Guides leading a backcountry-skiing group near Lake Tahoe knew avalanche danger was high, had observed warning signs in the snow and expected a brief break in a raging blizzard to “shut quickly” before a slide killed nine people in February, according to a new report commissioned by the guiding company.

The 56-page report by Blackbird Mountain Guides of Truckee, California, based on the company’s own assessments and an analysis it commissioned, does not place blame for the tragedy that took the lives of six clients and three guides the morning of Feb. 17, in a wilderness area northeast of Boreal ski resort and I-80.

The report does not make clear why, as conditions worsened, the group left huts where they were staying, and why they didn’t turn back when a route chosen for its relative safety appeared impossible to follow.

Blackbird Mountain Guides did not respond Tuesday to questions from this news organization, including why the group left Frog Lake amid the storm and high avalanche danger, and why they did not return to the huts when they could not cross a creek to follow a route believed safer.

The analysis was conducted by avalanche expert Don Sharaf, who according to the report has been certified by the American Mountain Guide Association as a ski guide since 2004, and has been an American Avalanche Association member since 1992.

The nine deaths also remain under investigation by the Nevada County District Attorney’s Office, the Sheriff’s Office said last week.

Blackbird’s report partly answers a key question that arose after the incident: Why would the guides lead clients through avalanche-exposed terrain during heavy snowfall, ferocious winds and a rating by the Sierra Avalanche Center of “high” slide risk?

The report also suggests an answer to another major question: When it’s common practice in avalanche terrain for skiers to stay well spaced out from each other, why were 13 of the 15 members in the group hit by the same slide?

The large avalanche struck in the late morning as four guides and 11 clients were skiing out to return to civilization at the end of a three-day backcountry-skiing trip to Frog Lake Huts.

The day before, Monday afternoon, Blackbird senior guide and trip leader Andrew Alissandratos, who was killed in the avalanche, and company owner Zeb Blais — who was not on the trip — had a short phone call to talk about Tuesday’s plan, the report said.

“Of note, Alissandratos had exited the Frog Lake Huts before during High Avalanche Danger and felt confident of their planned exit route for the next day,” the report said. It didn’t indicate what exactly he said.

Alissandratos told Blais that clients had asked if they could make a short trip up a slope and ski down before departing on Tuesday, but the two “discussed that the focus should instead be on exiting before the storm intensified further, if conditions allowed.”

Two days before the slide, on Sunday, the National Weather Service had forecast heavy snowfall overnight through Monday evening, with more coming Tuesday afternoon and evening, “implying a comparative lull on Tuesday morning,” the report said.

“This ‘weather window’ looked favorable for the exit to the roadhead,” the report said.

The “major winter storm” hit early Monday morning, delivering heavy snow and “extreme” winds up to 38 miles per hour, the report said.

Slide risk was rated “considerable” Monday for “storm slabs” created by accumulated snow, and the guides and their clients went out skiing in two groups. One group in a wind-exposed area saw “shooting cracks” extend from their skis, a potential indicator of avalanche risk that showed “wind slabs were starting to form in areas exposed to the wind,” the report said. The guides, meeting in the afternoon, felt that snowpack instability was rising, the report said.

Then Alissandratos and Blais had their call where the senior guide told the owner he felt confident about the departure the next day.

Snow fell during the night, and at 5 a.m. Tuesday, the Sierra Avalanche Center had upgraded their avalanche advisory from a “watch” to a “warning,” with risk of slides “high” because of storm slabs. Just before the guides were to meet at 7 a.m., Blackbird senior guide Jason Smith, who was not on the trip, sent Alissandratos a link to a weather-radar forecast indicating “precipitation intensity (was) likely to increase soon,” the report said.

During the meeting, with Smith participating via cell phone, the guides decided to leave as soon as possible after breakfast and packing up. “The predicted Tuesday morning weather window was going to shut quickly,” the report said.

Two exit routes were ruled out, one because it would pass through private property where the owner “aggressively pursued trespassers in past years,” another because of avalanche exposure and a long uphill that raised concerns about “the group’s endurance and safety in deep snow and low visibility.”

For the route the guides chose, Smith advised his on-site colleagues to travel as far as possible from known avalanche paths descending from a mountain called Perry’s Peak, ideally crossing a creek to extend the distance from the hazard zone.

The group left at 9 a.m. One of the guides’ tracking apps suggests the group tried two to three times to get across the creek. But they were likely thwarted by “open water and vertical creek sidewalls,” the report said.

“Based on the group’s tracks from the preceding days, they would not have known about this impassable barrier before their exit on Tuesday morning,” the report said.

Between 11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., as the group was crossing through trees, the avalanche broke loose about 400 vertical feet above, the report said. Thirteen of the party were hit, with 12 completely buried, the report said.

“The most likely explanation for the lack of spacing between skiers was that the guides did not recognize that they were in an avalanche path,” partly because of dense trees, the report said.

Blackbird’s report added that “navigating by a digital map on a phone can be impossible in blizzard conditions.”

The Nevada County Coroner’s Office last week released autopsy reports concluding that the nine skiers who died had all asphyxiated from being buried five to six feet in snow.

The Sierra Avalanche Center said in a March report that the victims were likely hit by a “soft slab” avalanche, and were buried in a 20-foot by 20-foot area, in a small depression in the terrain.

Six close friends died: Carrie Atkin, 46, of Soda Springs; Danielle Keatley, 44, of Soda Springs and Larkspur; Kate Morse, 45, of Soda Springs and Tiburon; Caroline Sekar, 45, of Soda Springs and San Francisco; Katherine Vitt, 43, of Greenbrae; and Lizbeth Clabaugh, 52, of Boise, Idaho. The guides killed were Alissandratos, 34, of Verdi, Nevada; Nicole Choo, 42, of South Lake Tahoe; and Michael Henry, 30, of Tampa, Florida.

In the report, the company said trained mountain guides “commonly operate during periods of High avalanche danger and active storms by applying established risk-management practices, including terrain and route selection, continuous assessment of weather and snowpack conditions, and careful management of exposure.” The report described avalanche danger ratings as “regional forecasts intended to inform terrain selection and decision-making; they are not a prohibition on travel.”

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