Rash Impulse, Fortunate Outcome

People continue to throw caution overboard and submit to the seemingly irresistible invitation to place themselves in danger by ignoring warning signs designed for their safety, advising that to venture beyond safe ski areas into what is essentially terra incognita is to invite disaster.

Off-limits sites where the snow is loftier, untouched and just waiting for some intrepid skier to happily advantage himself by opening new vistas to his art of gliding over fresh snow intices those who simply cannot visualize themselves lifeless, their bodies well wrapped in a thick covering of avalanche-snow until spring.

Which is why, every year, year after year, snowmobilers and skiers in Alberta and British Columbia take no heed of weather conditions and posted avalanche warnings, and signage meant to turn back dauntless skiers from sites where they will be essentially left to their own devices should disaster strike. These disastrous occurrences, occasionally involving multiple deaths at a time in the event of a catastrophic avalanche seem to resonate for a brief period of time, and then the awareness dissipates.

Survival chances for those trapped under tonnes of snow is judged in minutes. If someone else is present and able to hastily dig out the overwhelmed skier survival is a possibility. If a buried skier has no nearby human resources to rely upon his life is forfeit. The potential for physical injury, suffocation, trauma and hypothermia all too often carry the day. Rescue searches may find bodies, the corporeal essence of a person, his spirit and soul fled.

But there are always rare exceptions to anything, and one such exception survived an avalanche in the Swiss Alps, even though he was buried in a solid vault of snow completely immobilizing his body for a period of 17 hours. "After the event I realize I took a childish and ill-considered risk", said Cedric Genaud, lying in a hospital bed being treated for mild hypothermia after his "long cold night".

Mountain rescuers consider his escape from otherwise-certain death nothing but a "miracle"; his burial under an avalanche while skiing off-site alone in Evolene resulting in no one being aware of where he might be located. "I couldn't move my legs or hands, I could just move my head ... It was like a sarcophagus, like having concrete around me", the 21-year-old Swiss skier explained.

His rescuers said he was one fortunate man. Once he left the secure ski runs, even though there was a well-publicized avalanche risk, it was just sheer luck that a rescue helicopter's searchlights enabled searchers to make out his tracks. Still, because of dangerous conditions, they'd had to abandon the rescue attempt overnight. A helicopter team at first light saw his barely-visible helmet.

It is a certainty that Mr. Genoud will always remember, vividly, his lonely 17 hours covered with frozen snow at the 2,000-metre mark up a mountainside, able to move his head only enough to create an air pocket enabling him to breathe and to nourish himself with snow.