Professional skier Dave Treadway has passed away after an accident in western Canada. Treadway was skiing in the Pemberton backcountry on Mon., April 15, according to Pemberton District Search and Rescue (PSAR) when he fell into a crevasse.

Nearby rescue crews received a call that a backcountry skier had fallen roughly 30 metres down a crevasse near Rhododendron Mountain and was unresponsive. David MacKenzie, head of PSAR, said the man was a “very experienced skier” who was travelling with a group.

MacKenzie said that the effort to recover the skier was “a very technical operation” that included members of Whistler Search and Rescue. In all, 14 members from both Pemberton and Whistler crews attended.

“I would say the depth of the crevasse was paramount to the operation,” he explained. “Having to put in various ice anchors and protection and getting our team down into the crevasse to access the subject was one thing, and then being able to actually rig it back up so that they could be pulled back up to the surface was another.”

A note on Treadway’s website read: “April 16, 2019: We’ve learned that Dave Treadway, an incredible skier and a monumental human, has passed away after an accident near Rhododendron Mountain, Pemberton. We are sending lots of love to his wife, Tessa, and their two sons, Kasper and Raffi.”

Fellow top skiers Kye Peterson and Cody Townsend posted images and words about Treadway shortly after word got out, see below. In an interview with SBC Skier, Treadway answered in one word what to describe what skiing feels like with “Freedom.”

Life is so grand. Sometimes it takes the big hits to realize the small things dont matter; like without the ground what point is the latter?, It could be any of us, at any time…believe me, i’ve thought about how it could be mine on any given line; different scenarios play out in my head like an over scripted movie, waking me at night, sending me to the porch to smoke a doobie, I only know that to stay alive i must be alert, not only for me but for all the others it may hurt, I wait for the day to come, like this pit in my stomach is a regular occurrence, It’s pretty fuked up but we can’t live behind curtains, More so we have to read the sword, and the battle, and attack with respect cuz you never know when it could be your neck, Ya, we play the game with calculated strategy, but the numbers…the numbers game it had to be…uncontrolled objective hazard is still half the capacity of catastrophe, And even after all the thought of how it could happen to me, theres a million ways the mountains can kill how none of us thought it would happen to be, We live by the sword, we die by the sword, like a death note we already wrote, its our destiny and somehow our only way to live happily, Like any addictive substance, its easily over fed, but for this its an internal mtn rat craving addrenaline, and the more his appetite for flight gets fed, the hungrier he gets, leading to more risk growing rapidly, It’s a double edged sword, and we live on the front point if its edges, Without it we’re already dead, with it we’re fed…and that’s the only way to justify it, Not everyone will understand and noone will know when life powers give us the upper hand but if we are together as one, then the only thing that take away that love and fun is the gun…the gun, the sword, the grenade…Whatever u wanna called it, it’s life how the most high has it made, And as much as we hate that sword we live by, we wouldn’t even wanna live if it wasnt there in the first place, Without good there’s no bad and without bad there is no good…only in this perspective we can see positivity in everything life throws at us, So technically everything is a blessing…whether it’s…[cont]⬇

A post shared by Kye Petersen (@kyepetersen) on

❤️❤️❤️

A post shared by Cody Townsend (@codytownsend) on

The below video features Treadway with good friends Joe Lax, Dave Basterchia and Reuben Krabbe skiing in 2018. The description reads, “Nowadays, if Dave Treadway is in the mountains, he’s normally with his family. But last Spring, the professional skier put his dad duties on hold and snuck away for two selfish days of skiing with the boys.”

“As skiers, we’re selfish, and chase after ‘our’ powder day or ski line,” said Treadway. “It wasn’t until April 21 and 22 that I ditched my family, ‘got selfish’ and had some fun with the boys camping out in the mountains. Safe to say that only two days was ample for my Adrenalin fix for the year.” Donate to a fundraiser for the family here.

Treadway and Friends Skiing

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