Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A deep mountainside gorge or gully, especially in the Swiss Alps.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A dredging-machine which employs iron elevator-buckets on an endless chain and excavates by making a gully where the buckets pass.
  • noun A steeply ascending gorge or gully: applied especially to gorges near the Alpine summits.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A deep gorge; a gully.
  • noun (Hydraul. Engin.) A dredging machine for excavating canals, etc.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A steep gorge along a mountainside.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from couler, to slide, to flow; see coulee.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French couloir.

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Examples

  • To get down that tongue of rock to the lower snows of the couloir was a job that fairly brought us to the end of our tether.

    Mr. Standfast John Buchan 1907

  • The snow in the couloir is a delight, turned sugary because it has sat untouched on the hill for so long, and we whoop as we ski down it, stopping occasionally to take photos, before we eventually reach a snow-covered road in a forgotten side valley.

    The Guardian World News 2010

  • The snow in the couloir is a delight, turned sugary because it has sat untouched on the hill for so long, and we whoop as we ski down it, stopping occasionally to take photos, before we eventually reach a snow-covered road in a forgotten side valley.

    The Guardian World News 2010

  • And it's prone to just halving off building-size chunks of ice and flushing down to the couloir, and if you're there at the wrong time, you're in big trouble.

    Stories From The 'Savage Mountain': Death On K2 2010

  • And it's prone to just halving off building-size chunks of ice and flushing down to the couloir, and if you're there at the wrong time, you're in big trouble.

    Stories From The 'Savage Mountain': Death On K2 2010

  • Barry had climbed the couloir once before, in 1982, back when he admits he didn't know all that much about avalanche conditions.

    A Nature for the Great Outdoors Michael J. Ybarra 2010

  • The rescue team went on to say that they had witnessed a climber in a red suit with patches fall from the middle of the Traverse, the section of the route which connects the top of the Bottleneck couloir to the summit slopes.

    Freddie Wilkinson: The Abandonment of Gerard McDonnell 2009

  • Kina had skied big lines in the Tetons for years; on many of them, if you failed to make the right turn at the right time, you would fall for a thousand feet, pinballing between the rocky walls of the couloir until you ragdolled out the bottom.

    Christian Beckwith: Greening the Barrio, Part 6 2009

  • But another Sherpa guide had dropped his ice axe, effectively stranding him, so Chhiring tied him to his harness, and down climbed the couloir with his friend hanging off him.

    Freddie Wilkinson: Heroes in Fine Print 2008

  • The route to the summit of K2 follows steepening snow slopes towards a snow and ice couloir called "the Bottleneck".

    Freddie Wilkinson: Avalanche Triggers Survival Situation on K2 2008

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