The skier stands on top a vertiginous drop, the camera on top of his helmet picking up snowy peaks in the distance, his fellow skiers and his final preparations before he launches on his run.
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But within seconds, snow flurries fill up the camera. This is not turning out to be a straightforward descent out of Downhill Racer, the film starring Robert Redford. If anything this eight-minute video, shot last year but only now doing the rounds on the internet is even more compelling.
The video captures a 1 500-foot fall in little over 20 seconds. The camera goes crazy, flickering from blue to white to black and then settles back to a blue. That is all the viewer sees for the next four minutes or so, but the sound of heavy breathing with the occasional whimper is clearly audible as the skier lies buried under snow.
Chappy, who posted the video of the skier on the site, writes: “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 [a breathing device which is used to prolong the supply of oxygen for avalanche victims by recycling air] wasn’t fully in his mouth and instead just to the corner of his mouth.”
Remarkably, the skier has no broken bones and is lying on his back so the camera captures his incredible escape. After what must have been an eternity for the skier, the mic on his camera picks up the sound of digging. His breathing becomes louder and he seems to gasping and crying in disbelief and relief as the rescuers get closer until suddenly the camera fills up with a rescuer standing practically directly over him, digging him out. Luckily for the skier, rescuers managed to find him because of a glove that flew off as he fell — the very glove he is seen fiddling with at the start of the video.
“And then the digging out is utterly amazing,” writes Chappy. “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.”
The amazing escape in Haines, Alaska took place in April last year. Almost as amazing is that it has taken so long to go viral. – guardian.co.uk