Snowboarder survives fall into hole on mountain

Witnesses say man emerged after ravine run

A snowboarder had a close call on New Hampshire’s Mount Washington after falling into a hole at the base of a waterfall, during a run down Tuckerman Ravine on Saturday.

The snowboarder hit a rocky ridge a couple of times before falling below the surface, according to videos posted online by witnesses.

After a few tense minutes, the man threw his snowboard out and later climbed out of the hole with icepicks, drawing cheers from witnesses, according to Jeff Fongemie, acting director of the Mount Washington Avalanche Center.

“Collectively, the entire ravine gasped at that point,” Fongemie said.

Fongemie declined to identify the man but said he was uninjured and hiked down the mountain on his own. He said he was not sure why the boarder decided to attempt the slope.

“I’m not sure if it was on purpose or by accident. The top of the cliff was pretty sloped,” Fongemie said. “We were so thankful that he was alive and OK that his decision-making going into that seemed irrelevant.”

Fongemie said skiers and snowboarders occasionally fall into holes in the ravine, which are created by flows of water as snow melts in the spring. Flowing water cuts into the snowpacks as deep as 100 feet, creating chasms under the surface.

Fongemie said he was not sure how deep the hole is, but crews are planning to check later this week.

Such accidents can be fatal, depending on how deep someone falls.

“If that guy went down into the hole deeply, we simply couldn’t get a hold of him,” Fongemie said.

Tufts University student Charles Swan, 22, was in the ravine Saturday with a couple of friends and watched the scene unfold, recording his own footage. He said energy among skiers was high during the first half of the day, but as the day went on and the snow warmed, Swan saw an increasing number of wipeouts.

He started filming when he saw the boarder, wearing a green snowsuit and strapped to a bright red board, position himself at the top of the incline. He said the route looked “super sketchy.”

“He was just standing up there, and you could kind of tell he wasn’t really confident in what he was going to do,” Swan said. “To his right is the part you’re supposed to go off of, and then to his left is the part that kind of leads you down into the waterfall. I was watching and I was hoping that he wasn’t going to do this.”

When the man disappeared, Swan thought he was dead until he saw the snowboard pop out of the hole three to five minutes later, he estimated. It was another few minutes before the boarder made it out.

“His skin looked kind of red, like he’s pretty cold” Swan said. “But he was smiling — yeah, he was smiling.”

A rescue crew attended to the man, giving him a hypothermia wrap — “a big burrito made of big bags and a plastic tarp” — which helps retain warmth and prevent heat loss through evaporation, Fongemie said.

Fongemie said the boarder’s clothes had been soaked by the waterfall but one of his friends had a dry outfit for him to change into.

Tuckerman Ravine Trail is a popular springtime backcountry skiing site. Most of its routes are pitched at 35 degrees or steeper.

Last month, a skier was rescued after triggering a soft-slab avalanche in the slope’s loosened snow, according to the Mount Washington Avalanche Center.

In April 2019, a skier survived a fall into another waterfall along the ravine. He crawled out of a different hole after rescuers searched for 20 minutes.

Fongemie said that while falls like this one attract a lot of attention, they are easily avoidable with planning. He noted that the day went by mostly without incident, despite a massive crowd in the ravine.