STOWE, Vt. (AP) – One moment Alec Stall was there. The next moment he was not.

“I saw this huge rush of snow coming down in a cloud,” said Chris James. “The cloud lasted three or four seconds, and he was gone. It happened in the blink of an eye.”

Stall died last Monday when a small avalanche carried him off a cliff while he, James and two others were working on a film on extreme skiing.

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

Stall, 23, had been featured in three of Meathead’s four films. They captured his smooth, flowing descents perfected during a lifetime of Vermont skiing. Although his family lived in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., they had a vacation home in Quechee. By 10, Stall was skiing on the freestyle mogul team at Killington.

“The draw is 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.”

On Monday, Stall was eager to show James and Geoff McDonald a set of remote chutes off the northeastern ridge of Mount Mansfield, far from the Stowe ski area.

Stall’s roommate in Stowe, Kristian Geissler, was the fourth man in the party.

The four rode the gondola to the top of Stowe Mountain Resort about 9:30 and began the 2-hour slog across the ridge.

In the afternoon, the four friends dropped off the ridge and out of the wind.

They found the top of the first chute, a narrow strip of snow between the cliffs that plunge into the notch.

Chutes – snow-filled gullies – are favorite terrain of extreme skiers, with their steep pitches and tree-free descents. Some chutes are so steep that a skier who turns sharply can knock his shoulder or hip against the slope behind him.

They tested the snow in the gully, jumping up and down on the slope, then cutting across it on their skis to see if the snow would slide. The snow was fine. Geissler and Stall skied down; McDonald and James recorded their descent.

The plan was this: James would climb down one side of the chute to shoot stills. Higher up the chute, McDonald would shoot video. Stall would ski down the unbroken snow at the center of the chute. Geissler would follow.

“Ski slow,” McDonald urged. “It makes better film.”

Stall turned to James and gave him a pat. Get down there and get ready, he said, I’m going to make some great turns.

“He came down slow, making beautiful turns – some of the best he’s ever made,” McDonald said.

Close to the bottom, something went wrong. Stall may have caught a ski tip in a crust of snow.

He fell, perhaps 30 feet from the cliff edge.

Above him, a slab of snow loosened. It exploded down the chute, a river of snow swelling as it came.

The snow river swept Stall over the edge of the cliff and dropped him down the mountain, out of sight.

His stunned friends called to him as they scrambled to find another way off the cliffs. The bottom of the notch was not far below, and they reached the road, Vermont 108, before they found Stall. James headed toward Stowe Mountain Resort to find help.

His friends headed back up the mountain, first climbing in the wrong place, returning to the road, then climbing a different route.

As the afternoon light began to fail, they found Stall where the mountain had thrown him. He was dead of injuries suffered in the fall.

“You have got to have a lot of respect for the mountain. Sometimes they get the best of you,” McDonald said Tuesday, as he helped Stall’s family pack up his belongings.

Services for Stall will be held Thursday in Poughkeepsie.

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Information from: The Burlington Free Press, http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com