It stretched about 150 yards down what remained of the slope. It was 10 or 20 feet tall, obstructing Peikert’s view to the bottom. Peikert’s beacon began its frantic chirping.

“I started getting a signal,” Peikert said. “I marked it with one of my poles. That’s what they teach, to mark where you start picking up a signal and keep working to where it gets stronger. I took my skis off because it was so hard to ski on that stuff. And as I got close to that signal, I saw two pink gloves sticking out.”

Saugstad was about 20 feet downhill.

“Her feet were into the snow and her head was downhill, but I saw two pink gloves and her face,” Peikert said. “I don’t know if she uncovered her face or not, but it was just barely sticking out of the snow. And a little bit of orange from her backpack. I started digging her out, trying not to hurt her. I said, ‘Are you O.K.?’ And she said: ‘I think so. My leg’s kind of hurt.’ ”

Peikert pulled his shovel from his backpack and started to dig.

“For a pause, really quickly, I thought to myself: she’s alive, she’s breathing, her face is out of the snow,” Peikert said. “I thought, let’s go find others. But then I realized that more snow could come down. I found someone alive, and I needed to get her out of here.”

Saugstad sensed his urgency.

“When he started unburying me, he flung his shovel and it went flying down the hill so far that he couldn’t stop and go get it,” she said. “And so then he had to start digging me out with his hands.”

Peikert hurried, knowing that others were likely buried nearby.

“She was actually really hard to get out,” he said. “One of her skis had stayed on, so it had kind of locked her into the snow. Even a ski boot gets locked in. I dug to get her ski off. It probably took five minutes of digging to get her out.”

Finally, Michelson and Abrams arrived from above. They found Peikert and Saugstad on their feet.

“It didn’t dawn on me that she had been buried,” Michelson said. “I was relieved she was alive.”