Avalanche killed Catherine “Kasha” Rigby of Utah while she was skiing near Brezovica, which is Kosovo’s only ski resort.
The 54-year-old skier, who was born in Vermont but now lives in Utah, was working on a project called Tour de Piste. She skied off-piste at ski resorts all over the world in it.
After Rigby went down one of those slopes in Kosovo, an avalanche swept him into some trees.
The slope was called the Eagle’s Nest. The Daily Mail says she died soon after the impact. Her fiancé, Magnus Wolfe Murray, was with her when it happened and tried to bring her back to life but failed. Euronews.albania was the first to report her death.
As one of the first people in the U.S. to do telemark skiing in the 1990s, Rigby first became known for her sport. Outside magazine called her “the best telemark skier in the known universe” because she changed it into a fast, aggressive style.
She soon took her skis from the Rockies and Alaska to other high mountains around the world. She was the first person to ski down Cho Oyu on telemark skis.
She also skied down 5,000- and 6,000-meter mountains in India, Kamchatka, the Andes, and the Himalaya. Rigby was in nine movies about skiing.
Hilaree Nelson, another lost legend, skied a lot with Kasha Rigby. Nelson tragically died in 2022 while skiing down from the top of Manaslu. Rigby, Nelson Margaret Wheeler, and Alison Gannett were the first people to ski down the Northwest Face of Hanuman Tibba (5,982m) in the Indian Himalaya in 2010. They did this by mastering a 2,500m couloir.