Two brothers were lucky to make it to Christmas after a Tuesday avalanche nearly took out both of them. Hunter and Braeden Hansen were enjoying a Christmas Eve backcountry adventure on their snowmobiles in Utah's Logan Canyon, near the Idaho border, at about 8,400 feet elevation, per a release from the Utah Avalanche Center. Braeden was ahead of his older brother as they were ascending to a higher meadow when he "saw the snow ripple" around his sled and realized an avalanche had been triggered, NBC News reports.
Braeden was able to avoid the worst of the rushing snow himself, but he watched as it barreled down the slope and swept Hunter away, burying him. The younger Hansen whipped out a transceiver to locate his brother, who'd been carried about 150 yards from the place where he'd been standing next to his snowmobile. "By the time I got to him ... his head was about 2 feet under the snow," Braeden tells NBC. "I could see his hand, his gloves, kind of poking out, waving." Braeden quickly dug the snow out from around his brother's head so that Hunter could breathe, then dug the rest of his body out.
"The most violent thing I've ever felt," Hunter, who suffered just minor injuries, says of the avalanche. "It just washed me down the mountain." The brothers note that they always carry safety gear like beacons, shovels, and probes during their backcountry treks. Meanwhile, local officials warn that conditions on nearby mountains may still be perilous. "Remotely triggered avalanches remain possible, and dangerous avalanches might be triggered from flat terrain below steep slopes," says the UAC, warning that most slopes in northern Utah are currently "plagued by very poor snow structure," per KSL. (More avalanche stories.)
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