LEAVENWORTH — Law enforcement on Wednesday identified the three people who died Sunday afternoon after a snow slide near Colchuck Lake.
The Chelan County Sheriff’s Office identified the avalanche victims as Seong Cho, a 54-year-old man from West Hartford, Connecticut, Jeannie Lee, a 60-year-old woman from Bayside, New York and Yun Park, a 66-year-old man from Palisades Park, New Jersey.
Sheriff Mike Morrison said on Wednesday that no rescuers have been sent in to the avalanche scene near Colchuck Peak, according to a sheriff’s office news release.
Two avalanche experts from the Northwest Avalanche Center have been deployed to the area to assess the current avalanche hazard.
Local authorities have not recovered the bodies due to dangerous conditions on the mountain.
A group of six were climbing the northeast couloir of Colchuck Peak when the lead climber triggered an avalanche, sweeping them about 500 feet downslope, according to the news release.
Park and Lee were killed in the initial slide and then Cho died of severe injuries shortly after, according to the sheriff’s office.
Another climber, a 56-year-old New York man was injured, but declined medical assistance, and two others, a 50-year-old New York man and a 36-year-old New Jersey man, were uninjured.
Colchuck Peak is a 8,705-foot summit located in The Enchantments and is part of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness about 10 miles — via straightline — southwest of Leavenworth.
The slide was North Central Washington’s deadliest since the 2012 Tunnel Creek avalanche on the backside of Stevens Pass that killed three Upper Valley men, according to the Northwest Avalanche Center. Statewide, it’s the deadliest since May 2014 when four clients and two guides were killed on Mt. Rainier’s Liberty Ridge.
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