The snowmobiler who survived for more than an hour after being caught and fully buried by an avalanche at Shrine Mountain earlier this month had forgotten his avalanche transceiver at home, according to the

As one man became buried, the other tried to locate him by using his avalanche rescue transceiver, officials with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC) said.

"Typically, we do see kind of an exponential decay in survivability. So about 30 min is where your chances of survival drop below 50%," said Greene. "So at an hour, we certainly have seen people survive longer than that. But it's uncommon for sure." Avalanche commonly kill in two ways. The first is the trauma of the slide.