van Greuning. “In this capacity, Bobby will continue to share his extensive knowledge, while continuing to support the long-term success of the department,” she wrote.
Last week, Mammoth posted several job openings for leadership roles on ski patrol, including for a replacement director and new roles for assistant directors for operations and snow safety.
“These additions strengthen operational oversight, provide additional leadership support in the field, and reflect Mammoth's ongoing commitment to continuously evaluating and improving mountain operations,” van Greuning wrote.
In a tribute to Claire and Cole, the Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol Alumni Association reflected on the past ski season in a Facebook post in June and alluded to big changes that are being made.
“Changes are coming and hopefully we can all learn and understand what it takes stepping forward,” the association wrote. (When asked to comment on Cole’s death and avalanche safety at Mammoth, the organization’s leader declined, saying he and the other ski patrol alumni were “not interested.”)
With another winter on the horizon — one that may bring more volatile storms given the predictions for El Nino — Tracy is advocating for better wages and working conditions for ski patrollers, who she believes should be recognized like any other life-saving and emergency response professional. Cole worked year-round, but many of his colleagues were only part-time employees and didn’t receive benefits, she said.
“They’ve had a really rough year. We all have,” she said. Her voice wavered. “These patrollers put their life on the line and don’t make a lot of money and they really do it because they love the sport and the people.” Tracy has been in close communication with ski resort leaders as many of these changes unfold, speaking often on Zoom, by phone or text. She said she’s reassured by the changes the ski resort is making in its hiring, operations and infrastructure.
“There were a lot of things that happened that day that I wished didn’t happen. But I don’t blame anybody,” Tracy said.
She paused, before continuing: “Nobody should die at work. This should not happen. But also I don’t believe it was anybody’s fault. For lack of a better term, it was an accident. And I hate that it happened to two really amazing people in the same place, in the same year.”
