Yeah, no problem man!

March 31, 2023 10:32 AM

My guy on the tooth picks: "I was skiing a zone with a partner when I passed by a snowboarder upsidedown and buried in a tree well. I only caught a glimpse of his board but it was enough to get my attention."

The luckiest snowboarder alive:
"I was gonna die on my own mountain in an area I’ve ridden hundreds of times"

Rescue starts at 30 seconds into the video.

posted by inflatablekiwi (34 comments total)

Easily the scariest, yet most uplifting ski video I've seen this season. Snowboarder dude and his friends had the right gear (beacon, shovel, probe, and radio). But tree wells suck. They will kill you in a heartbeat. If my guy on tooth picks had zigged or zagged differently the snowboarder would have died.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 10:35 AM on March 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

Just the idea of tree-wells always deeply terrified me. The old guys would say "they'll find someone in the spring, upside down next to a tree". Like it's just impossible to unsnap bindings hanging upside down.
posted by sammyo at 10:46 AM on March 31, 2023 [6 favorites]

holymoly.
posted by djseafood at 10:47 AM on March 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

whoa!! that is terrifying!! how extraordinarily lucky he was to be spotted by someone with the strength, know-how, and gear to do a rescue.
posted by supermedusa at 10:59 AM on March 31, 2023 [8 favorites]

The wild thing is the skier basically had to run over the guy to see him. Even if the snowboarder’s friends looped back up….it could have taken hours to find him.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 11:06 AM on March 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

Something similar happened to me at Mt Hood Meadows, except I just happened to see a skier upside down over a buried creek along one of the runs. Scary.

Have snowboard manufacturers ever experimented with solutions for this kind of thing? Emergency releases or something?
posted by gottabefunky at 11:07 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Wowwowwow. Would love to see a follow-up! (edit: oops, first link!)
posted by Glinn at 11:08 AM on March 31, 2023

I have goosebumps for how scary real that was. So glad it had a happy ending. What a wild vid.

*shivers*
posted by Fizz at 11:11 AM on March 31, 2023

Dusty in here. Must be the pow.
posted by lalochezia at 11:15 AM on March 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

More explanation. Ever read "To Build a Fire"? You can't trust those goddanm trees.

The trees on the snowy mountains are probably comparing notes with Old Man Willow.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:35 AM on March 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

I once found myself hanging upside down from my skis after being caught by a small cornice collapse. It's disorienting being suspended from one's feet in the dark. But the snow was not packed hard so I was able to reach up and release the bindings and then climb out.
posted by cyanistes at 11:54 AM on March 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

I had a disastrous, nearly tragic, winter solo (well almost - me and my dog) hike in the white mountains of NH 3-4 years ago. Crusty snow on top of deep powder on a poorly marked trail that followed a ravine, zigging and zagging across a river that was covered in snow and it was impossible to know when I was on dangerous snow above running water, or safe snow above ice. I was already hours behind my estimated out time, it was getting dark, and I had no cell service. I ended up falling through the snow, into the water and losing both my poles, soaked to the waist. Boots full of water. 2+ miles from the trail head and I was making about a mile an hour BEFORE the trail got really bad and I fell in. I was really, thoroughly scared at this point. Soaking wet and hours from dry clothes and communication. I decided I couldn't risk crossing the river anymore and had to bushwhack along the ravine edge, following it straight down to the road. At this point the crusty snow had torn up my dogs paw pads to the point that she just refused to keep walking. I couldn't bring myself to leave her behind even though I was extremely terrified at this point. If I stopped moving I was going to freeze to death, absolutely no question about it. I would die out there and nobody was coming to help me (at least not in the sort of time domain that I needed them to). I ended up slinging her across my shoulders, and holding her front legs in one hand, back legs in the other hand to keep her from sliding off. Every 25-50ish steps, I would step and get "spruced" - a juvenile spruce sapling that had been bent over by, and then completely covered in snow, but with a air pocket underneath it would collapsed when my snowshoe stepped on it. I would pitch forward and face plant in the snow. I'd struggle to get to my feet again, my dog was wriggling around after getting freaked out by the fall, I had no poles or even arms really to help myself get up and snowshoes are super awkward. This happened again and again for HOURS. I wasn't in a great mental place at this time in my life and honestly I may have given up but I couldn't bear to leave my dog alone in the woods without me. I was more motivated to get her out safe then myself. I finally hit the Kancamagus highway sometime around 11pm - 8 hours after I planned to be out. I screamed until my breath ran out, and then started sobbing. It was the craziest feeling I've ever felt, to be ALIVE but completely alone in the middle of fucking nowhere, no cell service, no other person to share the moment with, to confirm mutual existence with. I stripped off my snow shoes and walked a mile along the road back to my van, still carrying my dog. Two minutes after I changed into the warm, dry set of clothes I had in my van, a state trooper pulled in to the lot, looking for me after my partner called in that I had been hiking and she hadn't heard from me. I confirmed I was fine and drove the 3 hours home. I was in a totally insane head space for about a month after that. I would just start crying randomly and wander through the woods around my house for hours. Crazy experience. Only tangentially related to the video, but the combination of a spruce trap, snow, and nearly dying helpless and alone just kicked it back up in me. I hope the snowboarder is doing ok, mentally as much as physically - his disastrous, nearly tragic, experience was even more nightmarish than mine was. The appearance of the skier must have felt utterly miraculous to him. Crazy. Fuck spruce traps.
posted by youthenrage at 12:27 PM on March 31, 2023 [98 favorites]

