A 21-year-old man spent 17 hours buried under an avalanche in the Swiss Alps before rescuers recovered him. He suffered only from mild hypothermia. The man was pinned below about 20 inches of snow and trapped next to a pocket of air, but the crushing weight of the snow proved too much for him to free himself. The man had been skiing alone, and was reported missing by his family at about 4:30pm. Searchers with dogs found his ski tracks that night, but they had to call off the rescue operation until dawn for safety reasons-not that anyone thought it could be anything but a recovery mission anyway. The next morning a search helicopter spotted movement in the slide zone, and people on the ground freed the young man. The guy is obviously insanely lucky, but you have to go a little crazy when you’re caught under 20 inches of snow for 17 hours. I’m sure he made lots of promises about being a better person if he was ever freed.

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