This is Devin Stratton in the backcountry of the Wasatch Range in Utah.
WaPo story here.
“I immediately thought about my cousin who was [left a] quadrapeligic from a car accident and thought, ‘I’m gonna be paralyzed,’ ” he said Wednesday. “And then when I saw how big the cliff was when I was going over the edge, I thought I was dead for sure.”
“I [prayed] in my head in midair,” Stratton added. “It doesn’t sound like it in the raw footage because I’m cussing. But in my head, I was praying.”
Stratton said when he first hit the ground, it took him a few seconds to realize he was actually alive. He said he then immediately started yelling up to his friend who was skiing behind him to watch out, lest he follow in Stratton’s tracks and fly over the edge, as well.
“I saw him come around and I was relieved that he’s not gonna come land on me and kill us both,” Stratton said of his buddy, who helped him locate a ski he lost in the accident.
Posts
19 comments:
Good thing we've had a lot of snow recently... almost 3 times the normal amount for January so far. He's lucky to be alive!
--Vance
He was spot on with what all God wants you say for answered prayers: Thank You.
kewl
Video or it didn't happ----oh,, nevermind
It's always better to be lucky than good, but never more than at a time like this.
Bumbles bounce.
Wow. I'm guessing that his forward motion and a downward slope in the landing area saved his bacon..kind of like a ski jumper.
Intentional 255 foot jump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RYkapHBVs8
352 feet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg-zjgWqFkE
Wow! And without a bathtub!
First World Problem,
I've had that very dream/nightmare
Damn lucky. For those of us who have done any river running a sharp line in the river with nothing behind it means a fall or big drop which you should scout - certainly not proceed right over. Same thing here but this guy blithely skies right over the line. As I said, damn lucky.
Just thinking about it without looking at the video, you'd think falling 150 feet would take a perceptible amount of time.
You watch the video, & once he clears the edge of the cliff --- BOOM! --- he's in the snow below, in what seems like no time at all.
I know, I know. 150 feet goes by really fast in free fall.
YoungHegelian said...Just thinking about it without looking at the video, you'd think falling 150 feet would take a perceptible amount of time.
9.8m = 32.2 ft; 150/32.2 = 4.66 seconds. Seems shorter though, I agree; long enough for a couple-a thoughts anyway!
Whoever made those tracks right up to the edge really fooled him, I guess.
HoodlumDoodlum,
You're assuming 32.2 feet per second, about 20 mph. But 9.8 m refers to acceleration: each second, you speed up by 9.8 m/s.
You want the equation s = (1/2)at^2. s = 150 feet, a = 32.2 feet per second per second, t is in seconds.
150 = 16.1 t^2; t^2 is about 9.3 s^2, t is just over 3 seconds.
(Which neglects air resistance - but at the end of those 3 seconds he'd be falling at 97 feet per second, nowhere near terminal velocity.)
Several thoughts. First, stupid, stupid, stupid. The sort of thing that we did in our early 20s, and either got over quickly, or died. We were in the back country in CO on skis long before it was cool - starting in maybe 1970 or so. The biggest danger in CO was probably getting wiped by avalanches. Accidentally skiing off cliffs, not as much, since much of the back country skiing is above tree line. My ch more than in UT. Most of my HS ski group got caught in avalanches, at some point at that age, but survived. One of them broke his back in HS, and in the intervening years, has lost most of the mobility he so laboriously regained after his accident. Another guy we knew did it trying to flip for a car. Thankfully, we didn't have videos back then, with everyone trying to outdo everyone else.
In my experience, having grown up skiing in CO, the best powder in the continental US is in the Wasatch Mtns of UT. A good friend of mine and I got snowed in for a couple days at Snowbird in the mid 1970s. Avalanches closed the canyon below us. We had a fraternity brother working there who knew the mountain, and took us down a bunch of non-runs between the formal runs that are only skiable in deep powder. Learned about the "steep and the deep" - if the snow is deep enough, and not heavy like you find on the coasts, you can ski much steeper runs. And, indeed, when it gets really deep, you had better be skiing very steep runs, or you won't move very well. So, we would push off, start down what looked to me like cliffs, lean back, tips would come out, and it was almost like floating, as you made those trademarked S's down through the trees. The cap of the trip though was catching the first tram to the top, after it had been closed for 2 1/2 days. 2-3 foot a day, leaving maybe 8 foot of uncut, light Utah powder. The top is wide enough open that we each got our own uncut tracks, and there was a mad rush down from the top. You tried not to stop, so that you could be close to the first. The powder had apparently gotten lighter as the temperature dropped throughout the storm, so it was light on top, and got thicker down below. It was effectively bottomless, so, you floated through it.
As a note - ski equipment has progressed a lot since then. When I am back in CO next week, I am going to pick up my powder boards for my kid in Boulder. I picked them up cheap at the Vail ski swap most of a decade ago, and even then were considered obsolete (esp compared to the dedicated powder skis we saw at Silverton back about then, super wide, with no side cut and negative camber), but were so very much better than anything we dreamed about in the early 1970s. I have them mounted with AT (alpine touring) bindings, which let you free heel up, and you can then lock your heels for the downhill. Never did like telemarking (free heeling all the time). It always seemed like we were moving back to obsolete technology (my father was telemarking in the 1940s).
Yesterday was so annoying at work. One telemarking call after another.
"Whoever made those tracks right up to the edge really fooled him, I guess."
He made those old tracks on his scouting run. Then he jumped off on purpose on his second run.
That darn Washington Post reporter leaves her readers on the edge of our seats. DID Devin Stratton find his missing ski, or didn't he?
Post a Comment