You know the old adage that goes something like “Faith can move a mountain, but you better be ready to shovel?” I found out first-hand today that only takes a snowmobile to make a mountain move. Literally.
We put people in the picture for scale. I’m the guy riding down the hill in the foreground and had ridden up this hill a couple of times before the snow broke free.
I spent part of the weekend on a snowmobile in Idaho just out of Swan Valley, and I watched a guy almost get buried (see above photo) when the entire mountain came down. The snow cracked up to the right of the photo and then cracked about 300 yards away until the whole hill came crashing down with snow. It was about 15-20 feet deeep in the middle. He luckily stayed on top of the snow until he rode it out. Yikes. That’ll get your heart racing.
Another avalanche happened in this same area and a young man died. Word is he wasn’t wearing an avalance beacon. Sadly, three snowmobile riders died today in three separate avalanches throughout Idaho and Utah.
See more photos below of the avalanche I saw.
This is the guy who was riding up the hill when the snow broke loose. We are grateful no one was injured.
This is a photo of the left side of the hill where the snow broke free.
5 comments ↓
Glad to hear no one got hurt, Russ.
[...] Thoughts about life and death I don’t know that I will ever forget this experience. It’s one of those things about about life. Likewise, I don’t think I will ever forget watching an entire mountain of snow fall off a mountain minutes after I was on the hill myself. It’s the thing about life. A brush with death reminds you how easily life can be gone. [...]
We will write about avalanche in our next magazine. You have good pictures!
man ur lucky lots of ppl get hurt durin acalanches… nice sleds tho
Leave a Comment