Snowmobiler Falls 1300 feet into Mt.St.Helens Crater, and lives

[whoisthatguy]

On Saturday, April 12th, 2008, a 53 year old snowmobiler/UPS driver, accidentally broke off the snow drifted rim of Mt. St. Helens, while clad in his shirtsleeves and helmet, and plummeted down the steep west side blast face of the cone. Apparently, he was an experienced water skier and is used to crashing in water at high speeds, so he went immediately into a curled up posture. Although he could hear his helmet hitting rocks on the way down, and had no upper body protection, he suffered only a twisted knee and a few arm scratches. The rim was at about 7700 feet, and the location where he was picked up by helicopter was about 6400 feet. He was still able to walk, at the bottom of his ride. 1300 vertical feet and about 700 feet horizontally. What is the current Guinness book record on that? He had been looking at the view into the crater, prior to his unplanned descent.

http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_041708_news_st_helens_snowmobiler_speaks.75314bf8.html

 

[Lake Cle Elum]

Another one went in?????

http://snowest.com/forum/showthread.php?t=75252

 

[R J]

First reports I heard was a few feet, then it went to a couple hundred and now it's 1300? What was it really?

 

[Lake Cle Elum]

First reports I heard was a few feet, then it went to a couple hundred and now it's 1300? What was it really?

His good friend made some post on the WA state SW forum that he dropped something like 100 feet and then slid and rolled like another 1,000 to 1,500 feet.

 

[Ice Cap]

I heard he fell all the way to the bottom of the crater and burned his boots on some lava! lol

 

[summitchaser]

I bet that ride rated a 10+ on the old pucker factor

 

[Mafesto]

First reports I heard was a few feet, then it went to a couple hundred and now it's 1300? What was it really?

Put it this way, he kept fallling & falling & when he finally slid out of a hole,
the man who found him spoke Mandarin.