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Una avalancha cayó cuando el alpinista estaba durmiendo.

Una avalancha cayó cuando el alpinista estaba durmiendo.
An avalanche fell when the mountain climber was sleeping.
From Lesson 278:Clausal comparatives with adjectives (más... de lo que)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Una avalancha cayó cuando el alpinista estaba durmiendo.

Why do we use the preterite cayó alongside the past progressive estaba durmiendo here?
This sentence shows a classic interrupting action. The past progressive estaba durmiendo describes the ongoing background event (he was in the middle of sleeping). The preterite cayó is the sudden, completed action that interrupted it.
Why is it cayó with a "y" instead of an "i"?
Cayó is the third-person singular preterite form of caer (to fall). Normally, an -er verb would use the ending -ió. However, Spanish spelling rules avoid having an unstressed "i" between two vowels. To fix this, the "i" changes to a "y", giving us cayó instead of caió.
Why does alpinista use the masculine article el if it ends in "-a"?
Words ending in the suffix -ista (like alpinista, dentista, and artista) are the same for both men and women. They always end in "-a". To show the person's gender, you change the article. Here, el alpinista refers to a male climber. If it were a female climber, it would be la alpinista.
Is durmiendo irregular? I thought the verb was dormir.
Yes, dormir has a stem change in the gerund (the equivalent of an "-ing" word in English). The o changes to a u, making it durmiendo.

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