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Man dies while making extreme skiing film

STOWE, Vermont (AP) -- A lifelong skier was killed when an avalanche carried him off a mountain while he and three friends were making a film about extreme skiing.

Alec Stall, 23, was being filmed doing sweeping turns down a steep chute just before the accident Monday on Mount Mansfield.

His friends believe Stall may have caught a ski tip in a crust of snow and fell 30 feet from a cliff edge. Above him, a slab of snow broke loose and created a river of snow that swept Stall off the mountain.

"I saw this huge rush of snow coming down in a cloud," said colleague Chris James. "The cloud lasted 3 or 4 seconds, and he was gone."

Stall was later found dead of injuries suffered in the fall. No one else was hurt.

The four men worked for Burlington-based Meathead Films, a company they started while attending the University of Vermont.

"The draw is (that) I like to get scared," Stall once told an interviewer. "It's about taking the sport to a new level -- about skiing where people wouldn't have thought possible 10 years ago."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/16/extreme.skier.death.ap/index.html