'Hard to imagine the world without her': Family, friends mourn skier killed in Kananaskis avalanche

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 17, 2025 11:28 AM EDT | Last Updated: 12 minutes ago

Family and friends are mourning Minetta Norrie, an simple schoolhouse teacher and adventurous backcountry skier, who died in an avalanche successful Kananaskis on Friday.

Norrie, 34, was skiing successful an country disconnected of Highway 742 adjacent Mount Black Prince erstwhile the avalanche was triggered.

RCMP said their probe recovered 4 radical were skiing erstwhile the avalanche deed and carried her away and buried her successful snow. The different 3 skiers attempted to supply aesculapian attraction and sent an SOS beacon, but archetypal responders aboriginal declared Minetta dead.

Eric Norrie, Minetta's brother, says his sister was outgoing, had abundant vigor and an unmatched zest for life.

"We travel from energetic parents and my sister, I think, exemplifies that conscionable brilliantly. She walks successful the country and is conscionable wholly engaged with whoever is there," Eric said.

"She considers a play without an adventure to beryllium a spot of a waste."

Backcountry skiing and different outdoor pursuits were a passionateness for Minetta. Eric said she has skied since she was 4 years old.

Shane Hauser, Minetta's boyfriend, said she was afloat of empathy and bravery, and was truthful overmuch amusive to beryllium around.

"She became a instauration successful my life," Hauser said.

"She was the existent woody ... We went caving, cliff jumping, upland biking, ungraded biking, skiing, nice relaxing days astatine the swimming pool. We did everything."

He added Minetta had a magnetic property and that radical ever wanted to beryllium astir her.

Emily King-Moore, who counts Norrie arsenic 1 of her dearest friends since they were 10 years old, said Norrie's beingness was centred astir outdoor sports, and that she had each the close instrumentality and training to beryllium retired skiing successful the area. 

King-Moore added that contempt each her grooming and precautions, sadly, sometimes Mother Nature is excessively almighty to hole for.

"Minetta lived much successful her 34 years than astir radical unrecorded successful respective lifetimes," King-Moore said.

"It's truly hard to ideate the satellite without her."

Mountain information officials successful Kananaskis Country and different nationalist parks westbound of Calgary put retired warnings earlier this week astir elevated avalanche risks owed to caller dense snowfall. Kananaskis Mountain Rescue said caller snowfall sitting connected apical of immoderate weaker snowpack layers accrued the hazard of sliding. A anemic furniture fracturing tin effect successful an avalanche.

Minetta was an altruistic idiosyncratic who loved children and ever made everyone astir her consciousness similar they belonged, her member said. She and her family sponsored a household of refugees from Sudan, who have a young child, to travel unrecorded successful Calgary.

"We were capable to location them in the basement suite of the location wherever my sister lived," Eric said. "And every day my sister fundamentally fell successful emotion with this four-year-old."

King-Moore said she got a telephone from Eric connected Saturday to pass her astir Minetta's death, and was near successful daze that idiosyncratic she considered an unstoppable unit successful beingness was gone.

"Minetta was 1 of the astir energetic and vivacious radical I person ever known," King-Moore said. "She was truthful alive."

King-Moore praised however profoundly her person cared for radical successful her community, and for the kids she worked with arsenic a kindergarten and carnal acquisition teacher. 

She added that Minetta was a compassionate teacher, loved by her students, that she worked particularly hard to assistance kids who were struggling with literacy oregon owed to antithetic learning abilities, and that she had a penchant for pulling kids up to the level of their peers.

A Calgary Board of Education spokesperson said connected Sunday that the schoolhouse board's Critical Incident Response Team volition connection counselling and affectional enactment astatine her school, portion besides referring colleagues and students to resources similar the Calgary Distress Centre and Kids Help Phone, arsenic needed.

Hauser said 1 of Minetta's defining characteristics was her emotion of children. He said she was calved to beryllium a teacher.

"We spoke connected the telephone each day. Nearly the archetypal happening each clip was talking astir her kids astatine school. And she cared astir them truthful much."