A skier has shared chilling footage of the moment he rescued a snowboarder who had been buried alive head-first in a heavy pile of snow.
Francis Zuber had been on the slopes at Mount Baker, Washington, when he noticed something bright poking out of the snow. What happened next was nothing short of a miracle. Check it out:
After investigating the mysterious object in the show, Zuber realised he had found a snowboard - with someone's feet attached to it.
In a sudden panic, he realised that someone had fallen in the heavy snow and their entire body had been submerged underneath.
"You alright?" he asks as he climbs toward the snowboarder - but there's no response.
Remaining as calm as possible, Zuber takes off his skis and starts digging into the snow with his gloves to try and reach the buried snowboarder.
It's impossible not to hold your breath as the footage from Zuber's bodycam shows him frantically digging through the snow and calling out to the snowboarder, with no response.
Eventually, Zuber reaches the snowboarder's face, and clears off the show so that he can breathe.
The snowboarder, who was later revealed to be a man named Ian Steger, can be heard taking a desperate gasp of air when his face is finally uncovered.
"Okay, you’re good, I got you,” Zuber tells Steger. “Alright we’re both gonna catch our breath for a sec, then I’m gonna help dig you out, okay?"
Finally able to catch his breath, Steger replies: "Thank you."
Zeger then whips out an emergency shovel that he had been carrying in his backpack and assembles it as quick as he can, so he can start digging Steger free.
Sharing the footage to his Instagram page a few weeks later, Zeger warned his fellow skiers and snowboarders about the dangers of the mountains, and reminded them how important it is to travel in pairs or in a group.
"Tree wells are real," he wrote.