Imagine casually cruising along at a ski resort and the next thing you know you’re in an uncontrolled slide going 50mph with no way to stop and no end in sight.
That’s exactly what happened to this unfortunate skier in the Austrian Alps who caught an edge while riding a black diamond rated slope at Zillertal Arena Ski Resort and ended up in an 1,100 meter uncontrolled slide before mercifully getting caught in a safety net.
The man was running a GPS speed app at the time of the fall which measured his velocity at around 50mph. Truly an epic wipeout:
“Note: I did not know about self arresting, now I do and I agree it would probably have been the best course of action.
A friend and I went skiing on a very steep and icy slope (closed the previous day, during which the top layer of snow melted and froze again), I fell and didn’t manage to slow down. I learned my lesson and I hope some of you will too! Be very careful on steep, icy slopes and learn how to self arrest! I got lucky and managed to get away with just a few bruises.
I had an GPS speed app on at the moment, I fell whilst going around 55 km/h, then I did manage to get back to 40 km/h, but after that the slope got steeper and steeper and in the end, when I hit the net, I was going about 82 km/h! So i guess we could agree the net did a marvelous job :)”