I Didn't Know the Moms Who Died in the Tahoe Avalanche. But I Understand Them.

Five days after the deadliest avalanche in California history claimed nine lives a few miles from my home, hundreds of locals gathered around the Victory Highway Eagle Monument in downtown Truckee. From where I stood with three of my four kids pressed against me for warmth, I could barely see the bronze bald eagle protecting her babies beneath a six-foot-eight-inch wingspan. At its base, Lutheran Church Charities, a nonprofit that helps communities deal with loss, installed nine baby blue mercy hearts on white posts, each one labelled with a name: the three guides—Andrew Alissandratos (34), Nicole “Niki” Choo (42) and Michael Henry (30)—and six moms—Carrie Atkin (46), Liz Clabaugh (52), Danielle Keatley (44), Kate Morse (45), Caroline Sekar (45), and Katherine Vitt (43).

Many Truckee residents, myself included, had spent days digging out our cars buried beneath nine feet of snow from the recent storm. Road closures, whiteout conditions, and traffic had disrupted our Ski and Skate Week, when school closes so families can travel and enjoy snowsports. My eldest, Kyra (20), missed important exams and labs when she couldn’t drive west over Donner Summit to return to college, and her younger sister Riley (12) couldn’t come home after a sleepover.

So when a stranger flagged me down and offered me her apartment’s reserved parking” near the candlelight vigil, I felt a complex rush of emotions I had been suppressing since I learned that the six backcountry skiers were adventurous moms like me. By the time everyone had lit their votive, tea light, taper, decorative, novelty, or pillar candle they brought from home, Tahoe Church had handed out hot cocoa and hand warmers, and Truckee Threshold Choir had led us in a heartbreaking rendition of “Amazing Grace,” I wasn’t the only one moved to tears.

Long after the speakers had concluded their remarks, and more than half of the mourners had walked to the nearby Church of the Mountains, I lingered. There was something about the footprints disappearing in the powder dusting the sidewalks, the heaps of dirty snow that the kids tried to conquer like Everest, and dogs nearly my size scratching their backs on a tiny patch of ice that resonated with me.

At first, I tried to comfort anyone directly impacted by the avalanche. I lost both my mother and brother to the same disease before I turned 21, and hoped to share the lessons about grief I’ve learned traveling the world. But the crowd had thinned to mostly those who forgot to bring gloves but didn’t mind that temperatures were dropping rapidly that night from 37 degrees Fahrenheit to 28. Like me, many had not personally known the backcountry skiers but had survived similar adventures that had pushed us out of our comfort zones, and in some cases, gone wrong.

I approached a mother and daughter standing near me and asked if they could relight our candles. Sondrea Lyon, co-owner of Riverside Studios, a local art gallery, has lived in Truckee for 16 years. She had come that night because “as a small community that loves backcountry skiing, there’s one degree of separation between all of us,” she said. “It’s the mom factor. If something happens to one of my family members or friends, I want to feel the whole community is there for me.”

We exchanged tales of our own adventures in the backcountry and our love for flyfishing before we discovered that our kids went to the same school. She understood the guilt and the reason I left my kids when they were 5, 8, 13, and 16 for a month (at their insistence) to camp in Antarctica. She also understood our constant push and pull between the person we were before becoming a mom and wife and the person who now juggles all three.

Returning home after the vigil, I couldn’t sleep. I moved to Truckee eight years ago, so that in the winter my kids could train five days a week in snowboard cross, one of the most dangerous sports in the Olympics, and learn how to fly gliders in the summer and obtain a pilot’s license before a driver’s license. As I lay in bed scrolling Instagram, a post by @outdoorsymama articulated what I couldn’t: “They are my tribe. We know the risks. And yet we also know the risks of staying home. Our partners and husbands and friends understand. We’re not going to stay home. We’re going to live a life fulfilled, diving into nature and her wonders, as we’re meant to.” Annie Gallagher, the name behind the handle, mom to three teenagers, wrote messages like this on the blue hearts earlier that night, even though she had never met them either.

Our community understands that doing what you love comes with risks. Joy and grief are tightly entwined, woven into the fabric of our lifestyle. Even in showing up to grieve these moms, they connected me to two new friends who got me.