Some call it the "White Death"
and an ancient riddle asks, what flies without wings,
strikes without hands and sees without eyes?
Every year more than a million avalanches fall world wide.
Avalanches are simply part of our planet's natural order.
It is only when we get in their way that tragedy strikes.
Utilizing unique methods, we continue our quest
to better understand the dynamic power of raging snow.
But the magic of the mountains lures us...
more and more place themselves in harm's way.
My machine just moved over me and everything just started moving
and I just yelled. I just screamed "Help me God.
My whole life's flashing in front of my eyes.
You go to inhale and you were just inhaling a mouthful of snow.
I was sure I was gonna die.
They're not to be trusted. They're awesome terrible things.
They'll rip you to shreds. They'll Maytag ya.
Something we need to learn something about.
one of the most dangerous mountains in the world.
October 15, 1997.
Brothers Jose Antonio and Jesus Martinez Novas,
veteran mountain climbers from Spain
plan to ascend over 26,000 feet to the summit.
Cameraman Allejandro Rocha
is to record their departure from Camp 2
and then await their return.
Recent storms have left deep snow on the mountain side.
It is slow going as the brothers set off to establish Camp Three
some 3000 feet higher on the peak.
An hour after they begin to climb
they are just two tiny dots on the face of the mountain...
as Allejandro shoots video from the tent.
As he faces death.
Allejandro captures a final self portrait.
But just as it reaches the tent, the avalanche is spent.
Allejandro is astonished to find himself alive,
but has little hope for his friends.
Are you alright?
Like specters they emerge from the white eager to tell their tale.
The following day the weather got worse
and they were driven off Annapurna.
Some 20 percent of the Earth's land mass is crowned by mountains.
In the Andes, the Caucasus, the Himalaya,
the Alps and the Rockies avalanches exert their terrible power.
100,000 fall every year in the United States
from Vermont to Alaska.
And here deep in the back country of Alaska...
Three experts are seeking to photograph the perfect avalanche.
With cinematographer Steve roschel,
world reknowned avalanche experts Doug Fesler and Jill Fredston,
are here both to trigger the snow slide
and ensure the safety of roschel's film crew.
I realize the power of the avalanche and I try to capture that on film.
I mean it really rouses people.
It stirs in all of us something. I don't know, primeval.
It's very interesting.
But to get those images,
I must go down into these dangerous zones
where the avalanche is going to come down
and if I make a mistake, if I'm wrong, it'll cost me my life.
So being with people like Doug and Jill
who are experts and know snow safety to a T.
That's what their main objective is
to make sure that I don't get killed.
I'm aware of the lighting conditions that he wants.
And I'm aware of the kind of avalanche he'd like to have.
But sometimes I feel like I have to do a little reality check.
Because there's exposure from crevasse fields
that are in the run out zone, that people could fall down
and have avalanche potential if they're on adjoining slopes.
And so those are the things that I'm looking at.
First and foremost I want to make it a safe spot.
Can we go along this ridge to this little peak
where that cornice is just go right along so I can look out.
This is a good spot isn't it Doug?
Well it's good so far up there.
This kind of concerns me all those seracs up above
as far as landing down there.
We'll have to take a look at that.
This is the peak right here. That should rip out Doug.
I believe it will rip out. Doesn't that look good to you?
I don't like it because of the crevasses.
And some of the exposure to some of these chunks of ice
up here coming off.
I don't think it's safe.
It takes several hours to find the spot that satisfies everyone.
It looks like we could drop charges right down
in that little pocket there where the cornice is.
Doesn't that look good to you?
Yeah.
Lower 'em in there like it's my unborn son.
One camera is positioned inside a padded steel crash box
which is placed directly in the path of the avalanche.
Timing is everything in this mission.
The camera must begin shooting when the avalanche is triggered
or it will all be for nothing.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.
Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.
O!
On your mark get set and go!
Steve positions himself behind a second camera at a safe distance.
Second one out.
Okay keep going... keep going.
