Teen dies on Hatcher Pass; brother finds him in storm

HATCHER PASS — Alaska State Troopers say a snowboarder died on the slopes Wednesday.

According to a trooper press statement, Matthew Theodore, 25, was snowboarding with his brother, Royce Morgan, 18, when they were separated.

Theodore tried to find his brother and failed. So shortly after 6 p.m., he went to the Hatcher Pass Lodge where he called troopers.

“We said, ‘Don’t go out and look for your brother, we’ll do it,’” said trooper Spokeswoman Megan Peters. But Theodore didn’t listen.

“He went out and looked for his brother and actually found his brother,” Peters said.

Shortly before 9 p.m. Theodore came back to the lodge and said he’d found his brother but his brother couldn’t walk.

Troopers went to the area Theodore described and found the teen, unresponsive, not breathing and without a pulse.

They started CPR while waiting for medics who arrived and, shortly before 10 p.m., pronounced Morgan dead

Asked if she could narrow down a cause of death or even speak to the circumstances that may have caused it, Peters said she could not.

“We are investigating the circumstances and the context of everything,” she said. “I’m not saying that it’s suspicious, I’m just saying that we’re looking into it to see why he died.”

Doris Hendrickson whose husband maintains some of the trails in the area said she was at the lodge that night and watched what went on.

“It was a bad night. You couldn’t see anything because it was snowing very hard and the wind was blowing very hard,” Hendrickson said. “There was no visibility and it was just tragic that the young man was out in that kind of weather.”

Still, she said, she felt that Theodore did everything he could to help his brother.

“I think the circumstances were insurmountable for normal everyday human beings,” she said.

Peters urged anyone who goes into the backcountry to be well-prepared.

“Make sure you go out in an area that you are familiar with or that someone in your group is familiar with,” Peters said.

She also said people should try to go out in as large of a group as possible so if one gets hurt, someone can stay with the person while a third goes for help.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.