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(translated from French)
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(...) "the Avalanche Airbag (AA) just saved my life, I should even say
that it makes me being here today a big miracle."
It took me a while to get pictures of me with
the abs, but in the last few days all I can say is
that I couldn't have a better way of showing the use
of the abs in action. In a couple of words, the abs
just saved my life. I should even say that me being
here today a big miracle. I just came out of the
hospital with no trouble, a little sour but no big
deal.
Right now, I want to say a few things:
first I won't be able to thank you enough for having
given me this back pack, you saved my life by doing
this. The 16mm film footage and photo got taken from
the heli while I was going down and I’ve shown
through this miracle that abs doesn’t just work, it
rocks. I now make it my mission to spread the word
about the abs!
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Now, let me explain what happened:
Speed is
not always enough to keep you safe and ahead of an
avalanche...even though you might hear me pretty
often claiming that speed is your best friend in
freeriding. Doing the right choice at the right time
is not always easy. In the first section of the
avalanche, it seems to work quite well. The slab
brakes, I just get out of it and point down with the
monster on my back and it seems that I'm gonna laugh
about it at the end of that straight line until I
see these weird lines forming all around me. I carry
some serious speed but not enough.
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That mountain wants me down and down I'm going. It's
time to pull my AA... It's really big and as it
breaks again even after that, and on a much bigger
section, I don't tumble for very long. A few
memories when my friends find me maybe two km lower
but nothing really till the hospital. When they
found me on top of maybe six meters of snow, they
didn't think that I could be alive.
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Miracles happen, and soon I realize that it's been a
miracle to still be alive after that. After these
two days of shooting in the area, that slope didn't
show a bad aspect at all and this avalanche or at
least these proportions where completely unexpected.
Apparently a guide that was riding in the same area
got his client into an avalanche in the same type of
slope, same angle, exposition, altitude etc (and
also saved by the abs); He had been riding that
slope couple of times the same day and the day
before and nothing had apparently moved.
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The temperature rose drastically at that time and
that north facing became suddenly full of
surprises.... Anyways, I know I'm more than lucky
and some of that luck is to have had an abs back
pack. The pictures tell enough to realize it.... A
good sign for me... I'll be looking closer to my
terrain in the future but most of all it's a great
sign to listen better to my surroundings in the
future. Filming with a heli is... amazing but it
takes a lot of that time to communicate and to feel
what's around and what's so much bigger than you.
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Xavier De Le Rue.
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