Several sticks of high explosives
will be used to trigger the avalanche
Most avalanches are naturally triggered,
when the weight of the snow excedes its ability to hold together.
And most of these occur far from human eyes.
I think the usefulness of seeing avalanches in motion
is that a lot of the people that we deal
with in our avalanche workshops
have never seen an avalanche in motion before.
But when they see this thing in motion
and they see the power that's associated
with an avalanche it's a wake up alarm
Like the snowflakes they are composed of
no two avalanches are alike.
Even very small avalanches can kill,
and the big ones are true monsters.
They can attain speeds of over 200 miles per hour...
traveling a mile or more on level ground.
No place in avalanche country is entirely safe.
In 1988 the Austrian town of St. Anton
which had not experienced an avalanche in over 60 years,
was struck just after dawn.
Houses which had stood for almost 400 years
were destroyed in an instant.
Remote areas in less developed countries are the hardest hit.
The greatest known avalanche disaster took place in Peru
where an ice slide decimated the town of Yungay,
killing 18,000 people.
They're awesome terrible things. They'll rip you to shreds.
They'll Maytag you.
But they're also beautiful to watch,
they're delicate,
they're graceful, they dance.
They're a double edged sword in that sense.
They're not to be trusted.
Something we need to learn something about.
In the western world most avalanche victims place themselves
in the path of danger,
and see the mountains as a playground beautiful and benign.
The interesting thing about avalanche accidents is that
most of them happen on nice blue sky days.
It's also very interesting to me
that roughly 95% of the people who are caught in avalanches
are the ones who triggered the avalanche.
And really the question isn't really why is so and so getting caught,
it's why did they let themselves get caught,
because there's so much knowledge available today that nobody,
nobody needs to get caught in an avalanche by accident.
The trap is set over a period of time.
One snow flake is light as a feather.
But the stealthy accumulation of trillions can
form massive layers weighing millions of pounds.
What triggers slides can only be discovered
by digging into the snow pack.
Doug Fesler introduces a group of students
to the deadly archeology of a slab avalanche.
What kind of force is it gonna take to rip it out?
That's all I really need to know.
First of all do I have a slab?
I'll start feeling here and I feel resistance as I pull down.
It goes fairly hard to begin
with now it's starting to go going a little easier.
A little more resistance again.
Right here a little bit easier.
Right through here is a crust layer.
Now it's very easy right in there.
Another shear plane possibly.
This is a nasty shear plane.
Look how this stuff just falls out of here.
Shear planes allow colossal avalanches to be set off
by the slightest disturbance.
We're corroborating the opinion we have about the hardness
and weakness of these various layers.
This stuff is so weak it... just falls out.
Intermediate faceted snow. The sugar snow.
More people have probably died in the world as a result
of this weak layer than any other weak layer there is.
These snow crystals can be more dangerous than dynamite.
Fluctuations in temperature cause some crystals
to lose cohesion and become slippery.
These frozen ball bearings allow everything above to slide.
Notice I have my hand ready just in case.
Okay now we have a free standing column.
Want to make sure the ski is nice and vertical.
See how that came out just like it's spring loaded?
By integrating all that information together
there should be a picture flashing in front of your mind.
And the picture is one of the serious instability that exists
from a human triggered point of view.
And so the message there is to stay away
from steep leeward smooth slopes
because those are the ones that are waiting to eat you.
What I want you to do is on the count of three.
I want you to go. One. Two. Three.
Up in the air punch your heels in real hard. Ready Banzai warriors?
One two three. Banzai!
An avalanche on the move is a dynamic event,
a slab will rip out new slabs,
transforming, becoming ever larger,
and triggering billowing clouds of powder.
Fortunately, nature can warn of avalanches
with subtle sights and sounds.
But if you're hard blasting a 130 horsepower vehicle
at 85 miles per hour,
it's unlikely that you'll hear or see any of nature's warnings.
Snowmobiles can swiftly invade the heart of avalanche country.
