A mountaineer has survived more than 20 hours buried by an avalanche with temperatures dropping to a freezing -15C.
Carluccio Sartori, 54, left rescuers and police officers astonished when he was pulled out of the snow alive - and was even able to have a conversation.
He told rescuers that an air chamber that formed the surface of the avalanche not only provided him with oxygen to breathe but also insulated him from the freezing temperatures of the night.
The incredible rescue of the man from Villanova Marchesana in Rovigo, northeast Italy, happened at the famous resort in Val Badia Valley in the South Tyrol region on January 27.
When he was pulled out of the ground he had a body temperature of around 24 degrees Celsius after spending the whole night buried by snow.
The body temperature meant that he was in the third and most serious stage of hypothermia.
After being rushed to the San Maurizio hospital in Bolzano and being hospitalised in intensive care, Mr Sartori is expected to make a full recovery despite suffering some fractures and frostbite on his hands and feet.
Talking from his hospital bed, Mr Sartori said while buried under the snow, he tried to stay awake and not fall asleep as his will to live was very strong.
He told Italian news agency Ansa: "The night was terrible. I was so scared, I didn't want to die. I knew I shouldn't give up, I shouldn't fall asleep at all, otherwise that would have been the end of it."
Mr Sartori said he made small movements while being buried in order to keep his body temperature as high as possible and survive the ordeal.
He added that as soon as the avalanche stopped, he used one arm to form the shape of a funnel so that he could breathe.
The mountaineer said: "I feel very lucky."
His daughter Irene, 19, is by his bedside and said: "Dad is recovering, now the doctors will keep him monitored, we want to thank all the rescuers."
She added: "Let's hope for the best, he's strong."
The emergency services started looking when the missing man's family raised the alarm and a team from the Aiut Alpin Dolomites eventually found him in the Alpe di Fanes area.
It was Irene who called and investigated that he had never returned to the Sass Dlacia campsite in San Cassiano, in Alto Adige, where he had parked his camper.
She said: "From the early afternoon he didn't answer phone calls and didn't receive messages, that's why I was worried."
They started looking that evening with an aerial search and started digging when they found a glove that the man had lost when the avalanche struck.
Irene said that the rescuers could not believe it when they saw the glove and then when they pulled the glove off they found that hand and also the signal from a rescue device.
The Arva is an electronic device used to help track down the victims of avalanches where it omits an acoustic signal.
After being asked by reporters whether he will continue to practice ski mountaineering, Mr Sartori joked: "I better say home, or they will look at me badly at home, so I'll tell you no, I'm no longer doing it."
