Pico Escala, 2297m...the day I survived to an avalanche...March, 9th 14

Second day of my trip to western Pyrenees. On Sunday I was meeting some people of the splitboarding forum. All of us wanted something short and easy, included me. We went to a place one of us knew very well, in fact he had gone over this same route 3 weeks ago.

We left the car in the parking of Astun and start skinning up towards the lakes of Escalar, in this time frozen. There were many many people in this area

From the lakes we decided to hike up to Escalar peak among all the options that this "corner" in Astun offers.

The rocky peak at the background is the Midi d´Ossue.

The reason why we chose this peak is that one of its sides leded directly to the parking. So this is me dropping in. The pak wasnt very high, just around 2200m.

Almost in the parking with amazing views of the peaks of Candanchu. The scenary was in fact very beatiful despite being in the surroundings of the ski resort. We were at 1900m and there was less than 300m to get to the car.....WHEN...

.... the layer of snow suddenly broke. We were three of us and we waited for each other to start as a basic rule. I was the second one and it caught me after a few turns. The first one was way down me and was also caught whereas the third one was luckier and remained just a couple of meters above of the breaking point.

The thing is we two were pulled meters and meters.  I dont know how much time I was in the avalanche, but it seems a lot of time since I saw how the snow cracked and it stopped. I remember very well trying to stay above from the snow and managed to. At one point I thought I was going to fail, because there was a kind of hole and the snow went in reverse, just like in the rivers when the water encounters rocks. My concern was to be stopped by that snow in reverse and the proper avalanche pushing me down.

Good for all of us, none of us was buried. In my case I was pulled all that slope. so it wasnt a child game. I could have died.

First time after like 130 days in the mountains wih my board that I dont just see an avalanche but I was caught by it. The risk of avalanche that day was 2, since we were below 2100m (3 up that). Its true that it was warm and that was south face but the slope had pines, several tracks of people who have gone down first and was the fourth day of stable weather (anticyclone). Even with this knowledge and having the equipment I guess we all stand odds of this. This is mountains in winter.