An alarming number of skiers, snowboarders, and snowmobile riders, and mountaineers have been killed over Christmas and the New Year holidays amidst record falls of snow.

Most of the deaths have occurred in North America.

In the latest fatality an 11-year-old British schoolboy was killed when he hit a tree while skiing down a "blue run" at the Breckenridge Ski Resort in the U.S. state of Colorado on Thursday, January 3 2008. He has been named as Ben Trichler, from Uffington in Oxfordshire.

He had been on vacation with his parents and two older sisters. The accident occurred at 9:30am Thursday. The boy was given life support by the Ski Patrol at the scene and was rushed to the Breckenridge Medical Centre where he was pronounced dead.

On New Year's Day a 29-year-old Whistler resident, Curtis Green, was killed while skiing when an avalanche hit he and a 21-year-old snowboarder, sweeping the two of them off a 75-metre cliff on Whistler Mountain, in British Columbia, Canada.

The RCMP was alerted at 11:20am which triggered a major search of the area where the men, both staff members of Whistler-Blackcomb, went missing.

The Whistler Ski Patrol located the men within 30 minutes.

The area where they ventured, known as Hanging Roll, is a restricted area, and has been closed for more than 20 years.

It was the second fatality on Whistler-Blackcomb, one of the largest and most popular ski resorts in North America, in two weeks.

On December 18th a 33-year-old member of the mountains' ski patrol was killed when he hit a tree on Blackcomb Mountain.

In the U.S. State of Utah in the third avalanche in 9 days to claim lives, an Altamont snowmobiler was killed when he was swept away by a slide in the Co-op Creek area of the Wasatch County backcountry on the afternoon of New Year's Eve.

Dale W. Christensen, 41, was buried for at least forty minutes after an avalanche 500 feet wide crashed down to the trail from the slopes about 400 yards above, Wasatch County sheriff's Lt. Jeff Winterton told the Salt Lake Tribune. 'It's one of the biggest avalanches we've seen in a long time,' he said.

On Friday a 29-year-old Jamaican woman, Alicia White, was found unconscious at the top of Vail Mountain in Colorado. She was pronounced dead on Sunday night at the Vail Valley Medical Center.

A huge snow storm has resulted in the most snowfall in Colorado in more than a hundred years. Denver received 7.8 inches of snow on Christmas Day.

A skier from Oklahoma was also killed Friday, at Wolf Creek Ski Area. Fifteen-year-old Mitchell Maltsberger of Oologah, Okla., was due to be groomsman at his sister's wedding this week. He died of head and neck injuries after colliding with a tree. He was wearing a helmet.

A 28 year old snowboarder was killed Thursday at Hood River Meadows in the U.S. State of Oregon. After taking a small jump at the end of a run he landed head-first into waist-deep powder. It took members of the Ski Patrol and the snowboarder's friends fifteen minutes to dig him out. By the time they did he was dead. On Friday the snowboarder was named as Eric McConeghy.

Two snowmobile riders were killed on Christmas Eve when their party of four, all in their 20s, were snowmobiling on a remote mountain in the Spanish Mountain area in British Columbia, Canada. They were hit by a small avalanche and then a much larger one. The first avalanche completely buried three of the riders, and the other one partially. As they were digging themselves out the larger avalanche hit. Two of the young men managed to claw themselves out and they alerted the Ski Patrol. An extensive search recovered one of the men but he had died. The body of the second man was found on Christmas Day, under three feet of snow.

Also Christmas Eve two snowmobilers died after they collided on a snow-covered street in the Kootenays town of Yahk in British Columbia, Canada, near the U.S. border. They were Joseph Armond Broillard, 37, of Cranbrook, and Wesley Danylak, 50, of Yahk.

Just prior to Christmas, on Saturday December 22, an Illinois woman was critically injured in a tubing accident at Snow Trails Ski Resort. Amanda Applegate, also 28, of Elk Grove Village, Ill.,died from her injuries late on Thursday night.

Also on Saturday December 22 the opening day of North America's newest ski resort at Revelstoke, in British Columbia, Canada, was marred by a 24-year old Edmonton man going missing. An extensive search of the mountain, including an RMCP helicopter thermal imaging search, discovered his body three days later, on Christmas Day, in a tree well. He was Tal Hofstra, who worked as an instructor. 'He loved to ski. He lived to ski, he was just a great kid,' the victim's father, Tom Hofstra, told CTV. 'You couldn't ask for a better son. He was full of life.'

The Salt Lake City Tribune reported a skier was killed by an avalanche in a steep chute at The Canyons Ski Resort in Summit County, Utah on Sunday, December 23.

The newspaper identified the victim as 30-year-old Jesse Williams of Grand Junction. Williams was an experienced skier and a member of the ski patrol in the Grand Junction area.

Meantime on Christmas Day 13-year-old Clare Dougherty wanted to take just a few more runs down the ski slope at Schuss Mountain resort near Traverse City, in the U.S. State of Michigan. The girl lost control at the bottom of the slope and struck a retaining wall about 12:30 p.m., authorities said. Her father, David Dougherty, accompanied Clare to Kalkaska Memorial Hospital, where she was pronounced dead of head trauma.

Separately, 53-year-old Dave Balls, owner of Valley Ready Mix in Salt Lake County, Utah, was killed by an avalanche while snowmobiling with his four sons on Christmas Day. A 400-foot-wide slide broke in the Thousand Peaks area of Summit County, about 35 miles east of Salt Lake City.

Meantime in Washington state at Mt Rainier National Park, on Tuesday December 18, two friends, who had known each other since childhood, were planning to reach Camp Muir at 10,188 feet. They decided to abandon their quest. One of them however, Kirk Reiser, a 22-year-old Edmonds Community College math student, was swept away in a slide as his friend stood by helpless.

In the last week, as much as five feet of snow has fallen in Northwest mountains, on top of an unstable layer created by torrential rainstorms earlier this month.

'If you were making up a textbook of what kind of conditions would make nasty avalanches, then this is a good one,' Kenny Kramer, avalanche meteorologist for the Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Mountain snowstorms are believed to have killed at least five people in the backcountry this season; rescuers were unable to find three snowboarders who disappeared near Crystal Mountain earlier this month.

Adding to the wave of deaths across North American, particularly Canadian, ski resorts, was the death of a man at the Blue Mountain Ski Resort in Ontario, near Toronto, on Christmas Eve. The man, a tourist from China, drowned in the Blue Mountain Inn swimming pool.

Also on December 10 Fort Collins man Lukas Oldenburg, 31, died from injuries he received when buried for 10 minutes by an avalanche in Hotdog Bowl near Zimmerman Lake, 100 kilometres (66 miles) from Fort Collins in Colorado on December 2, while snowboarding in backcountry.

Additionally, two people were killed by an avalanche on December 8 at Tent Ridge, in Kananaskis Country, in Alberta, Canada, while backcountry skiing, while on December 2 two hikers died in an avalanche near Source Lake, in Snoqualmie Pass, Washington state.