All four members of a snowmobile party that was hit by a deadly avalanche Friday in the Snake River Range were wearing avalanche transceivers, Lincoln County officials said.

The slide occurred in the Deadhorse Creek drainage, the county sheriff’s department said in a news release issued Saturday, killing three men by compression asphyxiation.

Officials identified the deceased as Robert Clark, 48, and Scott Smith, 45, both of Soda Springs, Idaho, and Bob Tiechert, about 55, of Grace, Idaho.

Wade Clark, 53, of Soda Springs, Idaho, the brother of Robert Clark, was the survivor. He dug himself out from the snow and hiked uphill to get cell phone service and call for help, according to Sgt. Shane Tindall of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.

The slide ran between a half-mile and a mile, Tindall said, and buried the snowmobilers under 3 feet of snow. Wade Clark said he was buried, as well, Tindall said, but managed to dig himself out.

There was no immediate information how long Wade Clark was buried or why he was not able to locate his partners with his transceiver. Tindall said only that the survivor reported being cold and shaking.

The survivor climbed “by his estimate, about an hour before he was high enough to get service,” for his cell phone, Tindall said. Search and rescue teams responded at 2:22 p.m., according to the agency’s news release. Both Star Valley and Teton County search and rescue teams were deployed from a base in the Snake River Canyon near Wolf Creek.

Using a Teton County helicopter, crews found Wade Clark and the avalanche site. They rescued him and set off explosives to reduce the chance of additional avalanches on the slide path.

Searchers then found the three victims using transceivers, battery-powered transmitters worn by skiers and snowmobilers to speed the chance of being located or locating a buried victim. The victims were retrieved that afternoon and the cause of death subsequently determined by the Lincoln County coroner.

Tindall said the avalanche site was approximately five miles into the backcountry from the highway between Hoback Junction and Alpine. The snowmobilers took off from near the confluence of Wolf Creek and the Snake River, he said.

Rescuers estimated the crown of the slide to be between 3 and 5 feet deep, Tindall said.

The location of Deadhorse Creek was not immediately clear. U.S. Forest Service maps show a Deadhorse Canyon on the north side of 9,767-foot-high Deadhorse Peak in Targhee National Forest. Those features are located above the South Fork of Indian Creek, which flows south to the Palisades Reservoir side of the range.

Working with admittedly limited information, the Bridger-Teton National Forest Avalanche Center said the slide involved only “surface snow.” The avalanche hazard forecast for the day warned of a weak layer deeper in the snowpack.

Tindall said it was “a huge area that broke,” when the avalanche began. “They were going down that draw, they were about halfway down,” he said.

Avalanche instructors warn backcountry users to venture onto suspect slopes one at a time, to carry rescue gear such as shovels and probes, and to first search for survivors before going for help.