Riders enjoy jetting up a steep incline as high as they can,
unwittingly teasing a potential avalanche.
The game is called "high marking."
Whoever gets the highest wins.
These snowmobilers almost lost it all one morning near ellogg, Idaho
A friend videotaped the action as a wall of snow came plunging down.
They would all escape unharmed
and spend the rest of the afternoon tempting fate on other slopes.
But in January 1998,
three friends exhilerated by a crisp clear day outside of Bend,
Oregon were not so lucky.
It was all virgin snow.
Everything was smooth and just real billowy and soft looking.
And being the first one to make the tracks is kind of a thrill.
That's where you really get your adrenaline going
and just let the throttle do what you can with the machine.
And we could get twenty or thirty miles away
from anything and see country
see a lot of country in a day that was nobody else was around.
The snow just looked like a big a big pillow
it was just smooth and soft looking.
When you got on it it would kind of fall apart beneath you
because there was nothing holding it from below.
Both Art and I looked at this big clearing off to the right of us.
Art took a couple of stabs at
and I watched him go up the mountain or go up the slope.
He must have gone up I don't know,
I'm guessing six seven eight times.
He came down and I decided to go up and I got up on top and I got stuck.
At that point in time I was pretty much stuck like this.
So I got off the low side of my sled and pulled down on my front ski.
My machine just moved over me and everything just started moving.
I was almost to the bottom getting ready to turn around and go back up.
I just got a big push from behind and snow dust everywhere.
And when the dust had gone down enough I turned around.
The snowmobile was buried to the seat
and my legs were buried right along with it.
And I turned around
and I could see the ski of Brian's snowmobile, but no Brian.
Buried alive, Brian has little more than 30 minutes to live.
And when everything came to a stop it just turned real dark.
My eyes couldn't focus on anything.
And I went into a very frantic time frame.
After trying to get control of the situation and just calm down,
I tried to move anything and everything I possibly could.
I tried to move a finger in my glove inside my glove
and I couldn't even do that.
And I ran up to where his snowmobile was
and looked around but I didn't see any sign of him.
It's about the most helpless feeling you can have.
You know that there's somebody that needs help
and you don't have any idea where they are.
The snow was compressed to my chin like this
I... I could move...
I felt my cheeks moving and my eye, my eyelids.
I could only move my stomach inward. I just screamed.
And after I calmed down
I just remember saying "help me God."
And we kinda started digging just with our hands within just a minute
we realized that that wasn't getting us anywhere.
We could only dig maybe a foot or two deep.
It was just gonna take too long.
So then I figured out that I thought we needed a probe.
And I asked Mark if he had anything and all he had was a saw.
So Mark took off with his saw to
find a stick or tree or something that we could use.
When you try to search for something you can move other
then your lips and your eyelid you just surrender.
I just remember surrendering.
And I just kind of went to sleep.
I didn't know what else to do.
We were probing close to the snowmobile
and started working up the hill,
and probably within 10 probes I hit something that felt...
it had some elasticity, it wasn't, it didn't feel solid.
And I told Mark I think I have him.
Brian was seconds from dying of asphyxiation
not just from the lack of air
but from the extreme pressure on his chest
Barely a few feet down, he might as well have been cast in concrete.
They reached him just in time
and learned a lesson they are eager to share.
In retrospect there were some signs.
And had we been as educated then as we are now
about avalanches we probably would have recognized them...
But the basic bottom line I think
is just common sense and the awareness.
Being snow smart out there carrying shovels and probes
and beepers is a big factor.
I would like to see the people that are gonna go in the back
country get some basic survival gear and some basic survival knowledge
and just try and be prepared for some of the events that can happen.
Such events have been happening for thousands of years
and no one has experienced a longer
or more grievous struggle with the avalanche
than the stalwart people of the Alps.
In the Great Saint Bernard Pass sits a hospice founded
in the 11th century to aid and protect weary travelers.
Today the hospice still welcomes those
who come to visit the ancestral home of the legendary Saint Bernard.
