My buddy and I were two climbers who this guy passed on his way up the notch. He told us he had started from the portal at 8am and was going to summit and heading back down in a day. He caught up to us around 700 feet from the notch at around noon, maybe later. We got to the notch around 3pm and were looking up to the area between the notch and summit plateau, and saw him coming down from what I believe is the plateau area. About a minute later, we heard and felt a commotion north of us but out of sight. Snow and debris came falling on us, and I saw a hat fall down. The backpack fell and hit my friend on the head and came to a stop on a nearby ledge. My buddy called out to the guy for about 20 minutes, with no response. We were exhausted ourselves, and had decided to not continue toward the summit. We ran into some rock climbers about halfway-3/4 way down the notch and used their phone to call 911. This was a tragic day.
