By KRISTEN SONNE
Because of the snow storm this past weekend, BYU students were forced to spend Saturday night in the same place they spent the day.
Dangerous avalanches at Alta Ski Resort trapped many skiers, some of which were students.
Lindsey Tall, a senior from Idaho Falls majoring in molecular biology, was one of the skiers who stayed at Alta overnight.
Tall said when her group took a break from skiing, the authorities at Alta told them in order to prevent a natural avalanche they were going to cause a controlled avalanche.
“Every time they shot into the mountain to cause an avalanche, a natural one would occur at the same time,” she said.
After sitting in the car for about six hours, Tall said they were told to leave the parking lot because an avalanche was headed their way.
“We slept on a hard, lightly carpeted floor on plastic bags because the floor was wet,” Tall said. “It really was not that bad. It was an adventure with nothing — no hairbrush, pillow or games. But we did get to talk to each other.”
Like Tall, Jody Jeffs, a senior from Fremont, Calif. majoring in community health, also stayed Saturday night at a lodge at Alta Ski Resort.
“I was already wet, and I slept on the wet basement floor at the lodge without any heat,” Jeffs said. “In order to stay warm, we all piled up and stayed close to each other.”
Jeffs said she was there with three friends from California who came into town to ski. However, she said they only spent four hours of the weekend skiing, and the rest of the time trapped at the lodge.
Unlike Tall and her group, who were given breakfast at their lodge for free, Jeffs had to pay $5 to eat breakfast.
Besides students being stranded at Alta Ski Resort, Holly Cragun, a junior from Santiago, Chile majoring in international relations, also had an unexpected stay away from Provo.
Cragun travelled to Logan to attend the funeral of her great aunt.
“When we went out to get food before we attempted to leave Logan, we could not see because of the wind and snow,” she said. “We then decided to spend the night at our grandmother’s house.”
Cragun said they said a prayer before leaving Logan because the driving was scary.
“There were times when the car was drifting because of the strong winds in Wellsville Canyon,” she said. “It was snowing so hard near Salt Lake we really did not know if we would make it back.”