In earlier times, both the monks and their dogs
quickly responded to travelers in distress.
With their keen sense of smell and massive strength,
nothing could stop the noble Saint Bernard
from locating avalanche victims.
During the several centuries
that the Saint Bernards served at the hospice
more than 2000 lives were saved.
But the legendary brandy keg
never actually hung around the Saint Bernard's neck.
The tradition originated with 19th century English painters
beginning with Sir Edwin Landseer.
The last thing a hypothermia victim needs is brandy.
In World War I,
the Alps saw a more sinister response
to the danger of the avalanche.
When Austrian and Italian armies met here,
each side deliberately triggered deadly snow slides upon the other.
An estimated 40,000 men were lost in this lethal use of nature.
Avalanches are intentionally triggered today...
but for an entirely different reason.
Fire in the hole!
Artillery and explosives are used in preemptive strikes,
releasing potential avalanches,
preparing the mountains for another kind of invasion
Each morning before skiers hit the slopes
the ski patrol hits them first, to make them safe.
But for some a tamed mountain is not a sufficient challenge.
Extreme skiers seek remote places where the powder is fresh and alive.
In 1996, three of them were shooting
an adventure film that almost ended in disaster.
Miraculously, they all survived.
Others filming the glory of unbounded snow sports
have pushed the margin of safety a little too far...
These experts escaped with their lives
but near ski resorts,
those caught in unsafe areas can find themselves
in trouble with the law.
Here in Loveland Colorado,
instead of going to jail
this avalanche offender chose to be buried alive.
I'm kinda scared right now actually to tell you the truth.
Buried beneath the snow for up to half an hour,
he'll have plenty of time to identify with avalanche victims
And retrieving him is great training for the dogs.
Angel search. That's good.
Easily the furriest and friendliest part of any rescue effort,
rescue dogs often arrive too late to save lives
and end up being used to recover bodies
Humans on the scene are usually the only ones who can help in time.
Therefore avalanche safety schools across the country teach
as many as possible the techniques of rapid rescue.
Avalanche "victims" are taught various
means of escape and survival,
such as using swimming motions to stay on top of the slide
and creating a breathing space with their hands before the snow hardens.
Radio beacons are a modern aid to fast rescue.
A transmitter worn by a victim emits a signal that others can home in on.
But the best defense remains avoiding the avalanche altogether.
The danger is well known.
Warnings abound but sometimes they are discounted or ignored.
On January 23, 1998,
a French Alpine guide broke all the rules
as he led a group of teenage hikers and their teachers
off of marked trails near Les Orres in the Alps.
None of them were wearing beacons.
Some of the children slammed
into a grove of larch trees they had just walked through.
Their bodies caught in branches and wrapped around trunks.
More than 150 rescuers combed the scene
in a heart breaking search for survivors.
Yet it could have so easily been avoided.
The group had discussed avalanches
and had even watched a video illustrating the risks.
But when some of the children questioned the wisdom
of hiking that day, they were ignored.
The accident gripped the heart of the nation.
Eleven died, nine of them school children.
It was the worst avalanche disaster to hit France in almost 30 years.
89 years ago in the Cascade Mountains of Washington,
disaster struck travelers who had never expected to even touch snow.
Number 25, a Great Northern Railroad passenger train
is followed by Number 27,
Great Northern's fast mail train.
Heavy winter storms trigger avalanches
causing both to stop just before the Cascade Tunnel.
On the following day
the tracks are finally cleared
and both trains slowly steam through.
The trains are diverted to a side track
outside the railroad town of Wellington.
There they remain helpless.
Crews work to clear the tracks
but for each foot they clear another falls
and the peaks above are a looming white wall.
Without warning an avalanche crashes down
from the mountains destroying the cook shack
where passengers had eaten the night before.
The tracks ahead and the tracks behind are now completely blocked.
There is nowhere to go.
Five days pass.
Some passengers slog to Wellington for food and comfort,
returning to the train to sleep.
A few risk the perilous trek to the next town.
