Tahoe plane crash

To understand now that he was on an RNAV approach to Runway 20 (4,654 feet) and then went VFR to a circling for Runway 11 (7,001 feet) for length, makes his approach even more dangerous, especially at that elevation and over that terrain.

Spot on! His ref + 10 maneuvering speed, fully configured, (absolute min. for a corporate jet) would be around 130 to 140 Knts. and to contain the impact area in that small a space says the vertical velocity greatly exceeded the horizontal, trees or no trees. Not your average GA fail.

That wasn’t a 360, it was a holding pattern while waiting for an approach clearance. The rest is probably accurate, given the high density altitude groundspeed was higher than normal which probably led to an overshoot on final and the dreaded stall/spin while trying to tighten the turn. But if you look at the track the impact is on base as they were starting the turn to final, they never even made it onto final. Most traditional base to final accidents occur after the aircraft crosses the extended centerline and is attempting to correct back. So it’s possible they mismanaged airspeed and stalled early in the turn, or became disoriented with the poor visibility. And you can never rule out mechanical failure or some other factor(s) until the investigators do their thing.

Highly unlikely for 2 reasons: the extraordinarily dry air in the western US, and the air temperature on the ground was around 90 degrees. Even if they had somehow picked up any ice on descent it would’ve quickly melted as they descended into warm air. The freezing level in that area is currently over 14,000msl, so around 10,000agl.