Friends and family describe victim of fatal avalanche as “a wonderful human being”

Friends and family are remembering Minetta Norrie as an adventurous woman who loved life. Norrie was killed Friday in an avalanche west of Calgary.

She loved life and lived it to the fullest — that’s how friends and family are remembering an Alberta woman who was killed in an avalanche in Kananaskis country west of Calgary on Friday.

Thirty-four-year-old Minetta Norrie, one of two people killed in separate avalanches on Friday, was back-country skiing with three friends, off Highway 742, near Mount Black Prince, when she was she was swept away by the slide.

RCMP say despite the “diligent best efforts of the other three skiers to provide medical attention,” Norrie was declared dead by first responders.

Emily King-Moore, who was Norrie’s friend since they were about 10-years-old, described her as “unforgettable. She was loud and boisterous, confident and full of life.”

“I was her sidekick when we were children,” King-Moore added. “We went to Guatemala to study Spanish when we were teenagers. We were both junior forest rangers during high school as a summer job. We did a ton of hiking.  We’ve gone to Cuba together.  We most recently went to India for a month together and toured across kind of the north of India.”

“Knowing her means you are presented incredible opportunities. I would say Minetta lived more in 34 years than most people live in several lifetimes,” King-Moore said.

Norrie was an elementary school teacher for kids with learning disabilities in Calgary.

“She, herself, overcame learning disabilities in school,” King-Moore said.  “She lived to inspire those kids to love learning.  When she wasn’t doing that, she was out in the mountains or floating down a river — somewhere in nature and going out into the mountains.”