Lone Pine, CA – The bodies of ski mountaineer Kip Garre and his girlfriend, Allison Kreutzen, were recovered Saturday from the Split Couloir in the eastern Sierra Nevada’s Inyo County, where the pair perished in an avalanche.

Garre, 38, and Kreutzen, 41, were reported missing by concerned family members on Tuesday when they failed to return from their ski outing to Split Couloir. Their bodies were located by search and rescue team members on Thursday, but bad weather delayed recovery operations until Saturday.

A New Hampshire native, Garre worked as a Lake Tahoe area shuttle driver and painter to fund his big mountain descents around the world. Kreutzen worked as an emergency room nurse at Tahoe Forest Hospital. Garre was with Tahoe freeskier Arne Backstrom in June 2010 when Backstrom was killed in Peru.