For these real-life survivors, there were no cameras or a $1 million prize. On January 6, 2007, one Colorado family was thrown into a life or death situation that was terrifyingly real.
David and June were looking forward to a few days of skiing at their cabin in Winter Park, Colorado. The mountain route they took to get there was a familiar one—David has used it for the past 15 years. Along for the ride was Gary, the son of David and June's friends. "It was one of those just absolutely crystal clear days in Colorado, royal blue skies," David says. "And we'd actually been talking about we hadn't seen the avalanches run in quite some time."
Without warning, a huge wall of snow and ice—200 feet wide and 15 feet high—came crashing down on their car. "We both saw it out of the corner of our eye and—pow—we were just hit by [what felt like] a train," June says.
The fierce avalanche swept the Boons off the road and sent their car over the guardrail, where it flipped four times and plummeted 200 feet. The car came to a smashing halt upside down when it hit a tree, splitting the tree in half.
Now buried in snow and trapped in the car, David, June and Gary knew they had to think fast to survive. » |
