(UTV | KYRGYZSTAN) – A group of nine British and an American hiker who went on a trek in Kyrgyzstan’s Tian Shen mountains encountered a stunning and rather scary experience as the snow from the glacial peaks came rolling down like a giant wave and collapsed on the mountain they were at.
The avalanche, captured by one of the trekkers, however, did send one of them to the hospital but all of them survived it.
The footage was uploaded on Instagram by Harry Shimmin, a member of the trekking tour. In the video, one can see the avalanche at a far distance which then approaches towards the trekkers, forcing them to take cover.
Shimmin continued to film the avalanche until the very end, probably for a little too long, when the snow reached him and took him under.
Speaking about the incident in his Instagram post, the trekker confessed, “…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 felt in control, but regardless, when the snow started coming over and it got dark / harder to breathe, I was bricking it and thought I might die.”
“Behind the rock it was like being inside a blizzard,” he said, adding there was an “adrenaline rush” after it was over.
He said he was only covered in a small layer of snow, without a scratch but one of them in the group had cut her knee quite badly, while another also sustained some light bruises after falling off a horse.
“If we had walked 5 minutes further on our trek, we would all be dead,” he noted. The video available on Instagram has since garnered nearly three lakh views.
Avalanches are life threatening and many trekkers fall fatal to the disaster every year. The act seen in the video is not advised and caution must be exercised.