A skier who went missing Monday at Solitude Mountain Resort was found dead Tuesday morning.
Police said 37-year-old Devon O’Connell, of Cottonwood Heights, was found at 8:20 a.m. near the Sensation run, Fox 13 News reported. The intermediate run is located on the lower portion of the mountain near the Sunrise lift and leads to the Last Chance Lodge.
Solitude Mountain Resort ski patrol was alerted to the missing skier around 6:30 p.m. Monday after he failed to rendezvous with others. The Unified Police Department reported the skier was supposed to be back by 2 p.m. His car was still in the parking lot when the ski patrol got the call.
Search and rescue efforts went until 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to the UPD, and then were resumed at 7:15 a.m. The resort, which opens at 8 a.m., kept its Apex, Summit and Sunrise lifts closed until the skier was found. Those lifts began running again around 10 a.m.
There were snowy conditions at the resort before and during the search. Solitude reported receiving 16 inches of snow from a storm that began Sunday evening and continued into Monday. It got 10 inches Tuesday, according to the forecasting website OpenSnow.com.
The skier was wearing a helmet, according to a Solitude press release.
It was the second death in a calendar year for Solitude. In February, a 38-year-old transplant surgeon at Intermountain Healthcare died while skiing at the resort when he fell off a 100-foot cliff.
