Steamboat Skier Recalls Avalanche That Buried Him in Snow

Steamboat Springs —“‘It felt like dynamite going off,’” Ryan Mitchell recalled of the moment his world shattered.

That was December 15, 2019. Mitchell was 21 years old, skiing with two friends in Steamboat Springs. They weren’t supposed to be there. The area between Chutes 1 and 2 was closed to the public, a no-go zone for anyone who didn’t read the signs. But Mitchell and his crew did. And the mountain didn’t care about their ignorance.

A persistent hard-slab avalanche tore loose. For context, this isn’t just wet slush sliding down a hill. It’s a structural failure where a layer of snow breaks its bond with a weaker layer beneath it. The result is violent and fast. In a video Mitchell captured, you can hear a distinct pop before the feed cuts to black. His friend is seen pivoting his skis in a last-ditch effort to find traction.

Mitchell was buried under roughly a foot of snow. His friends were buried upright, from the chest down.

“‘There was no fleeing,’ he explained. ‘I got flipped upside down and buried — my head was positioned through my legs and my arms were contorted.’”

The immediate rescue was frantic. Three skiers arrived first, digging Mitchell out. They found him blue, with ice packed in his throat. They pumped him with oxygen until ski patrol took over. Mitchell passed out, screaming, before losing consciousness entirely.

But the physical trauma was only the opening act. The real damage was invisible.

Mitchell’s mental state deteriorated slowly, then all at once. He developed severe anxiety and depression. He became hyper-vigilant, constantly scanning for danger. He isolated himself, cutting off friends and family.

At Colorado Mountain College, where he was studying business, the strain showed. He’d push through stress until he hit his limit, then collapse into a dark place, unable to leave bed for days or even weeks.

He sought help through EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, a form of trauma counseling designed to “unstick” memories that got lodged in the brain during high-stress moments.

“‘When you’re in a moment of such violence, it’s hard for your mind and body to comprehend what is going on,’” he said.

Despite the setbacks, Mitchell kept moving. He finished his business degree at CMC. Then he went further, earning a master’s in economics from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

The avalanche didn’t just bury him in snow. It buried him in silence, in fear, in the quiet weight of a life interrupted.

And now, years later, he’s still digging himself out.