Rocky Mountain National Park searchers recover body of avalanche victim during weather window

Update: The Boulder County coroner identified the victim as Christopher Clark of Land O’ Lakes, Fla.

Despite inclement weather forecast for Rocky Mountain National Park on Tuesday, park search and rescue team members were able to use a helicopter early in the day to recover the body of a man who died in an avalanche Sunday.

The man’s body was flown to a landing zone in the Upper Beaver Meadows area of the park and transferred to the Boulder County Coroner’s Office, according to a park news release late Tuesday afternoon.

The coroner’s office will not release positive identification until completion of an autopsy.

The causes of the rock fall and avalanche that also seriously injured one man and resulted in minor injuries to a woman, both from Albuquerque, New Mexico, are under investigation.

The National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory for the park and surrounding area from 3 p.m. Tuesday until noon Wednesday.

The Longs Peak area near where the man died is forecast to receive 9 to 15 inches of snow during that period, according to the weather service in Boulder.

Searchers found the man's body late Sunday afternoon, but winter-like conditions kept them from retrieving the victim until Tuesday.

Those conditions kept popular Trail Ridge Road closed from Sunday into Thursday.

The three people caught in the slide were technical climbing the Dreamweaver Couloir on Mount Meeker about 9 a.m. when the incident was witnessed by other climbers.

The death marks the seventh by avalanche in Colorado this season and 17th nationally. The state leads the country in avalanche deaths, with just more than six on average per year. Last year, 12 people died in avalanches in the state, the most since the 1915-16 season.

'It was a very reasonable choice'

Ethan Greene, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, said the center rated the avalanche conditions in the area of the accident Sunday as moderate, or 2 on a scale of 1 to 5, with the lower the number the lower the risk.

He said May has seen more snow than usual in places, which has produced avalanche conditions that are "not unheard of but not the most common for this time of year.''

"For people doing mountaineering routes in the park, it was a very reasonable choice,'' he said. "Figuring out when to go is always a difficult thing to know. On this particular day, the avalanche danger was higher than you would typically see for that area. It is unusual for rockfall to trigger an avalanche, but rockfalls are an objective hazard at high peaks.''

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It is the first avalanche fatality in the park since March 17, 2013, and among just two fatal avalanches there in at least 20 years, according to avalanche information center records.

It was the fourth fatality in the park this year and second in eight days.

Greene said avalanche deaths can happen any month of the year in Colorado because of snow at high elevation. Before Sunday, the last avalanche death in the state in May came in 2011.

He said the center doesn't update its forecast as often in spring but advises those going into the mountains to visit the site as it is updated when conditions warrant.

Jim Davidson, an avid mountain and ice climber who lives in Fort Collins, said he has climbed Dreamweaver Couloir once. He said the route is a "spring alpine mixed climb'' normally made up mostly of firm snow with some alpine ice and short rock sections.

"The standard season to climb there is spring through June,'' Davidson said. "But you always have to watch the weather and know avalanche conditions before you go.''

Dreamweaver Couloir is located on the north face of 13,911-foot Mount Meeker, which is the second-highest peak in the park. It is located next to the park's highest peak — Longs Peak at 14,259 feet.

Guidebooks describe Dreamweaver Couloir as a popular classic couloir in the park. Climbers start early in the morning at the Longs Peak Trailhead and hike around 5 miles to Chasm Lake. The climb portion starts with low-angle snow climbing before advancing into steep, narrow terrain to the top of Mount Meeker.

The climb is rated in guidebooks as 5.4 or 5.5, which is considered easy. The rating only figures in the physical difficulty, not the danger factor.

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Reporter Miles Blumhardt looks for stories that impact your life. Be it news, outdoors, sports — you name it, he wants to report it. Have a story idea? Contact him at milesblumhardt@coloradoan.com or on Twitter @MilesBlumhardt. Support his work and that of other Coloradoan journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Body of man killed in Rocky Mountain National Park avalanche recovered