A rock fall and avalanche at 11,000 feet in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, killed one climber and injured two more.
According to a park press release, a Colorado National Guard helicopter used a hoist to rescue a woman who sustained minor injuries and a male who had more critical injuries during a break in the wintry weather.
The park’s search and rescue team was seeking for another guy who was with the other two climbers in the Dreamweaver Couloir on Mount Meeker at the time of the avalanche on Sunday morning, according to the statement.
Search crews found his body in avalanche debris around 5:15 p.m. Sunday, park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson said. Responders used a RECCO device to find the deceased victim, which is based on a harmonic radar system and composed by a detector and a passive reflector integrated into outdoor clothing and gears.
The rescue was initially delayed due to severe weather conditions.
The identity of the victims was not immediately released. DailyMail.com has reached out to the national park for more details.
The avalanche was witnessed by other climbers in the area.
The injured climber was flown from the mountain range to Northern Colorado Med Evac air ambulance.
He was then taken to the Medical Center of the Rockies by helicopter, according to KKTV.
The Colorado Search and Rescue Association, Flight for Life, Rocky Mountain Rescue Group, Front Range Rescue Dogs and the Colorado National Guard and Med Evac all assisted with the rescues.
A temporary flight restriction was put in place to allow rescue crews to search the area during their air operations, Sky-Hi News reported.
Meteorologists in the area had been forecasting snow falling in the mountains over Memorial Day weekend.
Trail Ridge Road, a 48-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 34 that goes through Rocky Mountain National Park, was closed down to harsh road and weather conditions in the park’s highest points.
‘We’ve seen a lot of fresh snow in May this year, and that means we’re kind of moving back and forth between spring and winter avalanche conditions,’ Ethan Greene, the Director of Colorado Avalanche Information Center, told CBS Denver.
‘The most dangerous conditions are probably going to be upper elevation where we still have some old, hard snow, and then, we’re getting this new snow on top of it. We have seen some accidents with cornice fall over the last few weeks, [and] those are overhanging snow formations in really wind-exposed high elevation areas,’ he added.
Mount Meeker is the second-highest mountain within the national park, at 13,916 feet. The tallest elevation in the area goes to Longs Peak at 14, 259 feet.
Dreamweaver, the couloir where two injured climbers were found, is considered a Grade III climb, which translate as a moderate-to-hard route to ascend. The climb starts at about 500 feet below Flying Buttress – a Grade II rock route.
The Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC) reported the deceased climber as the seventh casualty of an avalanche this year in the state. In the US, there have been 17 fatalities so far this year.
On average, about 150 people are killed in avalanche accident in North America and Europe, every year, according to Science Direct.