Snowboarder’s GoPro Avalanche Video Will Make You Think Twice About Winter Sports

An avalanche video making the rounds online will make you think twice about snowboarding, especially if you should find yourself on the slopes of the Retezat Mountains, located in the southern Carpathians.

That’s where snowboarder Sorin-Alexandru Radu was when he shot what you’re about to see using a GoPro camera.

As Radu begins, it appears to be a beautiful sunny day — clear, cold, and with plenty of snow to warrant an entire Saturday. But it doesn’t take long in the 52-second avalanche video to see how quickly this natural calamity can go down.

Radu barely has time to respond to the cracking snow, and any response he might have been able to come up with would have been insufficient for avoiding what happened next. Luckily, Radu is alive, but as you can tell, it isn’t through any doing of his own. Have a look, it’s less than a minute of your life.

Naturally, YouTube was taken with what Radu posted. The avalanche video went up on February 3 and has already been viewed more than 350,000 times.

Some commenters were sure to criticize Radu’s response.

“I am curious. I snowboard too. Not an expert. But in this video when the snow starts to crack, HE LOOKED UP…. At this stage meaning he was on his toe side looking up the slope which means he stopped. Could’ve been confused, amazed, don’t know what to do?… He turned back facing downhill but it was too late. The surfer was a twit, lucky to have survived. BTW, some people should go out more.”

Thankfully, there was at least one critic who saved some room for perspective.

“Looking at the terrain, he should have known that there was that high ridge to skiers right and made a b-line back to it instead of stopping when he saw (and felt) the snow fracture. It’s easy to see whole sitting in a computer chair, I’m sure he just panicked.”

Yes, it does seem easier to see things like that from a computer chair, another pointed out.

“Oh look! Everyone’s an expert in snowboarding in this comment section! This must be like the biggest congregation of snowboarding experts in the world!… All you know-it-all [expletives] just suck in the moment and stop giving your faulty advice, while sitting behind a screen.”

What about you, readers? How would you have reacted if presented with a situation like what you see in the avalanche video?