The survival of a man who was buried in an avalanche for over an hour is being described as miraculous.
The man, whose name has not been released, was hiking alone on Flattop Mountain in Alaska on Saturday when large ice block slabs dislodged and buried him upside down in about 2 to 3 feet of snow and ice. Another hiker, Alex Kuprienko of Anchorage, was hiking that same day when he saw two feet kicking out from the avalanche.
“Honestly, at first, I thought it was a kid playing around in the snow, didn’t think much of it,” Kuprienko told KTUU.
“It wasn’t just adding up,” he continued. “I went up, and sure enough, there was a guy buried in the snow with his legs sticking up. So, he was on his back, face up, but obviously head down into the snow.”
Kuprienko began to furiously dig through the snow to rescue the man, forgoing his gloves and dislodging the avalanche victim in about five minutes.
“I didn’t have my gloves on, and I didn’t want to waste time putting them on, so I just kind of went to town digging him out. So, obviously my hands were kind of frozen at some point. I figure he feels much worse than I do, so I didn’t want to stop and get my gloves on,” he explained.
When the man was pulled up, he was conscious but very cold and suffering from hypothermia. Kuprienko called 911 and helped lead him to a parking lot where emergency services were waiting.
“It was a miracle, because I looked up just the time that he raised his legs up, because otherwise I would have just missed him,” he recalled.
The man was able to survive about 90 minutes under the ice because of air pockets provided by the slabs. The average survival rate for someone trapped in an avalanche for that period of time is less than 10%.
