An avalanche survivor said she would be back on the slopes at a California ski resort near Lake Tahoe on Thursday, a day after an avalanche roared down a steep section of the mountain, killing a 66-year-old skier in the first U.S. avalanche death of the winter.

Palisades Tahoe reopened, but its iconic KT-22 lift, which serves the area where the snowslide hit, remained closed while crews worked to clear a road to enable snowcats and snowmobiles to enter the section of mostly expert runs.

Other lifts opened on a delayed schedule on what would be a “rigorous snow safety day,” the resort said in a statement. Lift openings at adjoining Alpine Meadows also were expected to open later to allow staff to assess all terrain.

A storm had blanketed the area Wednesday when the avalanche hit around 9:30 a.m., sweeping up four people and killing one. The debris field spanned about 150 feet (46 meters) wide, 450 feet (137 meters) long and 10 feet (3 meters) deep, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office said.

Janet He said she and her husband had just gotten off KT-22 when she felt the ground slip away under her skis. “The snow is already moving my feet, took me away and swept me off the mountain,” she told CBS 13.

After tumbling about 200 feet (60 meters) down the slope, she ended up buried under snow, unable to breathe. She asked herself, “Am I going to die here?”

Meanwhile her husband, Joseph Lu, was above, frantically using a ski pole to punch in the snow to find his wife. He said a stranger managed to locate her and pull her to safety.

“He says, ‘No worries, I got you,’” Janet recalled. “I think that’s the best thing I ever heard in my life.” She walked away uninjured. And the couple said they planned to be back on the slopes Thursday.

Palisades, the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, is on the western side of Lake Tahoe, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) from Reno, Nevada.

The sheriff’s office identified the person killed as Kenneth Kidd, 66, a resident of nearby Truckee and Point Reyes. One person suffered a lower leg injury and two others were treated for unspecified injuries and released, officials said.

The death was the first U.S. avalanche fatality of the season, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

The Sierra Avalanche Center’s forecast for the central Sierra backcountry predicted continuing dangerous avalanche conditions Thursday.

“New snow and high winds have loaded existing weak layers in our snowpack,” the forecast said.

Another skier caught in Wednesday’s avalanche estimated that he was buried under about a foot of snow and debris for about eight minutes. Jason Parker said he was enjoying the fresh powder when he was hit by a wave of snow, “going headfirst, trying to swim to the top.”

He said he thought to himself, “Is this really happening?”

After coming to a halt, Parker screamed for several minutes before telling himself to calm down and save oxygen. “It was so weird,” he told KCRA 3, adding that he began to think, “This is the way you’re going out.”

Just as he began to lose consciousness, searchers broke through and created an airway for him as they dug him out.

“It was locals,” he said. “People that know the area well, and that saved me. I can’t thank them enough.”

The KT-22 lift opened for the first time this season just 30 minutes before the avalanche. The resort’s website said it received 1-3 inches (2.5-7.6 centimeters) of snow on Tuesday, and Wednesday was to begin with snow showers followed by heavy snow with strong gusts. The resort said 14 inches (35.5 centimeters) fell Wednesday.

On Monday, the website had noted its plans to open KT-22 and another lift on Wednesday: “A lot of work goes into prepping these two lifts, even with the help of more than two feet (62 centimeters) of recent snowfall up top,” the post said. It characterized the existing snow as light in density.

Michael Gross, vice president of mountain operations, said before deeming an area safe to open, the team evaluates the conditions relying on their expertise and historical data.

“You know, we’ve got decades worth of weather data that we’re always resourcing or referencing, so looking at current forecasts, looking at all different models, looking at wind speed, snow density, wind direction,” Gross told reporters Wednesday. “There’s a variety of things that go into play and the people that are doing the work are truly experts in their field. Most of them have been working at it 10 to 20 years, some of them upwards of 50 years, just doing forecasting.”

An average of about 24 people have died annually in avalanches in the U.S. over the past decade, ranging from a low of 11 in 2014-15 to a high of 37 in 2021-22, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

A 2020 avalanche at Alpine Meadows killed one skier and seriously injured another a day after a major storm. Another avalanche at the resort in March 1982 killed seven people, including several employees.

Most avalanches happen during or soon after a big snowstorm, a period of strong winds or during a rapid increase in temperature, according to forecasters. They are possible any time snow is on a slope steeper than about 30 degrees and can be triggered by humans moving across the area, or more frequently by natural occurrences involving the weight of overhanging snow and or wind events.

Avalanche mitigation is common practice at ski resorts. Skiers and snowboarders are used to delayed openings following storms, as loud booms echo from explosives used to create man-made snowslides and make the areas safe.

Most skiers or snowboarders are caught up in avalanches in the backcountry outside of actual ski resorts, where staff closely monitor conditions within their boundaries.

In fact, the Sierra Avalanche Center’s daily forecasts address only avalanche conditions for backcountry areas where no mitigation is conducted.

“Any avalanches that occur within ski area boundaries are outside of the scope of our work. For this reason, we have no comments on avalanches that occur within ski area boundaries,” Brandon Schwartz, the Sierra Avalanche Centers’ lead avalanche forecaster on the Tahoe National Forest, said in an email to The Associated Press.

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Associated Press writer John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed to this report.