Avalanche kills 6 moms who bonded over the outdoors

The families of six friends and mothers who were lost life in a Sierra Nevada avalanche this week identified the victims on Thursday and said they were "devastated beyond words."

In a statement, the families said that the women who died were Carrie Atkin, Liz Clabaugh, Danielle Keatley, Kate Morse, Caroline Sekar and Kate Vitt.

The women bonded as most of them raised their families in the Bay Area and enjoyed regular trips to the Tahoe region.

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"They were all mothers, wives and friends, all of whom connected through the love of the outdoors," the families said. "They were passionate, skilled skiers who cherished time together in the mountains."

The women embarked on a guided, two-night trip to the Frog Lake Backcountry Huts outside Truckee, California, that was planned well in advance, according to the statement.

They were experienced skiers who were "fully equipped with avalanche safety equipment." The families said they had many unanswered questions.

Sekar, 45, lived in San Francisco, and her sister, Clabaugh, 52, lived in Boise, Idaho. Sekar's husband, Kiren Sekar, 46, provided a separate statement to The New York Times recalling his wife as "authentic and unabashedly unfiltered," a woman who spread joy and enthusiasm to her circle of friends, her children's school and her neighbourhood.

He said he and his wife were together for more than 20 years and that she raised their two children to love hiking, bicycling and skiing in the mountains.

"Caroline spent her final days doing what she loved top, with the people who loved her most, in her favourite place," Sekar wrote.

Apart from the sisters and Atkin, other avalanche victims were from Marin County, California, just north of San Francisco.

The avalanche was the deadliest in modern California history, and one of the deadliest in the United States.

The families said eight women had been on the friends' ski trip, which indicates that two of the friends survived. Three of the four guides died in the avalanche, according to their employer, Blackbird Mountain Guides.

Many of the mothers were connected through Sugar Bowl Academy, a private, ski-focused school that said Wednesday that multiple victims had ties to its community in Norden, California, several miles from where the avalanche occurred.

Marin County is a constellation of affluent, family-oriented towns where children's sports and ski vacations in the Tahoe region are a regular part of the culture.

Rescue workers have not yet been able to retrieve the eight people who were found dead on the mountain because of severe storm conditions, according to officials with Nevada County, which includes the area where the avalanche struck. A ninth person remains missing.