Terrifying POV video shows snowmobilers buried by silent avalanche: ‘Lucky to be alive’
A heart-pounding first-person video shows the moment two snowmobilers were buried alive by a fast-moving 300-foot avalanche in Wyoming – with one of the men being rescued just minutes before he says he would have suffocated.
Mason Zak and Jake Dahl were both submerged under up to five feet of snow after an unexpected avalanche caught them off guard during a day out snowmobiling with friends in Star Valley, Wyoming, on Jan. 22.
In a terrifying video recorded by Zak’s camera, which seems to be mounted on his helmet, he first notices that Dahl had tumbled off his snowmobile — and then spots the avalanche coming down the mountain. He desperately screams “Avy!” several times to alert his pals of the danger, before attempting to escape.
“I saw Jake had fallen off and I was going to go up there to see if he needed help and as I looked up I could see the hills break above him and started screaming ‘avalanche’ as many times as I could,” Zak, a 23-year-old businessman from Minnesota, recounted. “It all happened so fast.”
“I thought I was in the safe area at the bottom. I watched Jake get buried and kept eyes on him so I knew where he was buried if I had to go save him,” he continued. “As I was looking at him, I didn’t even realize that it was coming so fast and it just hit me on the back, threw me forward off my snowmobile and actually dragged me around a patch of trees.”
Just before the moment of impact, Zak’s video shows him facing the wave of snow barreling toward him, and murmuring: “no, no.”
Zak ended up lying face down in the snow, with the palms of his hands pinned behind his back, and being almost completely unable to move.
“I was about two to three feet under. I was completely buried, nothing of me was showing. [The avalanche] could’ve hit me at about 50 mph,” he said.
Zak’s POV footage cuts to black, and only the sound of his heavy breathing could be heard.
He said he “lost hope immediately” and thought no one knew where they were so feared “no one is going to find us.”
Luckily, a rescue party got to the trapped snowmobiler in the nick of time — he believes around “five minutes” before he would have succumbed to carbon dioxide poisoning under the snow.
He had spent about seven minutes under the snow before he was dug up.
The snowmobiler said memories were flashing before his eyes as he accepted the reality of dying on the mountain that day.
“I don’t think I passed out but I went into some sort of dream,” Zak recalled. “Core memories were going through my head. I pictured my mom, dad, and brother.”
“I think I had a case of carbon dioxide poisoning when I came out,” he added. “I had a pretty bad headache. I was just astonished I was getting saved.”
Meanwhile, Dahl, a 25-year-old from Wyoming, was only submerged for around 30 seconds and despite fearing he was “done,” was able to claw his way out of the snow.
Recalling his experience during the avalanche, Dahl, a dad of two, said: “It just kind of swallowed me. It took me down about 75 yards and I started freaking out. Luckily enough, it stopped and my left arm was above the snow just enough to dig my face out.
“My face was probably about a foot deep. I could barely breathe. I was just screaming when I dug my face out. I was under for about 30 seconds. I thought I was done.”
Dahl said he had emerged from the snow with a new perspective — and a sense of gratitude.
“This was kind of an eye-opener about what can happen out there,” he said. “It scared us all and gave everyone a wake-up call. We’re lucky to be alive.”
