Avalanche
For nearly an hour, Thibault lay buried under 1.2 meters (4 feet) of snow, unable to move, unable to see, fighting for breath. The 38-year-old skier from Megève had been ski touring in Bonneval-sur-Arc, France, on February 14 when a snow slab fractured beneath him, sweeping him away. His survival, against overwhelming odds, was nothing short of miraculous.
In an interview with Mélanie Tournadre of ici Pays de Savoie, Thibault recounted the terrifying ordeal. He had been making his way toward the Fond des Fours refuge when he felt the snow around him give way. “I have a plate that cracks all around me and that takes me with it,” he recalled. As he came to a stop, more snow rushed down, burying him completely. “The first thing I say to myself is that I’m in an avalanche and that the first cause of death in an avalanche is the lack of oxygen. So I immediately focused on [calming down] my breathing to try to stay alive as long as possible.”
Encased in darkness, he quickly realized the severity of his situation. “Very quickly, I feel the lack of oxygen. I see that I can’t move anything, I can’t do anything. It’s a dark night down there, and the notion of time is very abstract in this situation.” The reality set in and dark thoughts crept into his mind. “I immediately become aware that in this configuration, maybe it is much better that the end is now, that it ends quickly for me.”
But thankfully for Thibault, his girlfriend, who had not been caught in the avalanche, immediately called for help. “She has mobile network right away, even if it cuts out two or three times,” he said. But from her perspective, the wait felt unbearable. “She saw me leave, and in her head, she thinks it’s too late, it’s all over.”
For Thibault, time blurred into an agonizing stretch of stillness, the air growing thinner with each passing moment.
Then, faintly, he thought he heard something—helicopter blades, shovels. “I wondered if it was my imagination or if it was real,” he said. Then, the unmistakable scrape of metal against snow. “I hear shovel noises, and then I see the shovel passing in front of my face, removing the snow in front of me, and I have a real breath of oxygen. Little by little, I realize that it’s true, that I’m going to get out of it.”
When he was finally pulled free, his relief was overwhelming. “It’s a huge relief. I repeated many times that it was incredible, that it was crazy,” he said. “I am full of gratitude and want to give a huge thanks to the entire CRS Alpes team. It was February 14, Valentine’s Day, and the rescuer who took me out is called Valentin… a huge thank you to him.”
Thibault and his girlfriend had assessed the avalanche forecast before heading out that day. “In our opinion, we had not started in an imprudent way,” he said. “But the difference is that there had been a lot of wind, the snow had moved in a very heterogeneous way. I was in a place where there was slope, a passage apparently around 40° of inclination, which was relatively short—barely 50 meters (164 feet)—but even on a short distance like that, it can go. We underestimated the risk a little at that time.”
His survival defied the statistics. Studies show that after 35 minutes of burial, the odds of survival drop below 10%. At the one-hour mark, they stand at roughly 19%. Thibault had been under the snow for nearly an hour when rescuers reached him. His ability to control his breathing and the swift response of his partner and the CRS Alpes team made the difference between life and death. Just last week a man was found alive after an hour buried under snow in Colorado.
- Related: Study Finds Avalanche Victims with Long Burial Times (>60 Min) Have Only 19% Chance of Survival
The following day, another avalanche struck in the same area, this time with tragic consequences. Two hikers, a man and a woman in their 30s, were swept away and could not be saved. Their deaths serve as a stark reminder of the unpredictable and often deadly power of avalanches, even for those who take precautions.
For Thibault, the experience is one he will never forget—but he also knows how close he came to never telling his story at all.
