Higinio “Quino” Gonzalez stopped to catch his breath and take in the view from a ridge overlooking the White Pine area of Little Cottonwood Canyon. That’s when he saw the skiers fall.
Two of them plummeted an estimated 1,500 feet down an icy slope and over a cliff.
“What I was thinking,” he told reporters, in his quiet voice tinged with a Chilean accent, following the 2011 incident, “was that I had to rush there and do something.”
Though he had been traveling alone, Gonzalez carried all of the equipment and knowledge needed to perform a backcountry rescue. That included, recalled Kim Hall, one of the women who fell, a lightweight splint and wrap and the tools and know-how for cobbling together a sled to get her seriously injured friend to a place where she could be airlifted out by a helicopter.
Those who skied the backcountry or climbed in the Cottonwood Canyons or traveled on big mountain expeditions with Gonzalez said that response aligned with his nature: calm, competent, cerebral. Seemingly, he could do everything.
The exception came earlier this month when he couldn’t save himself from an avalanche in the Silver Fork area of Big Cottonwood Canyon. A Utah Avalanche Center’s official report, released Friday night, said Gonzalez, who was closing in on his 20th year guiding for Utah Mountain Adventures, died of trauma in a Feb. 8 slide that measured 125 feet across, 800 feet long and two feet deep. He had turned 60 just a week earlier.
“Any loss in the mountains is so hard,” Hall said. “But having a loss of somebody who has that much experience, especially in something like an avalanche scenario, is just a punch to the gut and a really good — or bad — wake up call about how unpredictable snow conditions could be.”
Not your stereotypical ski guide
Even those who knew Gonzalez for decades didn’t know the extent of his mountaineering resume.
(Jamie Fendler | Courtesy) Higinio "Quino" Gonzalez guided expeditions up several 24,000-foot-plus peaks, including Annapurna and Gasherbrum, but also was 'an intellectual' and had worked for the World Bank as an interpreter. He died in an avalanche Feb. 8, 2025, while guiding another skier in the East Bowl in Little Cottonwood Canyon.
He had been a guide for Utah Mountain Adventures since 2006. In nearly two decades, he spent more than 1,100 days guiding all the disciplines the outfitter offers: rock climbing, ice climbing, alpine and backcountry touring, avalanche education, and rescue and canyoneering skills.
Prior to that, though, Gonzalez’s playground was much bigger than the Wasatch Mountains. He led an American expedition up Gasherbrum I, a 24,000-foot peak on the border of China and Pakistan. He also summited Broad Peak in that same region as well as Annapurna in Nepal. He climbed Mount McKinley 11 times and topped peaks in Chile, Spain and Peru.
Yet, Gonzalez rarely brought up those feats.
“For a long time,” said Tom Kimbrough, a former UAC forecaster and a retired ski patroller who met Gonzalez at a climbing gym 20 years ago, “I didn’t have any notion that he’d been a high altitude mountaineer.”
The two talked about art and history instead. Opera, in particular, was a popular topic. Gonzalez not only was passionate about opera, Eastman said, he didn’t need a translator to understand it. In his corporate life, Gonzalez had worked professionally as an interpreter for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and Eastman said it seemed as though could speak most of the European languages.
Born in Chile, Gonzalez earned a degree in journalism from the University of Santiago and a masters in political science from Georgetown University. Barb Eastman, who occasionally joined Gonzalez on backcountry ski outings, said he had a bookshelf full of classical records and also held a fascination for expeditions in the frigid lands between northern Canada and the North Pole.
(Jamie Fendler | Courtesy) Higinio "Quino" Gonzalez guided expeditions up several 24,000-foot-plus peaks, including Annapurna and Gasherbrum and also had worked for the World Bank as an interpreter. He died in an avalanche Feb. 8, 2025, while guiding another skier in the East Bowl in Little Cottonwood Canyon.
UAC forecaster Drew Hardesty said guiding was “just kind of a side hustle” for Gonzalez — a reason to get into the mountains he loved and meet interesting people.
