The director of an avalanche center, who sought to increase avalanche safety and awareness, was killed this week in an avalanche in Oregon.
Kip Rand, who became director of the Wallowa Avalanche Center in Oregon in November, was skiing with a friend on Tuesday afternoon when the avalanche occurred, the center said in a statement.
Rand was skiing in the northern Wallowa mountains when a large cornice — a pack of snow that is often found on a ridge — broke off and partially buried him, Michael Hatch, a member of the avalanche center’s board, wrote in a statement Thursday morning.
While his friend was able to find him and revive him using CPR, making their way off the debris pile, Hatch said, Rand died a little more than two hours later, before a rescue team arrived.
Rand’s internal injuries likely proved fatal, Hatch said.
“Kip was one of those individuals who touched the lives of the people he knew in extraordinary ways,” Hatch wrote. “He had an infectious passion for the mountains and he so enjoyed being able to share his knowledge and love for wild places with so many of us over the years.”
The rescue team arrived about two hours after Rand died and got his friend off Chief Joseph Mountain. The following day, Rand’s body was recovered. The center said a full report will be released after an investigation.
“We are simply stunned with sorrow,” the Wallowa Avalanche Center said in a statement.
Before he became the avalanche center’s director, Rand had years of experience as a guide and educator, according to the center. The nonprofit has existed since 2009, with a goal of improving avalanche safety in northeastern Oregon, according to the group’s records.
Rand was the 21st person killed in an avalanche this year in the United States, and the first in Oregon, according to a tally kept by Avalanche.org.
Hatch said that the center’s “thoughts and prayers go out to Kip’s longtime sweetheart and girlfriend, family, and his many friends.”
“He was a true mountain mystic. For a time he belonged to this world,” Hatch wrote Thursday. “Now he belongs to the mountains.”
