Ten people, including nine Britons, are reported to have survived after a huge avalanche swept over them in the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan.
Footage uploaded to Instagram by Harry Shimmin, one of the people on the trekking tour, showed snow starting to break down a mountain in the distance and sweeping towards them, forcing the group to take cover as the snow went over the top of them.
Shimmin had broken away from the guided tour to take photographs when he heard “the sound of deep ice cracking behind me”, according to an account he posted alongside the video.
He added: “I’d been there for a few minutes already so I knew there was a spot for shelter right next to me.
I suppose there was nowhere to run to, but still! 😳pic.twitter.com/3GE4M4YOxa
— James Withers (@scotfoodjames) July 10, 2022
“I left it to the last second to move, and yes I know it would have been safer moving to the shelter right away. I’m very aware that I took a big risk. I felt in control, but regardless, when the snow started coming over and it got dark/harder to breathe, I was bricking it and I thought I might die.”
The Tian Shan mountains mainly straddle south-eastern Kyrgyzstan and its north-east border with China. They formed part of the ancient Silk Road trading route from the Middle East and Asia to the west.
Shimmin said he knew the rest of his group was further away and so would be safe, and he wrote of feeling “giddy” when he realised he was only covered in light powder “without a scratch”.
They had been due to walk the path of the avalanche shortly afterwards. “We would have only heard the roar before lights out,” he said.
According to Shimmin, a few members of the group received light injuries, and an American woman in the party cut her knee to the bone and was taken by horse to a medical centre three hours away. After being stitched up by a doctor and spending time in an emergency ward, she flew home.
Shimmin said he had thought about how close a call it had been and how fortunate people were to have escaped serious injury.
“I won’t lie, it was harrowing to walk through the aftermath of where we would have been if we were 5 minutes quicker,” he wrote. “I stared at the roof of my tent for longer than I care to admit that night. Very, very glad everyone survived without super serious injuries.”
Last week, 11 people died after a huge chunk of an Alpine glacier in Italy broke off, sending an avalanche of ice, snow and rocks down the slope. After that incident, scientists said similar events were likely to become more common as the planet heats.
Kyrgyzstan’s disappearing glaciers have been described as an urgent problem by the United Nations. In an interview with the Independent in June, Kyrgyzstan’s president, Sadyr Zhaparov, warned about the danger posed by the climate crisis to mountainous countries such as his.
“The world is facing global climate change, which is fraught with dangerous consequences,” Zhaparov said. “This is especially true for us mountain countries because these problems are more dynamic and specific: glaciers melting and natural water reserves decreasing, which can lead to imminent disaster.
“Kyrgyzstan is home for almost 10,000 glaciers. Over the last 20 years, we are witnessing an irreversible melting of those century-old glaciers.”
During a guided tour of the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan, a group of tourists captured this avalanche
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 10, 2022
[source, HD by Harry Shimmin + full story: https://t.co/4R0dbG2clN] pic.twitter.com/DPMqK1kELG
