Rescuers find bodies of Alberta men buried in B.C. avalanche

Search and rescue teams in British Columbia have found the bodies of two snowmobilers who were buried in an avalanche on Tuesday.

Shane Scheideman and Kory Wagner were from Keephills, west of Edmonton. They were part of a group of three men caught in an avalanche on Tuesday on Renshaw Mountain near McBride. 

Earlier reports erroneously suggested the two men were related. They were friends, RCMP said.

A third man, Wagner's cousin Jeff, survived the slide. He pulled himself out of the snow, but couldn't find the other two even though the group was equipped with beacons and shovels. He dug out his snowmobile and left the area and was later found by another group of snowmobilers on Wednesday.

Scheideman's wife, Bonnie, remembered her husband as an avid outdoorsman. Family members spent Thursday looking through scrapbooks and sharing memories.

"He wasn't the type of guy to bring home roses, but he'd bring home snowmobiles and lawnmowers. That's just who he was," she said.

Scheideman first got a call telling her something was wrong early Wednesday morning. 

She spent the day hoping her husband would call and tell her everything was all right, but that didn't happen.

"When you get the call [saying] he's not coming home,... you can't imagine it," she said. "Like this morning, you see a picture of him doing something that he loves. You want him there."

Shane Scheideman leaves behind his wife and four children.

Kory Wagner's family also shared their memories at the home in Keephills he shared with his wife, Lori, and their two-year-old daughter.

"It's hard to think about going on without him... but this will be his legacy that we can carry on," Lori Wagner said. Wagner is expecting the couple's second child.

Her husband, too, was an avid snowmobiler and outdoorsman, and he died doing what he loved most in life, she said.

"He just said that would be the perfect thing. Me being up on the mountains. That's me touching heaven," she said. "And if he was to go, that is how he would want to go, like being full of life, and then that would be it."

Search hindered

The discovery of the men's bodies came after a search effort that was initially hampered by conditions on the mountain.

After the group's vehicle was first spotted in a parking lot Tuesday night, a search was launched by rescue crews, but the risk of further avalanches prevented them from reaching the site on Wednesday, according to RCMP Sgt. Pat McTiernan of the North District detachment.

The RCMP said avalanche maintenance procedures were conducted late into the afternoon and evening Wednesday, but avalanche technicians were not satisfied the conditions were safe for search efforts.

When the search got underway Thursday, crews picked up signals from the locator beacons both missing riders were wearing.

A third snowmobiler was killed Wednesday afternoon in a separate avalanche near Kimberley, in southeastern B.C..

The Canadian Avalanche Centre warns the avalanche risk for most of B.C. remains considerable and is forecast to rise to high for many areas on Saturday.