Joshua Ricci saw the avalanche coming just before it hit.
"I saw it on the ridge. I saw cracks," the 19-year-old Cottonwood Heights, Utah, resident said. Then the snow was on him, rushing his snowboard out from under him and sending him head-first down the hill.
Snow flew into his mouth, choking him. Ricci heard cracking as he crashed through trees before smashing into one that ended his fall. The impact broke the board as it buried him up to his chest. His ride Wednesday lasted all of 10 seconds.
His friend, 19-year-old Kelly Ferrone, also of Cottonwood Heights, didn't know he had set off the slide in backcountry terrain at Brighton ski resort until he saw people yelling and waving from the top of the ridge. The pair had hiked there from the lift in search of fresh powder, despite avalanche-warning signs.
Ferrone took off his headphones and felt the deep vibration of the slide like an earthquake.
"I was scared as hell," he said. Then he saw Ricci trapped in snow with his legs bent at unnatural angles.
"I thought his legs were broken," Ferrone said. He started digging through the snow with his hands, pulling out slabs of packed, icelike snow.
"When I got his binding off, he sighed," Ferrone said. That's when he knew his friend was going to be OK.
Dazed, ghost-white, with bloodshot eyes and covered with cuts and bruises, Ricci was otherwise uninjured.
The Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office said the slide was 8 feet deep, 300 feet wide and 2,000 feet long.
"This guy is incredibly lucky," said sheriff's deputy Shane Manwaring. "He cheated death today."
The Utah Avalanche Center rated the mountains around Salt Lake City as having pockets of high danger this week.
During the approximately 20-minute hike to Pioneer Ridge, Ricci and Ferrone twice encountered ski-patrol officers, and were told they could go into the backcountry, they said.
They also passed several signs warning people that staff did not do avalanche control in the area, and encouraging patrons to test their avalanche beacons. Ferrone and Ricci did not wear beacons.
"We can't stop anybody," said ski-patrol officer Lauren Davis. "People know they take a risk when they go out there."
Though he was shivering uncontrollably more than an hour after he was pulled out, Ricci said he felt "like a king."
"I think it's karma," he said, "because my dad said I shouldn't go out into the backcountry."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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