A trip to Utah to enjoy the snow almost ended in tragedy Tuesday after an avalanche hit a snowmobiler on a rural hillside, but his younger brother rushed to his aid and saved him.
“I could see his hand, his gloves, sticking out, waving,” Braeden Hansen said Wednesday, a day after the avalanche buried his brother Hunter in the Franklin Basin, near the Idaho border.
“But when I got to him, he was about 2 feet away and his head was about 2 feet under the snow,” Braeden Hansen said.
The avalanche occurred at about 8,400 feet elevation, according to the Utah Avalanche Center. The area where it occurred had a “persistent weak layer,” it said in an event notice.
The brothers were enjoying the snow in some meadows in Logan Canyon. They were climbing to a higher meadow when the avalanche came down the slope.
“I saw the snow billowing and I knew it was an avalanche,” said Braeden Hansen, who was ahead of his brother.
“I turned around to see the slide hit Hunter and I saw him fall and bury himself, and then I lost sight of him,” Braeden Hansen said.
Braeden Hansen activated a beacon showing where his brother was. He found Hunter Braeden about 150 yards from where he had last seen him.
“I just brushed the snow off his head and took off his helmet so he could start breathing again, and then I started carrying his body out of there,” Braeden Hansen said.
Hunter Hansen had taken out his phone to record his brother going down the slope, and then something caught his attention. It was the avalanche, with the snow breaking and starting. It happened too fast to get out of the way, he said.
“It just dragged me down the mountain,” he said. “The most violent thing I have ever felt.”
It fell and when the snow compacted, it felt like cement, he recalled.
“I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t do anything,” Hunter Hansen said. “I crashed into a rock or a tree.”
Hunter Hansen said he suffered bruising during the ordeal and will have his leg checked for a possible fracture. He has a wife and daughter, and his family has called his survival a “Christmas miracle,” he said.
The brothers were connected by radio, but Hunter Hansen was motionless in the snow and could only listen but not respond. He heard his father and brother talking about him and looking for him.
“I found it, I found it,” came over the radio, Hunter Hansen recalled.
“There was a sigh of relief when I felt it start to dig,” Hunter Hansen said. He recalled “being on my last breath” and holding it in as long as he could before being rescued.
Hunter Hansen credited his brother’s quick thinking in the situation.
The brothers always have beacons, which allow others to find them, and probes, shovels and airbag devices when they go into the backcountry in case of an avalanche, they said.
“It can happen at any time, any day, and it sure happened to us,” Braeden Hansen said.
According to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, an average of 27 people die each year in avalanches in the United States. Utah has the fourth-highest number of avalanche deaths recorded since the winter of 1951 and 1952. Colorado, Alaska and Washington state are the top three.
“You hear so many tragic stories of people who got buried in avalanches and didn’t make it out, so I feel very blessed and lucky,” Hunter Hansen said.
