Saved from a snowy tomb
Nick McNutt made it look so effortless, even for a pro skier. He bounded, glided, swished and soared down a powdery bit of terrain overlooking an alpine lake in coastal British Columbia, while his fellow skiers chilled in the midday sun. Their action-sport moviemaking was finished for the day—but Nick, the group’s freestyle specialist, wanted to trick out a bit more. “I love to watch you do your McNutt thing,” Ian McIntosh encouraged him. As his friend nailed one last aerial, McIntosh called out: “What a ninja!”
Neither ninja nor spectators anticipated what followed a second later. Large chunks of snow and ice, broken loose from a small ledge McNutt had landed on moments earlier, tumbled into him.
