Boing Boing guestblogger Connie Choe is a health and culture writer by day and a professional kimchimonger by night.
Whenever I'm hanging out on a chairlift I like to shout that I'm going to go die a cold, snowy death. Mostly so that if I were to actually perish on the ride down I could say, "I told you so." But also because I am genuinely (and in my case, irrationally) afraid that something terrible like this will happen. The guy in the video is an experienced backcountry skier named Chris Cardello. In his words:
When the slide propagated, I tried to remain as composed as possible and make sure my AvaLung was in. As I was getting buried and the slide slowed, I threw one hand up and with my other hand I grasped the AvaLung, which had been ripped out of my mouth during the turbulent ride. While I was buried, I tried to be as calm as possible; I knew my hand was exposed so my crew would be digging me out shortly. I was able to breathe through the AvaLung, but it was difficult due to the snow jammed down my throat.(via freeskier.com)
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Whoa, that is terrifying!
Thanks for linking to the version that's not an AvaLung advertisement version.
Holy F***- That is one lucky dude.
Amazing video, but I had to skip most of it because it was making me claustrophobic.
man i feel cheated. i suggested this link like 2 weeks ago. oh well.
when they get him out and he starts sobbing, i sobbed with him. mad endorphin rush.
Well that gave me the fantads. I need to get in better shape for ski season. Good job Chris.
Its interesting that I thought intellectually this would be an interesting video to watch, and how I didn't expect how emotionally I got caught up in it. Must have hot beverage in open space now... office seems a might bit small.
Whew scarey. I know those guys who came to rescue him were probably following drill and doing all they could as fast as they could but crikey, the worst bit is when you first see them and then they start fiddling with their clothes and gloves - I wanted to shout "get him out! get him out!" and I also wanted them to reassure him. For a while there I thought "wtf are they doing?!" But, as I say, they were likely doing all the right things....
I need to lie down now.
Avalanches. Oh, righhht! That's why I don't ski. That and the "agony of defeat" images of skiers wiping out from ABC's Wide World of Sports that run through my head when I think of the sport.
You know your mind and bindu-nervature perhaps better than I do, but you've much yet to learn about your body's prana-musculature.
I do a fair amount of backcountry skiing myself. I can't watch this.
At first I thought that rushing sound was of them quickly digging him out. Then I realized that was his breathing. Sobering.
Lucky, yeah, but welcome to Haines. Sounds like he had a bit of experience, but they could have avoided that situation altogether.
A foot of blower powder looks damn nice, but if there's a slab ready to break under there, you have to dig down and find it before dropping in. Glad he made it.
I tried that 'holding your hands, palm up, out in front of you' thing.
They did get older. But only at the normal, really slow rate.
Scarier than Paranormal Activity!
I'm really hoping they didn't deliberately put themselves in the path of an avalanche in order to show how handy the AquaLung thingummy is...
*squick*!
Sure, it's amazing footage, but I don't know why we don't have avalanche-triggering robots by now. They could mimic skiers or snowmobiles as far as the snow was concerned, and we could take our sweet time digging them out.
That we're sending people out to do a robot's job, strikes me as barbaric -thrill sport be damned.
I do a lot of back country snowboarding/snowshoeing/skiing, and this brings me to the verge of tears (and I haven't cried since 2005).
I'll be buying an AvaLung this year.
Look at those cracks open up at 1:17-1:18! Right as he says "whoa". Sublime.
Wow.. When you see the shifting shadows in the snow and hear one of them say something like "We got you buddy" I had to fight back the tears (sitting in the office). Even knowing he had survived it, that was tense.