A snowboarder is lucky to be alive after a stranger was skiing and rescued him from a tree well in the backcountry of Washington's Mount Baker.
Francis Zuber, 28 of Bellingham, was enjoying an afternoon skiing with friends when he spotted a snowboard sticking out of the snow. Zuber, who was wearing a GoPro at the time, quickly jumped into action and freed the suffocating snowboarder. The rescue was captured on video.
"I had no idea how long he'd been there for,” he tells Glacier Media in an interview. "I knew I needed to get to them immediately."
In the video, you can hear Zuber yell, ‘Are you alright?’
Ian Steger, who was stuck in a tree well, managed to move his snowboard slightly. Zuber, who has been skiing for 24 years, had all the right gear for the dramatic rescue.
“The part of the process of getting (to him) was really the scariest ordeal of the whole thing,” he says, noting it was a struggle.
Zuber used his skis to get closer but the snow kept pushing him down.
"I sunk into the snow and realized that me getting to him is going to just be a huge effort. I was really scared I was not going to be able to get to him in time,” says Zuber.
With the clock ticking, he cleared the snow out from in front of him instead of climbing over it and grabbed the snowboard to pull himself up. Out of breath, Zuber dug deeper and deeper to try and get to the trapped man.
“Ah, c'mon,” he can be heard saying in the video.
Steger tried to remain calm. He had a small air pocket.
He heard his friends on his walkie-talking trying to talk to him but realized they weren’t able to locate him.
At one point, a large section of snow falls on top of Zuber as he says, “Are you alright? Can you hear me?”
After digging for more than a minute, he finally finds Steger's face.
“Once I got to him, there was a little bit of relief because he was still moving. I knew that he was going to be OK, and that I would be able to dig him out,” recalls Zuber, who estimates Steger was trapped head-first for five to seven minutes.
“It probably felt like a lifetime for him.”
Once Zuber reached Steger, he told him they were both going to catch their breaths. He then pulled out a shovel to clear the rest of the snow.
"I cleared enough around him, had him grab onto my arm and pulled him out,” says Zuber. “The first thing I did was just give him a big hug.”
Rescue bonds men for life
Following the rescue, the pair decided to meet up on Saturday to go skiing and snowboarding together.
“There are no words to express the gratitude that I have for you,” said Steger, who also lives in the Pacific Northwest, in social media post. “Thanks for saving my life."
For Zuber, it was a moment he will never forget.
“This was my first rescue and hopefully my last, so I won't ever have to do it again,” he says. “Saving someone's life is quite a thing to have happened to you and for him to be this great person is just really awesome.”
Zuber has taken an avalanche certification course and spends a lot of time researching how to be safe in the outdoors.
“You always have to keep your skills honed-in and practice whenever you can with your buddies, especially if it's a high-avalanche danger day and just practice beacon rescue,” he says.
He hopes this video will highlight the need to have proper training and equipment.
“Ian, the snowboarder, is a very experienced snowboarder and was doing all the right things and was with a group and this still happened,” Zuber says.
BC AdventureSmart staff did watch the dramatic video.
"It was intense. It was it was action-packed. It was scary," says Sandra Riches, the organization's executive director. "Every winter, there's a story about a tree well incident. Sadly, there are fatalities due to these."
The video shows the dangerous situations that can happen while skiing, snowboarding or even snowshoeing in B.C.’s mountains.
“It's all of our responsibilities to pay close attention when we're playing in these areas and really keep an eye on your buddies and out for yourself,” she says.
Riches hopes everyone in B.C. will file a trip plan and alert people where they're going before they head out. Using a buddy system and having a whistle on a zipper close to the face are also helpful.
“Keep an eye out for each other and know that these tree wells exist at the base of every single tree,” she says.
A search and rescue response can take time, Riches adds, so looking out for each other in the backcountry can save lives.
Zuber is thankful for SAR members who conduct rescues similar to his.
“They're doing this stuff all the time, pretty much every day, helping people out of situations like that,” he says. "They deserve a lot of recognition and way more than they get.”