You can see the snowboarder move to try and get the skier's attention when he first lands in the powder above the tree
posted by JauntyFedora at 12:33 PM on March 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

i got caught in a tree well snowshoeing. I wasn't head first, but it was still sketchy. a had to collect my thoughts and make a coordinated effort to get out. yikes.
posted by j_curiouser at 1:10 PM on March 31, 2023

youthenrage, so glad you're still with us. Just: wow.
posted by gwint at 1:17 PM on March 31, 2023 [8 favorites]

While I loved skiing between trees when I was young, I will not do that any more.
posted by flamewise at 1:35 PM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I guess the silver lining to me being a mediocre skier is that I stay on the green runs and never go off piste.
posted by zardoz at 1:52 PM on March 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

I have friends who used to ski stuff like this. I cannot comprehend. The occasional blue run is thrilling enough for me, thanks.
posted by slogger at 2:00 PM on March 31, 2023

Have snowboard manufacturers ever experimented with solutions for this kind of thing? Emergency releases or something?

Many years ago when I snowboarded I had boots that clicked in to bindings and released by lifting a little lever. Step-in bindings stopped being a thing for a long time but it looks like some manufacturers are making a version again.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:21 PM on March 31, 2023

Holy cow. Just a split-second glance to glimpse the snowboard.
posted by doctornemo at 3:41 PM on March 31, 2023

Wow, that was intense to watch. I was impressed at how he jumped straight into action rather than hesitating or needing to think things through first. That snowboarder was a very lucky person.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:53 PM on March 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

If you are upside down under that much snow - it doesn’t really matter if you are on a board or skis or showshoes or just hiking boots - you aren’t getting free - your whole body can’t move.

And it happens quite a bit unfortunately

I know we have some ski patrollers on Metafilter who would know a ton more - but Snow Immersion Suffocation is a horrible way to go.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 3:57 PM on March 31, 2023

"Take your time, man."

Uh huh.
posted by jamjam at 4:41 PM on March 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Nightmare fuel.
posted by AJScease at 4:51 PM on March 31, 2023

I recently watched a video taken from a helicopter rescuing a swimmer who was a tiny dot in the wilds of the Gulf of Mexico and this video clenched my stomach in exactly the same way. I was impressed that both the skier and the boarder were well-prepared for the circumstances- I saw what I think was the boarder covering the open part of his helmet with his hand and guessing that’s something you’d learn in safety training.
posted by bendy at 5:30 PM on March 31, 2023

I've been a backcountry ski patroller for a couple of years but have no interesting stories to tell, fortunately. On Sunday a group of us are scheduled to do a training on navigation, snow shelters, and rope rescues. But it's supposed to snow FOUR FEET between Friday night and Sunday morning. Which isn't a huge problem for the training except getting there and back. So our instructor just a little while ago decided we'll do our training in town.
posted by neuron at 10:00 PM on March 31, 2023

A co-worker lost his teenage son to exactly this kind of accident a number of years ago. There are really no words to say to a parent when this happens.
posted by Snowflake at 10:14 PM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I fell on a icy slope at an Eastern US resort and slid head first down a tree well. I didn't hurt myself and there was no danger of suffocation but the ice was so slick I couldn't get out without help.
posted by hypnogogue at 10:32 PM on March 31, 2023

This was amazing to watch. I'm in awe of this guy's presence of mind, and the gentle but determined way he copes with the situation. Thank you for sharing.
posted by Zumbador at 11:39 PM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

you aren’t getting free - your whole body can’t move.

Years ago I did a faceplant on the flats in couple feet of snow (actually kinda fun). Not deep and I could just stand up. But for a couple minutes I thought, lets see how I can move laterally. And nothing, could barely rotate my head or wrist, let alone move an arm or leg left or right even an inch. After doing snow angles it seems like all that light fluffy stuff can just be pushed around but under compression it's like being Han in the carbonite.
posted by sammyo at 6:29 AM on April 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I can only imagine the rush of adrenaline that guy felt when he realized there was a person attached to that snowboard, and when he saw his arm twitch.
posted by bq at 8:38 AM on April 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Not a tree well, but I double ejected out of my skis and fell face first into 3 or 4 feet of uncompacted snow (we were assisting ski patrol with doing skiier compacting of a steep slope before it opened to the public for the season and I was trying to maintain my speed to get through the relatively flat part at the bottom).

When you fall your instinct is to out stretch your arms but that just buried my arms underneath me. It didn't take me long to realize I couldn't breath properly. It took an immense amount of effort to free my arms so that I could roll over on my back. Then just as I thought I was free, the realization was that I still couldn't breath...because my face was covered in a mound of snow.

I am sure I was only trapped for a few seconds at most but in the moment it was terrifying.
posted by mmascolino at 8:28 AM on April 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

ABC7 Chicago interviewed both men involved.

(Still absolutely in awe of Zuber's presence of mind. What an amazing video to have, too: the moment you saved a life, or in Steger's case, were saved from certain death.)
posted by rory at 9:26 AM on April 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

It was riveting watching this. Thank you for the link. If anyone else is in the mood for more live rescue audio, here's a 2018 post about air traffic control helping a 17 year old solo student pilot who loses part of her landing gear at takeoff.
posted by brainwane at 9:10 AM on April 6, 2023 [2 favorites]