I am absolutely mesmerized by this video. On a trip to Alaska, this skiier takes a first descent of some fresh powder — but almost immediately runs into trouble. An avalanche sends him tumbling, falling 1,500 feet in 20 seconds, and burying him under a metre of snow — more than enough to “entomb him”, as the poster of this video (who was there) writes:
The chute that he got sucked through to the skier’s right was flanked on either side by cliff bands that were about 30m tall. He luckily didn’t break any bones and obviously didn’t hit anything on the run out.
He was only buried for 4 and a half minutes which is incredibly short. I cannot stress these next sentences enough; that in and of itself to be unburied in ONLY 4:28 is miraculous if you have any understanding of being caught in an avalanche and what it takes to be found. It could literally be some kind of “world record” ….
He also got very lucky to be honest. In the time that he’s buried, you can hear his breathing already accelerate. The ruffling noise back and forth is his chest rising and falling and the noise that his jacket makes. The intermittent whimpering noise you hear is him trying to swallow and get some air since the avalung wasn’t fully in his mouth and instead just to the corner of his mouth. Still sends chills up the back of my neck. Oh…the luck? They located him so fast because his right glove came off just before he came completley to rest and there was an excellent visual of course.
And then the digging out is utterly amazing. I don’t think that you could’ve paid a Hollywood crew to stage something better. The fact that he could’ve been facing any 360 direction and yet he’s looking right up into the sun-filled blue sky with that first full scoop away of the shovel is borderline spiritual.
It’s tough to watch the camera struggle to keep up with the avalanche, crashing between white and blue and black until it settles down and you realize — this guy’s buried alive.
It’s tougher to listen as he struggles for a very long time, alone, trying to swallow snow to stay alive. But imagine how long and how lonely it must seem to him.
Stay with it — after a few minutes, you can hear the digging, you can hear the skiier call out, weakly, “Help!” and you get a gigantic emotional release as muffled voices come through the snow, offering reassurance that everything’s going to be okay and then finally, finally, gloved hands reach down and brush the snow off the lens of the camera.