The names of five Colorado men, all in their 30s, killed Saturday in Colorado’s deadliest avalanche in more than 50 years were released Sunday morning by the Clear Creek Sheriff’s Office.

The five are: Christopher Peters, 32, from Lakewood; Joseph Timlin, 32, from Gypsum; Ryan Novack, 33, from Boulder; Ian Lamphere, 36, from Crested Butte and Rick Gaukel, 33, from Estes Park.

Saturday’s avalanche struck about 1 p.m. on the north-northeast aspect of the Sheep Creek drainage of Loveland Pass along U.S. 6, the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office said.

The avalanche occurred near the Loveland Ski Area but outside its boundaries.

Sheriff Don Krueger said there was one confirmed survivor — a member of the group was able to drag himself out and call for help. Krueger said his office was notified about 2 p.m.

The survivor was up and walking around when he saw him, Krueger said.

No information was released Saturday about the five victims — no names, ages or genders. The bodies were recovered.

The sheriff confirmed that the parties were equipped with proper safety equipment, including avalanche beacons.

Krueger said additional information about the victims likely would not be available until Sunday morning.

Saturday’s avalanche was the deadliest since 1962, when seven people were killed Jan. 21 as an avalanche buried residences at Twin Lakes near Independence Pass.

Saturday’s fatal slide measured about 200 meters (about 219 yards) wide and 350 meters (about 383 yards) long. The fracture line was about 8 feet deep, officials said.

Teams from Alpine Search & Rescue, Summit County Rescue Group, Clear Creek Fire Authority, as well as Clear Creek and Summit counties’ sheriff’s officials, all came to the scene.

The Colorado Avalanche Information Center forecast for Summit County and Vail Pass on Saturday morning warned of “deep persistent slabs and fresh wind slabs” on the north, east and southeast aspects near and above tree line.

The recent deluge of heavy, wet snow and high winds in the high country has spiked avalanche danger in the Central Rockies at a time when snowpacks are typically stabilizing and getting safer for backcountry travel.

“I feel really bad for these guys. I think they were trying to do a lot of things right. These weren’t guys who were reckless and didn’t care. They all had gear, and I think they cared about making good decisions,” said Tim Brown, a Summit County avalanche forecaster with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

“That is an important message right now. You can do a lot of things right but still be caught in a dangerous situation.”

Dale Atkins, the president of the American Avalanche Association and a longtime member of the Alpine Rescue Team, was part of the early rescue team.

“As rescuers, what we’ve been dealing with lately is avalanches that are sort of like angry sleeping dogs. They are unreactive for a long period of time, but with recent heavy snows and the deep weakness, somebody in the wrong place at the wrong time can bring a whole mountainside down.”

Atkins said the bowl that released the avalanche Saturday was not an extreme slope.

“This would be a slope that looks like a lot of fun for good riders.” he said. “But the conditions this spring are unusual, and unusual conditions result in unusual avalanches. You really need to dial it back this spring.”

Late Saturday, the chunks that funneled from a 4-foot to 8-foot lip of snow clogged a deep ravine at the bottom of the wide bowl. Some of the icy chunks were the size of golf carts. The tracks of rescuers wended through the massive chunks toward deep holes.

The avalanche triggered while all six riders were nearing the bottom of the bowl and the beginning of the narrow ravine only a couple hundred yards above the top of the Loveland Valley chairlift.

“With all the snow and wind we’ve had over the last couple of weeks, winds are really building that slab up, and it’s really kind of reached the tipping point this last week,” said Colorado Avalanche Information Center executive director Ethan Greene. “Especially in that area. We are very much in a winter snowpack right now. The calendar may say it’s April, but the snowpack looks more like February and it needs to be treated as such.”

Colorado has seen 11 avalanche deaths in the 2012-13 season — almost half of the 24 U.S. fatalities, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

Ten of those 11 killed in Colorado were skiing, snowboarding or snowshoeing outside ski area boundaries.

CAIC forecaster Spencer Logan said there have been weak layers in Colorado’s snowpack since early January, and forecasters have said they’re seeing the worst avalanche danger in 30 years.

Some 42 people in Colorado’s back country and ski areas have been caught in slides this season.

“Our last series of storms made them more active again,” Logan said. “Over the last week and a half, that area got over 18 inches of snow. If you melted that, it would be 2 inches of water, so that is a heavy load.”

A snowboarder, a man from Westminster, was killed in an avalanche Thursday in Avalanche Bowl south of Vail Pass. He was making runs with two friends after they were dropped off at the top by a friend with a snowmobile.

U.S. 6 at Loveland Pass, elevation 11,990 feet, was closed by the Colorado Department of Transportation at 3:16 p.m because of a slide, just as many skiers were headed home from nearby Arapahoe Basin ski resort.

U.S. avalanche deaths climbed steeply around 1990 to an average of about 24 a year as new gear became available for backcountry travel. Until then, avalanches rarely claimed more than a handful of lives each season in records going back to 1950.

Peter Dettman and Adrian Garcia of The Denver Post contributed to this report.

Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671, tmcghee@denverpost.com or twitter.com/dpmcghee