How to survive a 1,600-foot tumble
By David Ferry, Outside
Ian McIntosh was maybe five turns into a first descent of a jagged Alaskan peak when things went wrong. The 34-year-old Canadian pro skier was filming a segment for Teton Gravity Research and carving down a face the film crew dubbed “Daybreak Spines.” The light was playing tricks on him, and early-morning shadows made a long spine look easy to cross over. It wasn’t. McIntosh hit it hard and dropped five feet into a trough he didn’t know existed. Then he started rolling.
McIntosh says he was immediately certain of one thing: “I knew I was going to the bottom,” he says. “I knew I was going for a ride.” Then all he could think was, Am I going to get traumatically injured by tomahawking down this mountain? andPlease be over.
You probably know this already—the whole Internet seemed to see McIntosh’s epic 1,600-foot tumble, which was caught on film during a shoot for the upcoming ski flick Paradise Waits. The clip went viral this week because of the spectacular nature of the fall—McIntosh plummets ass-over-heels down the height of the Empire State Building for more than 25 cringe-worthy seconds—but also because after coming to a stop he emerges on top of the snow, unbelievably fine. “I’m OK! I’m OK!” McIntosh says in the video.
