Joe Yelverton was on a rocky outcrop in the Chugach mountains, near Anchorage, Alaska, when he saw a wave of snow cascading towards him. The terrain was so steep that “it would be like looking up at a 10-storey building and seeing a truck falling off the top towards you”. He knew he would be hit within seconds, but he hoped that, if he could hang on to the mountainside, the wave would pass over him. He dropped down, swung his ice axe into the rock and held on as tightly as he could.
The snow piled on top of Yelverton, then started building up underneath him, “catapulting” him off the outcrop. Caught in the wave of snow, he tumbled down the face of the mountain, colliding with rocks. He felt the bones in his legs snap. “It felt as if my body was being ripped apart.” At the bottom of a cliff, where he had come to a stop, the snow continued to pile on top of him. “I was certain I was going to die,” he says. “You become entombed in snow, [and] as weight starts to pile up, the snow gets solidified. I couldn’t move, my mouth was packed full of snow and I couldn’t breathe.” It was a feeling of pure panic.
