The grandeur of an oncoming avalanche was captured by a British mountain climber who was among a party of ten people who survived the massive avalanche.
The footage was uploaded to Instagram by Harry Shimmin and has since been uploaded to Twitter.
As the snow descended Shimmin can be heard saying, “Holy s**t. Oh God. Oh dear God.”
Check out this incredible avalanche footage from the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan. Luckily, everyone survived. Account: https://t.co/amo4Bh6z8I pic.twitter.com/WQumCfelgz
— Everest Today (@EverestToday) July 10, 2022
In his Instagram post, he said that the group of 9 British climbers and one American was on a tour of the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan.
“We’d just reached the highest point in the trek and I separated from the group to take pictures on top of a hill/cliff edge. While I was taking pictures I heard the sound of deep ice cracking behind me. This is where the video starts,” he wrote.
Shimmin said he had a plan for staying safe.
“I’d been there for a few minutes already so I knew there was a spot for shelter right next to me. I was on a cliff edge, so I could only run away from the shelter (hence why I don’t move). Yes I left it to the last second to move, and yes I know it would have been safer moving to the shelter straight away. I’m very aware that I took a big risk,” he wrote.
Would you have continued to record?
“I felt in control, but regardless, when the snow started coming over and it got dark / harder to breath, I was bricking it and thought I might die,” he said.
The video does not cover Shimmin’s pursuit of a safer place to ride out the avalanche.
“Behind the rock it was like being inside a blizzard. Once it was over the adrenaline rush hit me hard. I was only covered in a small layer of snow, without a scratch,” he wrote.
When he rejoined his party, he found one woman had a serious cut on her knee and had to go to a medical facility by horseback, while another had bruises from falling off a horse.
“The whole group was laughing and crying, happy to be alive (including the girl who cut her knee). It was only later we realised just how lucky we’d been. If we had walked 5 minutes further on our trek, we would all be dead,” he wrote.
He added that after the avalanche passed, they walked the path they could have been on.
He wrote that the group walked “among massive ice boulders and rocks that had been thrown much further than we could have run, even if we acted immediately. To make it worse, the path runs alongside a low ridge, hiding the mountain from view, so we would have only heard the roar before lights out.”
In a later Instagram post, he noted that “I won’t lie, it was harrowing to walk through the aftermath of where we would have been if we were 5 minutes quicker. I stared at the roof of my tent for longer than I care to admit that night. Very very glad everyone survived without super serious injuries.
“Our group are all safe, however the American lady who cut her knee (to the bone) has spent some time in hospital. After the avalanche she spent 3hrs on a horse to the medical centre of a nearby gold mine and got stitched by a doctor there. She was then in ER for a while in a local hospital. She’s since flown back to the US,” he wrote.
The Tian Shan mountains are in south-eastern Kyrgyzstan, according to the Guardian.
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