The founder of the guiding company facing a criminal investigation after deadly Lake Tahoe avalanche is a highly accomplished skier and mountaineer with two summits of Mt. Everest under his belt.
Zeb Blais, who founded Truckee, Calif.-based Blackbird Mountain Guides in 2020, has been a mountain guide for more than two decades.
His company led a doomed tour group that saw eight of its members killed and one presumed dead in the avalanche Tuesday at Castle Peak, including a six “supermoms” and three guides.
The state and local police are probing Blackbird to determine any negligence after the group set out in dangerous conditions, even warning the day prior of a “BIG storm” in a social media clip that featured a guide sifting through a weak layer of snow potentially prone to avalanches.
Blais himself is no stranger to disaster.
He said he caught in an avalanche in Tajikistan after he and his team grew “impatient” crossing a glacier they knew had “unstable” snow, he explained in a 2021 podcast interview.
Blais said his group exhibited poor judgement and called it “one of the biggest learning experiences of my career” after snow buried the thrill-seeker and he needed to be rescued.
“I don’t care where you are, you just don’t want to get caught in a real avalanche. Yeah it was for me, it was a huge shift, and just like, yeah, this can happen to you,” he said.
Blais has reached some of the world’s tallest and most perilous peaks, including Everest, Cho Oyu and Lobuche in the Himalayas, according to his bio on Blackbird’s website. He’s summited other famed mountains, from Argentina’s Aconcagua and Alaska’s Denali to Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn in the Alps, as well as skiiing six of the seven continents.
Blais is also a licensed “avalanche blaster,” meaning he’s authorized to trigger explosives to clear unstable snow that could lead to avalanches, according to his LinkedIn page.
He also has other qualifications related to avalanche safety and teaches courses on the subject.
Blais founded Blackbird to “help his clients reach their lofty mountain goals in good style,” his bio states.
“Whether its shredding powder, jamming on granite or swinging tools on ice, Zeb loves moving people in the mountains and sharing his experience with his clients. His favorite thing about guiding is seeing his clients progress and helping his clients to achieve their goals.”
Blais called the Castle Peak avalanche an “enormous tragedy” and the “saddest event our team has ever experienced” in a statement on Wednesday, adding the company lost three “highly experienced” guides in the avalanche.
None of the guide have been identified.
The ski group reportedly took the most dangerous route to escape the mountain, choosing a “complex” 60-degree incline that was given the second highest rating on the avalanche risk scale.
There was a longer, flatter route the group could have taken that was graded as the second lowest threat of snow slides.
A statement from the families of the mothers killed in the avalanche said they “trusted their professional guides” on the excursion.
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