A Utah snowmobiler accidentally triggered an avalanche that buried his brother, whom he was able to save after spotting his fingers sticking out of the snow.
The brothers and their father were riding snowmobiles across the slopes in the Franklin Basin area of the Utah backcountry near the Idaho border, according to the Utah Avalanche Center.
One of the brothers was “side-hilling” beneath a cliff-band in Steep Hollow when he triggered the avalanche.
“I saw the snow ripple and knew that was an avalanche,” Braeden Hansen told NBC News. He was able to ride off the north flank of the avalanche safely.
But his brother, Hunter Hansen, who was standing next to his sled below the slope, was caught up in the avalanche and carried about 150 yards and buried.
“I turned around to watch the slide hit Hunter and just watched him kind of get tumbled and buried and then lost sight of him,” he said.
Braeden then used a transceiver that showed where his brother had been buried and was able to get close enough to “see a couple of fingers of a gloved hand sticking out of the snow,” according to the report.
“I could see his hand, his gloves, kind of poking out, waving,” Braeden said. “But by the time I got to him, he was about 2 feet, his head was about 2 feet under the snow.”
He was able to dig his brother out from the snow and they rode the snowmobile to safety. Hunter suffered minor injuries in the accident.
Hunter, who is married and has children, told NBC that he remembers it being the “most violent thing I’ve ever felt.”
He saw the avalanche when he pulled his phone out to record his brother on the slope. But it was too late for him to do anything.
“It just washed me down the mountain,” he said, recalling that the snow felt like concrete. “The most violent thing I’ve ever felt.”
The brothers were in touch with each other and their father via radio, so Hunter could hear his family searching for him.
“There was just a sigh of relief when I felt him start digging,” he said, adding that he felt like he was on his “last breath” when he was rescued.
Their family says it was a Christmas miracle that Hunter survived and credits Braeden’s quick thinking for saving his life.
“Those guys had a very, very lucky Christmas Eve,” Toby Weed, a forecaster with the Utah Avalanche Center, said, explaining that they had the equipment necessary for backcountry travel.
“The brother who was not buried used his transceiver to find the brother who was buried, and it got him pretty close and when he got close enough, he could see a couple fingers sticking out of the snow of his brother and was able to dig him out,” Weed said.
An average of 27 people die in avalanches in the United States every year, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
Avalanche conditions will likely worsen across the mountains of northern Utah and southeast Idaho heading into the weekend, forecasters said in the report.
“You hear so many tragic stories of people getting buried in avalanches and not making it out, so I feel very blessed and lucky,” Hunter said.
