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Heard an account of this incident on NPR yesterday, so looked it up. It's about a young woman in Norway that was back country skiing and fell through a hole in the ice on a creek and was stuck underwater for 80 minutes. Her companions were physicians and knew that even though her heart had stopped and she was not breathing when they finally got her out of the water, she might possibly still have a chance to be resuscitated. After amazingly heroic efforts by her companions and extensive medical teams in a well equipped hospital she finally fully recovered.
Unless you're willing to ski naked, it seems unlikely this remote possibility would up your chances of surviving avalanche burial, since you would not cool down fast enough, IMO. Seriously though, I found this an extremely interesting account, and it may be good for those of us that spend time where this sort of thing might happen to realize that someone that is very hypothermic and seems dead might possibly be saved, though exceedingly unlikely and requiring heroic efforts and extensive, rapidly available resources.
Unless you're willing to ski naked, it seems unlikely this remote possibility would up your chances of surviving avalanche burial, since you would not cool down fast enough, IMO. Seriously though, I found this an extremely interesting account, and it may be good for those of us that spend time where this sort of thing might happen to realize that someone that is very hypothermic and seems dead might possibly be saved, though exceedingly unlikely and requiring heroic efforts and extensive, rapidly available resources.
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