‘Very blessed and lucky’: Utah man saves brother buried in avalanche
A Utah trip to enjoy the snow nearly ended in tragedy Tuesday when an avalanche struck a snowmobiler on a backcountry hillside — but his younger brother rushed to his aid and saved him.
A Utah trip to enjoy the snow nearly ended in tragedy Tuesday when an avalanche struck a snowmobiler on a backcountry hillside — but his younger brother rushed to his aid and saved him.
“I could see his hand, his gloves, kind of poking out, waving,” Braeden Hansen said Wednesday, a day after the avalanche buried Hunter Hansen, his brother, in the Franklin Basin, close to the Idaho border.
“But by the time I got to him, he was about 2 feet, his head was about 2 feet under the snow,” Braeden said.
The avalanche happened at around 8,400 feet elevation, according to the Utah Avalanche Center. The area where it occurred had a “persistent weak layer,” it said in a notice of the event.
The brothers were enjoying the snow in some meadows in Logan Canyon. They were climbing up to a higher meadow when the avalanche came down the hillside.
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