Powder Rush Lures Snowboarders Into Dangerous Terrain : Sports: Adventurers drawn by fresh snow often ignore safety precautions, officials say. An enthusiast’s disappearance in Mt. Baldy avalanche illustrates the risks.

Once dismissed as rule-breaking renegades, snowboarders have increasingly taken their place in the fashionable world of mainstream winter sports. But as the disappearance of one longtime enthusiast in a Tuesday avalanche on Mt. Baldy shows, some snow sliders, be they snowboarders or skiers, remain intent on plunging into pristine but dangerous terrain.

“You have to understand, for snowboarders and skiers, the powder rush is what they want,” said Dana White, executive editor of Skiing magazine. “And sometimes they make a mistake.”

The search for Mike Pilotti, 24, of Costa Mesa was postponed because of bad weather Wednesday. He was trapped Tuesday by a plunging wall of snow in an area declared out-of-bounds on the east side of Mt. Baldy, authorities said. Larry Beard, 32, of Laguna Hills, who was snowboarding in Big Butch Canyon with Pilotti, was able to dig out of the drifts and hike two hours to safety. Both men were experienced snowboarders, and Pilotti designed snowboards for Beard’s company.

Despite the poor weather and the fear of additional avalanches, more than 100 skiers and snowboarders lined up at Mt. Baldy’s lifts Wednesday morning. They were asked to sign pledges that they would not traverse the No. 1 slope, which appeared particularly prone to further danger.

But snow enthusiasts and safety officials alike conceded that signatures sometimes recede into memory when reckless skiers or snowboarders, perched on mountaintops and faced with a split-second choice, face the lure of the glistening virgin powder.

“It depends how I’m feeling at the time,” said four-year snowboarder Curtis Cook, 25, of Huntington Beach, who was in line at Mt. Baldy. “If I feel safe, I go.”

“You don’t go after it snows--you have to wait a couple of days,” said Cook’s buddy, Tony Rush, 24, of Santa Monica. “(But) we take our own judgment, and we’ve all been hurt doing it.”

George Duffy, a U.S. Forest Service snow ranger and avalanche expert at Mt. Baldy, said some snow enthusiasts regularly ignore safety precautions.

“If we have heavy snow, some people wantonly ignore the closures,” Duffy said. “A handful of people seem to have a penchant for adventure.”

But experts said that risk-taking is common among more traditional skiers and youthful rebels who view the slopes as frozen surf.

“In this situation, it could have been a skier or a snowboarder,” said Mindy Clark, assistant to the snowboard director at Snow Summit in Big Bear Lake. “The snow is so good and anyone with a skier or snowboarder mentality wants to make fresh tracks.”

“I have more problems with skiers going off the trails,” said Rich McGarry, vice president of mountain services at nearby Bear Mountain.

Not long ago, most Southern California ski areas looked askance at snowboarders, whose youth and penchant for long hair and baggy clothes resulted in generational conflict with the more strait-laced and well-to-do ski crowd. However, since its fledgling days in the mid-1980s, the sport has surged in popularity, with snowboarders now making up as many as 30% of the annual lift users at the two biggest Big Bear Lake ski areas.

The main lingering friction between snowboarders and skiers is “skiers’ etiquette,” McGarry said. “We’ve become very proactive in educating (snowboarders) to the skier’s responsibility code and common-sense things (such as getting out of the way after falling).”

With specially designed runs, including Bear Mountain’s Outlaw Snowboard Park, featuring obstacles and skateboard-style walls of snow known as half-pipes, snowboarders have no need to venture into restricted areas.

But that doesn’t mean that everyone will follow the rules.

Often, inexperienced youngsters veer off patrolled slopes, saying, “Look at that fresh powder!” said Jamie Meiselman, managing editor of Transworld Snowboarding magazine in Oceanside.

“They take a chance and they lose,” Meiselman said. “You have to heed the warnings.”

At the same time, some expert snowboarders and skiers will also take chances by heading deep into the backcountry.

Meiselman’s magazine even devotes a column to the risky recreational pursuit.

“The type of people who do it are usually experienced. They know the techniques for avalanche safety--digging pits to check the snowpack. And it’s pretty much a rule in the backcountry that you bring an avalanche transceiver (an electronic locating device), a shovel and a backpack.”

“But they should know they’re taking their lives in their hands,” Meiselman said. “No one is there to save them. People generally know what they’re getting into. It’s a shame when it happens.”