Ski guide and mountaineer Kip Garre and Allison Kreutzen were killed in an avalanche in the Sierra Nevada backcountry south of Bishop, California, earlier this week, according to reports from and .
The couple had reportedly planned to ski the Tuesday, a 2,000-foot descent recently listed in . When they failed to return, a search and rescue effort was launched Thursday morning. Seven of Garre's and Kreutzen's friends assisted the SAR team, including Robb Gaffney, who later told Powder what they discovered.
“We saw a ski, then, partially, a body. … It appeared that they were probably climbing the couloir when the avalanche hit from above, and it looked like a pretty powerful avalanche.
鈥淓ach of them was partially buried鈥擪ip a little bit more so, while Allison had been ejected to the side. We were able to dig them out and all the property, probably over more than a thousand vertical feet down the path, and marked all that. Then we waited for search and rescue to come.”
Kreutzen, 41, was an accomplished ski mountaineer, climber, ultramarathoner and ER nurse.聽 Originally from California, she had undertaken numerous ski mountaineering expeditions around the world including South America, Chamonix, Alaska and Mongolia. Garre, 38, was originally from Hancock, New Hampshire. He moved to Squaw Valley, California, and was part of the early '90s freeskiing movement. A supporter of skiing's park scene, he later shifted focus to backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He notched descents around the world in places like Pakistan, China, Antarctica, and, of course, the Sierra. the “Most Interesting Man in the World.”
–Michael Webster