JACKSON -- Rob Hoff shook his head.

The Alpine snowmobiler was in the Salt River Range near Stewart Peak with two friends Saturday, and they saw other groups of snowmobilers going up and down a hillside. One hillside in the area had already slid, and Hoff drove up that debris path to a ridge.

"I saw somebody going up and down and up and down, and I'm just shaking my head going, 'My goodness, they didn't learn the first time,'" Hoff said. "I just saw a little bit of what I thought was a slide."

That slide, the second of the day in that area, killed Daniel James Boschae, 30, from Swan Valley, Idaho, and buried Greg Huntsman, 42, of Idaho Falls.

Hoff, out with two friends, all of whom had avalanche beacons, probes and shovels, drove his sled down the debris field just after 3 p.m. His two friends asked if he was OK, and he said yes. Then they told him someone was buried.

Hoff said the avalanche, estimated at 400 feet long, 300 feet across and with a 4-foot slab, was cut by someone "high marking," or gunning his machine up the hill to see how high he could go.

A Star Valley Search and Rescue preliminary report said the avalanche released at 9,500 feet and "ran full track."

Others at the slide's base right after the avalanche were "in a state of shock," Hoff said.

"They didn't even know what to do," Hoff said. "They didn't have beacons. I pulled out my probe and starting probing and found a snowmobile right away."

Hoff then gave his probe to another person and drove to Alpine to call for help.

According to Hoff, his friends asked where anyone was last seen, and the team started probing in those areas. Huntsman was found first after about 20 minutes. He was hypothermic and "barely vital," according to Hoff, who heard the story from his friends. Huntsman was buried under about six feet of snow.

People were able to warm Huntsman up, and he was ultimately able to snowmobile out on his own. Calls to the Huntsman home in Idaho were not returned Monday.

According to Hoff, no one told his two friends there was another man buried, so there "may have been five to 10 minutes where no digging was going on," and people were instead digging out snowmobiles, he said. Someone then said there was another man under the snow.

That man, Boschae, was uncovered under eight to 10 feet of snow after an estimated 60 minutes, and people attempted CPR. The Lincoln County coroner determined the death to be due to compression asphyxia, caused by heavy snow compressed from the avalanche.

"It was pretty surreal, I have to say," said Hoff, who returned to the area with search and rescue crews after dark. "I kneeled over the guy and said a prayer for him. I was pretty much in shock for a while. We were just happy to be there to save the one guy's life."

Dusty Skinner, head of Star Valley Search and Rescue, said the snowpack is unstable and is setting up "for a bad avalanche year." Heavy snow fell on cold layers, and now it is cold again, he said.

Avalanche danger in that area was rated as high Saturday, just one level below "extreme." A skier triggered an avalanche Thursday in the Salt River Range.

The Stewart Peak rescue was the second that occurred Saturday. Earlier, in the Smith Fork area near Lizard Lake, two people were buried by an avalanche, but were recovered by people in their group. Skinner said one man had a head and arm above the snow and another had a hand above the snow. But the slide path, caused by riding across a hillside, slid the men through trees.

"We're setting up for a busy year -- people need to be set up," Skinner said. That means people need to check avalanche conditions before they travel and pick different areas if travel is unsafe. People need avalanche beacons, probes and shovels. That equipment, too, needs to be "on your person" and not under a seat or the hood of a snowmobile, he said.

Mary Cernicek with the Bridger-Teton National Forest said snow conditions are "terrible as far as avalanches go."

"There's considerable danger throughout the forest," she said. "We can't say enough about the dangers of (high marking)."

In the Salt River range, seven people have died due to avalanches since 1962, according the Bridger-Teton National Forest Avalanche Center. The most recent was in February 2003, when snowmobiler Mark Loveland was killed in the Smiths Fork area.

As for Hoff, Saturday's incident is not pushing him to reconsider his backcountry use.

"I'm not going to change my outlook, but I definitely want to educate more people on the backcountry experience, to not take it lightly," he said. People can rent high-performance sleds and follow trails to dangerous places.

"We need to educate more people to be safe and take courses and bring beacons and probes and shovels."

RIP