Biography

He died while on a snowboard trip at the Snowbird Resort in the Wasatch Range of Utah when an avalanche carried him about 800 feet over rocky terrain and a small cliff. He came to a stop partly buried and died of trauma.

He lived in Big Sky Montana. He grew up in Minnetonka, Minnesota with seven siblings. He began skiing at Buck Hill in Burnsville in the early 1980s. He moved to Utah in the early 1990s while developing his skiing skills.

In 2006, he skied off a 255 foot cliff in the back country of Gran Targhee, Wyoming, plummeting nearly headfirst and without a helmet for more than four seconds. He struck a deep powder at the cliff's base that his friends had to dig him out.

He was a professional big mountain skier and his monumental leap in the Teton Mountains was considered to have set a world height record for a cliff jump on skis. He only had a bloody lip.

In 2003, he was the first to leap off a 165 foot cliff at Wolverine Cirque near Alva, Utha. In 2004, he landed on his back in a shallow snow amid rocks after skiing off a 185 foot cliff in Switzerland. In 2005, he launched himself more than 40 feet into the air off an 8 foot tall snow ramp over an Oregon highway traveling about 110 feet.