Everyone else remains.
Then on March 1 st around 1:30 am
the white death falls hard from the mountain.
A slab a half mile long,
and twenty feet deep surges over the tracks
Rescue workers follow trails of blood in the snow to unearth bodies
Mothers, daughters, salesmen, sons, lawyers, ranchers,
shepherds and miners crushed beyond recognition in the frozen deluge.
The final toll is 96 dead, with 22 survivors
This remains America's worst avalanche disaster.
In Europe, the threat of such tragedies has hovered over
Alpine residents for centuries.
Some homeowners fearing what their ancestors
called the "avalanche beast"
have built barrier walls for protection.
A 17 th century church meets the avalanche head on,
like a ship plowing through a sea of snow.
One of the best protections is the natural one.
Dense forests of trees can prevent some avalanches
and slow others down.
Yet years of mindless deforestation
have left some towns hanging precariously
on the edge of disaster.
Today as the slow process of reforestation continues,
steel and concrete barriers do the work of trees.
Although unsightly and expensive, they offer some protection.
While the search for better methods continues.
With their dense population and mountainous landscape,
the islands of Japan are a prime target for avalanche tragedy.
A devastating slide hit near Niigata, in 1986.
It was one of the worst avalanches to hit Japan since World War I I.
This disastrous slide would provid crucial data
for scientists in Japan.
Prompting Dr. Ouichi Nishimura
of the Institute of Low Temperature Science
at Hokkaido University to begin his research on avalanches.
A computer model shows just how the tragic slide progressed.
Here in Sapporo at the sight of the 1972 Olympics,
he recreates an avalanche on a small scale
to increase his understanding of the internal flow of snow.
Tracking individual particles of snow
as they behave in an avalanche is all but impossible.
Nishimura's inspired substitute over 300,000 ping pong balls!
The behavior of the balls will be fed into a computer
to learn more about how hard,
how far and how fast an avalanche will run.
Dr. Nishimura hopes to better predict
how and where it is safe to build.
In Juneau, Alaska, that lesson has still to be learned.
As the city has expanded into several avalanche paths,
Juneau is a disaster waiting to happen
Just past 5 am on March 22, 1962
above Behrends Ave in the Highland district...
a fast moving avalanche raced down Mt. Juneau
and smashed into the neighborhood below.
Miraculously no one was hurt.
But there was an immediate public outcry.
Yet none of this should have come as a surprise.
Avalanches had fallen in the past
and Behrends Ave lies directly in their path.
Studies were commissioned.
Plans were made, but nothing happened.
Mayor Dennis Egan remembers...
The city and borough of Juneau has spent
hundreds of thousands of dollars doing avalanche research,
doing studies.
In fact what we did was list high hazard areas right on the maps
so when folks see those
and go out to purchase a home from someone else
and come into our Planning Department,
they'll know that they'll be buying a piece of property
that's in a high hazard area.
Now we tried to put language
in the deeds that when the property was sold
and was refinanced through lending institutions
that they were in a high hazard area.
But the property owners were violently
opposed to it as well as the financial institutions
and it didn't pass.
In fact, we had talked about a program to buy the properties back
and the folks were violently opposed to that as well.
It's the place they want to stay,
it's the place they want to retire
and they don't want anybody telling them what to do.
They know they're in a hazardous zone
but they've come to accept it.
This summer I started in July and I've now built this deck
and I'm working on this building
which... I'm building as I think of it.
I'm not I don't have an exact plan but it,
I know what I want. I want a hot tub right here.
I want to be able to see that avalanche come and get me.
And I guess it's sort of a ing Lear thing,
uh blow ye winds and rage ye hurricaneos.
I like the weather. I love the weather. It's everywhere.
Apparently the risk of dying in an avalanche
is less than that from choking on meat
and I'm not a vegetarian so you know,
it's just... whatever you do, wherever you live,
I mean, people live in flood plains, people live in mud zones,
people live in hurr... I went to school is Sarasota Florida
where we waited for hurricanes on a regular basis.
