Following the Olympics, the 1964 racing season concluded March 22 at the U.S. Alpine Championships in Winter Park, Colorado, and Werner retired from competition at age 28 and started a new career. Three weeks later he was in Switzerland with more than a dozen others to film the ski fashion movie "Ski-Fascination" for Willy Bogner. Werner and German racer (and Olympic medalist) Barbi Henneberger, age 23, were caught in an avalanche on the Trais Fleur slope, near St. Moritz. Both skied out of the first avalanche, but were caught up in another; their bodies were found hours later, deaths attributed to suffocation.