“You think guide, you think big, Thor-looking, square-jawed,” Hardesty said. “Quino, he was interesting. Very quiet. Very amicable.”
But he was also fit and capable. That’s what makes the nature of Gonzalez’s death so confounding to those in the backcountry and guiding communities.
“I was very surprised,” Eastman said. “He was impeccably competent.”
What triggered the deadly avalanche?
After a long dry spell, snow finally came to the Wasatch.
A late-January heat wave in the Cottonwood Canyons had added insult to a slow start to the ski season. Yet on Friday, Feb. 7, the snow started to come down again. It first pelted the ground as graupel, which bears a closer likeness to fine hail than snowflakes. That, per the UAC report, made for a weak platform to support the next day’s significant and wet snowfall. Solitude Mountain Resort, located less than two miles up the canyon from Silver Fork, reported getting 15 inches of new snow. It carried between 1.40 and 2.85 inches of water, per the UAC report.
The combination of those factors led the UAC to declare the avalanche danger in the mountains near Salt Lake City “considerable.” That is the middle rating on the UAC’S forecasting scale, which ranges from low to extreme.
“On northerly facing terrain, these avalanches could step down into buried weak layers of faceted snow, making them more dangerous,” the last line of the UAC’s Feb. 8 forecast read. “Human-triggered avalanches 1 to 3 feet deep are likely today.”
Gonzalez steered clear of north faces. He did, however, venture into an area known to slide.
According to the UAC report, Gonzalez and a client skied a pair of south-facing runs into Michigan City, a mellow area near Grizzly Gulch in Little Cottonwood Canyon. They then skinned to the top of East Peak, an elevation of roughly 10,400 feet, and peered into East Bowl, on the Big Cottonwood Canyon side of the ridgeline. The East Bowl is west-facing and, the UAC reported, in addition to offering excellent skiing is a well-known avalanche path.
The UAC reported that Gonzalez’s client said “there was little to no discussion regarding the merits of the slope, only that it was clear that it looked to be an excellent powder run.”
Gonzalez dropped in first. He made a ski cut — a hard, fast turn that can preemptively trigger an avalanche — then skied the fall line. The client waited 15 seconds as instructed, then followed. He made four turns. Then, the report said, the slope “shattered around him.”
As the snow swept him up, the client “swam” to try to stay atop of the debris. Per the UAC report, he slammed into a tree and lost his skis but arrived at the bottom with his face cut but uncovered. Later, after he was airlifted to a nearby hospital, he would learn he had also broken his leg in at least two places.
The first person to reach the client was Will Robbins, an EMT and wildland firefighter who had been touring in the area. After quickly determining the client’s injuries were not life threatening, Robbins set out to find Gonzalez. He was joined in the search by Jeff Hardin, an emergency room doctor who had been skiing with his 15-year-old son.
(Jamie Fendler | Courtesy) Higinio "Quino" Gonzalez embraces his wife, Jamie Fendler. Gonzalez guided expeditions up several 24,000-foot-plus peaks, including Annapurna and Gasherbrum and also had worked for the World Bank as an interpreter. He died in an avalanche Feb. 8, 2025, while guiding another skier in the East Bowl in Little Cottonwood Canyon.
They located Gonzalez’s body higher up the slope. The guide had been hurled into a tree by the lumbering slab avalanche. He had chest trauma and no pulse. Efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.
Gonzalez leaves behind his wife, Jamie Fendler, and two step children.
He also leaves behind a void in the backcountry, said Hall, one of the women he helped rescue after their fall in 2011.
“He was the kind of personality that you just wanted to know was in the mountains, right?” she said. “He was the type of person that was out there on the trails with you, whether you see him or not. …
“And so to have that not be there anymore? It’s just really devastating.”
Correction • Feb. 18, 2025, 7:35 a.m. >> Tom Kimbrough is a former UAC forecaster. His name and position were incorrect in an earlier version of this article.
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