Coire na Tulaich is the standard ascent route up Buachaille Etive Mòr, the most popular way up one of the most popular mountains in the Highlands. In summer it is a steep but straightforward walk to the ridge, a couple of kilometres west of the peak of Stob Dearg. In winter it becomes something else entirely. The corrie is bowl-shaped, scooped out by glacial erosion, and snow accumulates on its upper slopes in deep, loaded layers. Wind drifts pile fresh snow onto the lee side. The angle is right for slab avalanches. The corrie has a history of them. Climbers who have walked the route a dozen times in summer can find themselves in a different mountain in January, where the route they know is buried under conditions they cannot read from below. The Murphy brothers and Brian Murray were experienced climbers in a party of seven friends, Scottish and English. A separate pair of climbers was also on the slope. Nine people were in the corrie when the slab released.

The avalanche happened at twelve noon UTC. The blizzard had not let up. Glencoe Mountain Rescue scrambled, with rescue helicopters launching into weather that would normally ground them. The first machine to reach the scene was RAF Rescue 137, which had been on an exercise nearby and was diverted to Buachaille Etive Mòr. The team brought detection dogs onto the slope to search for buried climbers. John Grieve, the leader of Glencoe Mountain Rescue, later described what they found: hundreds of tons of snow scattered across the corrie, and survivors who had been carried five hundred feet down the mountain. Three of the climbers could not be saved. A fourth was lifted to hospital with shoulder injuries. The remaining five were found alive and reportedly uninjured, though the rescuers had to leave them on the mountain for a stretch when the weather closed in again and the helicopters had to retreat. The Scotsman headline the next day quoted Grieve: There were hundreds of tons of snow.

Buachaille Etive Mòr is photographed more often than almost any peak in Scotland. Its pyramid shape, the steep north-east face of Stob Dearg rising above the A82 as you drive from Tyndrum toward Glencoe, is one of the iconic images of the Highlands. Bollywood films have used it as a backdrop. The mountain appears in Skyfall, where Bond drives M away from the villain along the road beneath it. Wedding photographers bring couples to the little waterfalls on the River Coupall. None of that softens what the mountain can do. Buachaille Etive Mòr has seen up to thirteen people die in a twelve-month period. A 1994 avalanche in the same Coire na Tulaich killed one climber. In 2019, Terance Rooney died of exposure on the mountain. In April 2023, a Royal Marine, Reggie Melia, fell 50 metres. The 2009 avalanche remains the deadliest single incident, described in the days that followed as one of the worst disasters in the Scottish mountains for decades. Three families lost someone they loved. The Buachaille still stands.