Dog teams leading search for missing snowboarder

The search for a missing snowboarder following an avalanche Sunday at the Big White ski resort near Kelowna, B.C., entered its second day with police dogs leading the efforts to find the 21-year-old man.

Police asked the resort to limit the number of searchers in the area on Monday to make it easier for the dogs to pick up any scent in the snow.

The snowboarder was reported missing by his friends at 3:15 p.m. PT Sunday after an avalanche swept through an in-bounds area of the resort.

Two other people caught in the avalanche were rescued and released. They were uninjured.

It's uncertain if the missing man was caught in the avalanche or if he is missing for other reasons.

"There are unconfirmed reports of where he was snowboarding today. We don't even know if he was in the area." said the resort's senior-vice president, Michael Ballingall, on Sunday.

A nighttime search of the resort's buildings, bars and restaurants failed to find the missing snowboarder, who reportedly worked as a housekeeper at the resort.

The RCMP was on the scene all day Sunday with two helicopters and two avalanche-trained search-and-rescue dogs.

"We are very hopeful that the search will show there is actually nobody buried," said Ballingall.

A search dog managed to find one skier buried under 2.5 metres of snow, but there was no other evidence that anyone else was buried. There were 10,000 to 11,000 people on the mountain at the time of the avalanche.

Four grid searches of the area had been completed by 3 p.m. Sunday, but the search resumed after the missing man's friends reported him missing.

The search of the mountain was called off Sunday when it got dark around 4 p.m.

The avalanche in the Parachute Bowl area occurred inside the ski area boundaries and stretched across two acres (about .8 hectares), but was less than one metre deep.

The Parachute Bowl is a double-black-diamond area of steep advanced ski terrain near the boundary of the family-oriented resort in B.C.'s Interior.

The ski patrol had blasted the area to control avalanches 48 hours before the incident, said Ballingall, and there were no similiar avalanches during the ski season.

Avalanche control "is not an exact science," said Ballingall, and the ski patrol was distraught about the weekend incident.