Snowmobiler survives avalanche, captures it on camera

A snowmobilersurvived a close call this week when he was caught in an avalanche near Tumbler Ridge, B.C.

TerenceFreemancaptured the avalanche and his tumble on camera on Feb. 6. Heposted it to Facebook as a cautionary tale for other snowmobilers, saying it has changed his approach to climbing.

"This was very close," the Alberta man said.'I think I won the lottery today."

The avalanche

The video shows fracture linesappear in thesnowas Freeman rides hissnowmobileacross vertical terrain.

A shelf of ice then collapses under the snowmobile, and he and the machine slide several metres after hitting a boulder.

The aftermath

Freeman estimates the shelf that gave way under his snowmobile was three to four metres high.

"I am not an inexperienced rider, and this slope had no indicators that it might let go," he said onFacebook. "There was no overhang, and the trees were not bent and stripped like you normally associate with slides."

Warning signs?

However, Avalanche Canada says there are many other indicators of avalanche risk that people should know.

Karl Klassen, the public avalanche warning service manager, says the avalanche looked large enough to injure or kill a person.

"It looks to me like a classic trigger point on that slope," he said."That's a pretty hard slab he was riding on and a pretty big avalanche that he triggered."

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The primaryfactor to consider is the steepnessof theslope,Klassen said.Klassen couldn't estimate the incline definitivelybased on Freeman's footage, but said it appears somewhere in the 30- to 40-degree range.

"If the slope is more than 30 degrees of incline, then you're definitely in avalanche terrain regardless of the other factors that are around you."

Klassen says there was also information available of a weak snowpack and windloadingin the eastern Rockieswhere Freeman was snowmobiling.

'Brave' to put in on social media

Still, Klassen says it was "pretty brave of him to put the videoout there and open it up to discussionabout something that could be construed as an error or a mistake."

Freeman also admitted the eventhas realigned hisapproach to climbing.

Klassen says he understands people are sharing their experiences with avalanches on social media networks, but he says it's also a good idea to post it to crowdsourced tool,the Mountain Information Network app for Avalanche Canada.