Reader’s Digest
82 august 2019
Fitzpatrick’s head. Three minutes
had passed since Crouch had fallen
out of sight, if not more. It felt like
forever to him before any of the
boarders deemed it safe to start
down the mountain. Jackson and
Campos led the way, heading to the
end of the runout, while Fitzpatrick
and Tremblay tracked higher, where
the debris began. Each of them hoped
to pick up a pulsed radio signal from
Crouch’s location transceiver.P
oole spotted a safe spot
to land near the runout and
dropped the chopper. He killed
the engines, then jumped out of the
cockpit with his shovel, running
through the snow toward the object
he’d spotted from the sky. Brushing
its surface off, he confirmed into
the radio that he’d located Crouch’s
board. Poole started to dig.
The chopper’s blades were still
spinning as Campos and Jackson
joined Poole—the two snowboarders
quickly working at the compacted
snow with the shovels they’d carried
in their packs. It took a minute just to
expose Crouch’s legs, and a few more
to uncover the top of his head. He’d
been folded up like a taco, and his
face was blue by the time they got it
exposed. He wasn’t breathing.
Jackson put his hand in Crouch’s
mouth and cleared his airway of snow
and broken teeth. Besides his head
and feet, his body was still buried.
Blood was coming out of his ears.He looked to be dead.
Campos readied to revive him.
Then, suddenly, Crouch’s eyes opened
and he began gasping for breath.
“Oh god!” Campos said, shocked.
“He’s alive! He’s alive!”
Crouch had survived for an
estimated seven minutes under the
snow. He looked around but could
hardly register what had happened.
Then sensation returned to him,
and he began moaning about the
pain piercing through his spine.
Campos asked him if he could feel his
fingers and his toes. He said he could
but continued to complain about
his back. Fitzpatrick and Tremblay
arrived on the scene, and soon the
five of them were digging delicately
around Crouch, none of them wanting
to do anything that would leave
him paralyzed.
When they got the teen out,
the men gingerly straightened out his
body while Poole sprinted back to
the chopper for a stretcher. Close to
2:40 p.m., about 20 minutes after
Crouch first began to fall, the pilot
flipped the propellers back on.
Campos and Jackson climbed into
the aircraft along with Crouch. Once
secured, Poole lifted off from the
mountainside and pointed toward the
Whistler Medical Clinic, some
20 kilometres away.I
t wasn’t until the chopper was
out of sight, and Fitzpatrick and
Tremblay were alone, that the