While many of us are backcountry skiing enthusiasts, most of us have been lucky enough to never be involved in a serious avalanche incident. All the training in the world will never prepare you for the real thing. That’s why videos like these from Swiss snowboarder Victor Liebenguth are so valuable. Check out this intimate video of a recent rescue in Verbier, Switzerland, and read the caption for the full story on the incident.—ML

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Avalanche in Verbier, Switzerland. Thursday 30th of January was a hard day, almost one meter of powder landed on a four weeks dry terrain, the avalanche risk was so high (4/5). We were riding some snug couloirs in @verbier area when we saw an important avalanche going down next door Creblet pass. Maybe 10 people riding at the same time, on the same face. No security precautions at all. Unfortunately two girls were snowboarding in the middle of the face and the avalanche hit them so hard. We were the first on site and immediately started to do the beacon research. We quickly found the first one, second one was 70m down the face and quickly rescued as well. While digging out the girls people around continued to ski in every directions and the inevitable happened, second avalanche hit the area and a third person got stocked in it. Fuck tat was scary. @verbier is the freeride mecca and everyone riding outside the slopes should have the right equipment, get informed of the conditions and more importantly get trained to mountain safety with institutes like @istaeducation to have the right reflex and knowledges. Usually not a big fan of watching that kind of content on the socials but I hope this will help a bit in motivating people to get educated. Here is a condensed 50s of the accident, think it’s enough. #gettrained #istaeducation #avalanche #verbier

A post shared by Victor Liebenguth (@victorliebenguth) on Feb 17, 2020 at 9:27am PST