Rescuers saved a man who was buried in two feet of snow from an avalanche in Vail Pass, Colorado. Chloe Kim

"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.