[imagesource: Instagram / Owen Leeper]

Mountaineer and seasonal skier Owen Leeper kept his wits about him as an unexpected snow avalanche swept him down a mountain.

The scary near-tragedy experience happened while he was out skiing in backcountry Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

He captured the entire harrowing experience through first-person (POV) footage showing him sliding down as the snow chute he was skiing on gave way leaving him unable to control his descent.

Drone footage also captured the whole thrilling scene from afar.

Luckily, falling down the face of a mountain left the big mountain skier with just a dislocated shoulder and a gash to his knee, reported Peta Pixel:

“Feeling very lucky right now,” Leeper writes on his Instagram page. “Scoped out this chute a few days ago, and thought it looked great, tight turns, to two different sections of rocks to jump.

“I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but the third turn-in, the slope gave way and it pulled me through the chute, bouncing off the rock walls and losing a ski. I came to a stop after the second set of rocks, and could feel my shoulder had popped out.”

Check it out if you have the guts:

 

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A post shared by Owen Leeper (@o_leeps)

And the macro angle:

 

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A post shared by Owen Leeper (@o_leeps)

Once he regained his balance, Leeper radioed a fellow skier to help pop his shoulder back in but was unable to do so, forcing them to call for a rescue helicopter:

“Roughly three hours after popping it out, three people in the emergency room were finally able to get my shoulder to go back in,” he says.

He recognises how lucky he is that there were no broken bones, though.

Leeper said that although the avalanche forecast was “moderate” that day and he wasn’t too worried about the snow collapsing underneath him, he also knows very well that “every day in the mountains is risky, there isn’t one day of the season where the avalanche danger is ‘none.’”

A few days later and he’s back at it again:

 

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A post shared by Owen Leeper (@o_leeps)

But he’s definitely thinking about that death-defying fall.

[source:petapixel]