You know, there's no place on earth, I don't think,
that is completely hazard free.
My friends they make jokes about it.
They call this Fort Liston.
And I get a charge out of it, I think it's pretty funny.
And they say, well we know
you're going to be seeing the avalanches coming down
and I say... Bring it on!
In 1972, a powder blast rocketed straight into the center of Juneau.
Luckily by the time it hit town, it's energy had already dissipated.
Many residents thought it was simply a fast and furious local blizzard.
A look up should have been enough for all to see the truth.
Experts say that it's not a question of "if"
but "when" the next disaster will happen.
While some choose to live in danger zones
others must earn a living there.
One of the most incredible survival stories
took place at the Bessie G mine
high in the La Plata mountains of Colorado.
In November 1986, Lester Morlang was working frantically
to build a snow shed with his partner, mentor
and best friend Jack Ritter.
We knew this storm was coming
and we had to get this timber in place before the storm came.
That was the whole purpose was to keep that old east portal open
for our ventilation inside.
Because of winter weather,
the Bessie G had only been worked three months a year.
But Jack Ritter, who knew more about gold mining than just about anyone,
had figured out how to operate her year round.
Yet this was the worst weather Jack had seen in over a decade.
Two feet of snow had already fallen
and both men were in a race with the storm.
Lester was in the bucket of the skip loader
and Jack was handing him timbers
when everything suddenly turned white.
When it initially hit when I come out of the bucket.
I'm sure that was only a matter of seconds before I landed.
And just naturally you put your hands
in front of your face in kind of ball up
because you don't know what's happening to you.
But for the first few seconds,
my whole life's flashing in front of my eyes.
And I'm seeing things I could never remember normally.
I'm actually seeing things like my son graduating from college
and you know I was sure I was going to die right there.
Although the snow was packed loosely around him,
Lester Morlang's odyssey had just begun
When I come to of course I had my hands
in front of my face and everything was packed.
One of the first things I could do was get the snow away from my face
because you go to inhale
and you were just inhaling a mouthful of snow.
And then of course, I was screaming for Jack, you know, I just,
screaming and crying and everything at the same time.
I mean it's trying to take your mind over.
Jack was already dead.
And now... buried only a few feet from Lester,
the skip loader's diesel engine was
spewing deadly exhaust into the snow.
I could feel the vibration in the snow and I could hear it,
definitely hear it and I knew to keep away from it
because I knew it would have been a big pocket of gas.
For if I'd a dug into that loader why that would have been it.
Lester knew where not to dig. But which way was up?
And when I had my face free I was kind of overlaying over on my side.
I had moisture from my mouth
and I could feel it running across the corner of my eye.
So I knew I was laying kinda of on my side, head down,
so I knew I wanted to start the incline you know to get back up.
What Lester couldn't know
was that he would have to dig through almost 30 feet of snow
fighting cold, claustrophobia
and a fear so intense, it sickened him.
Several times I would go into convulsions and I did throw up.
It seemed like every half hour,
why you'd have the dry heaves and some convulsions
kind of like attacking you.
I wasn't thirsty at first
I knew not to try and eat the snow
but my mouth was drying out
and everything and I'd take a little bit of snow in my mouth,
just to wet my lips, and spit it back out.
Every second. Every hour.
Every minute there's something there wanting you
to lose control of your senses.
And you know I'm thinking about my family
and the position I'd be leaving them in
and a couple of times I almost thought
my wife was right there with me because I could smell her perfume,
it was just as distinct as... I know it was there.
I could smell her and it and that was good
because that kind of gave me some strength
to know that I was, somebody was thinking about me.
Many people were thinking about him.
Word of the missing miners reached Sheriff Bill Gardner.
As soon as I heard I knew that this was the real thing.
I can't describe the feeling.
It... My heart sunk.
My stomach turned and literally chills went up my spine
because I knew what we were up against
This was a significant winter storm.
We had snow of at least two inches an hour.
We knew that we had winds of in excess of 50 miles an hour.
And we knew that the site was totally isolated.
That the only way to the site was either by air,
or through a canyon that was literally avalanche alley.
Avalanche safety expert Chris George was brought in to bomb the area,
clearing it of potential avalanches, making it safe for the rescue team.
The road into the Bessie G up the La Plata canyon was already
a serious hazard I mean just driving that road.
Just because one avalanche runs
doesn't mean to say that everything else is secured.
You know you'll have one or two people trapped somewhere.
You send another 40 people in there.
It's not secure. It's something we have to do.
After almost 22 hours of digging,
Lester finally inched closer to freedom
I could tell I was seeing a little bit of light
and so I was about, maybe two feet under
and of course the adrenaline started pumping then
and I just started digging and beating and jumping
and I can remember just breaking out and just screaming
Thank God, you know, I just, I made it.
I can't believe, I made it...
and then, to get out in a freezing storm, snowing,
blowing, that's when I got cold.
Bitterly disappointed with no rescue in sight,
Lester was forced to return to his snow tunnel for warmth.
He attempted to settle in for the night.
I tried to go to sleep and wake up real quick
and think I was in bed and had a bad dream.
But a very sad thing when I did wake up,
I was still in the cave.
Then another avalanche hit, burying Lester for a second time.
To hear that crack and that sliding sound
and I just assumed it was gonna squash me like a bug
in my little hole there.
Luckily it just slid over the top.
Morning came I knew I'm gonna get started as early as I can.
I'm gonna dig my out again.
So it was about six. I started digging my way out.
Course I only had a couple three feet of snow to go through.
And I got out. I just started...
the only direction I could move was down.
Finally in mid morning the winds abated enough.
We sent in Chris George to do our first aerial surveillance
of the accident site.
And we flew by the east portal looking for tracks.
There was no indication of where that portal was,
it was just one smooth angle of snow.
I had absolutely no idea that Lester had gotten out
and was at the foot of the mountain which is quite
a desperate descent under any circumstances.
I'll never forget that helicopter flying
approximately the same elevation that I was, but they were looking,
I could look in and see them
and they were looking up at the avalanche,
of course, they didn't expect me, where I was and then,
yeah it made me mad, I was, I was mad.
They just flew past me.
I could almost I thought I felt prop wash they were so close.
This must have been a half hour later.
I heard the thunder or what I thought was thunder
and then I realized they were dropping bombs
on the slope to secure the slope for the rescuers.
So I knew I had to get out of there.
I finally got up and got behind a tree
and it wasn't 15 minutes, I could hear the roar.
It was louder than any thunder you've ever heard.
If the first two didn't get him,
the third avalanche certainly wouldn't
Lester was almost to Junction Creek
when he heard the sound of the helicopter overhead.
This time they saw him.
He was flown 10 minutes away to Mercy Medical Center
where he was treated for severe frostbite.
They wanted to cut off several fingers but Lester held on.
With physical therapy and personal strength,
his fingers remain.
I can't express the mixture of joy and wonder
that someone survived this.
I mean veteran mountaineers and search and rescue people
were looking at each other.
People were hugging each other.
And we were going we can't believe this is true.
I have read hundreds of reports of avalanches.
I've been teaching snow safety for 35 years.
I've been in mountains, you know for 40 odd years.
To me it's one of the greatest survival stories I've ever heard of.
It's good for me because it gave me a new outlook and I,
I'm a lot tougher than I was
and I appreciate things a lot more than I did.
Like a nice warm house and a loving family.
I'm rich, I didn't need to extract all the gold out
of this mine to get rich.
I know now what rich is and I'm rich.
Experience teaches when we pay attention.
Wisdom arrives after we learn.
Winter will always come.
Snow will always fall.
All things obey the law of gravity.
In the mountains,
ignorance and arrogance can place us in harm's way.
We have a choice.
But if we remain unaware
and the mountains continue to lure us,
the white death will strike again... and again.
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