January 11, 2013, I was riding snowmobiles in the mountains of St. Charles, Idaho in the Bear Lake area. Snow conditions were terrible and the avalanche risk was extreme but being the powder hounds we were, we went anyway.  

Right after we had stopped for lunch, we went to the same hill that we always have played on and decided to drop in and hit it anyway. I was the lead rider and decided to drop off the ridge and head down into the bowl in the endless chase for the best powder. On the way in I triggered an avalanche that carried me down the mountain and buried me under 2' of snow in the valley below. I was with 3 friends and one of them rushed down and located me with a beacon and probe, after I was buried approximately 7-8 minutes.

As the avalanche carried me down the mountain, I suffered two compound fractured femurs, compound fractured left arm, broken shin bone, bruised ribs, and minor soft tissue injuries.

While I was buried in the snow, before my friends rescued me, my spirit left my body. I remember feeling completely weightless, with no external pressure on my body at all, no gravity, no cold, no heat, absolute complete perfect comfort. Even the clothes I was wearing seemed to be lighter than air, as if they weren’t even a thing. It almost seemed as if clothing wasn’t really clothing, but light and positive energy was the cover. I remember standing above my body, 5-6' in the air, looking down and seeing myself laying in the snow (even though I was under the snow) and just knowing everything was going to be all right. For some reason I just knew in my heart I had to go back, that I would be back in my body shortly. For some reason my body needed me out for a second to fix some things but was going to be ready quickly to have me back in.

As I was standing there in the air I, vividly and clearly as I can touch and feel this keyboard, remember both my grandpas standing there with me in the air, one on each side of me. I remember looking at them and they back at me. We didn’t talk but we were communicating soul-to-soul and had perfect discernment and, somehow, we knew exactly and perfectly what one another was saying. But they didn’t say anything. It’s like we were communicating with feelings but already knew everything and didn’t need to communicate much. We were all perfectly on the same page with one another.  

I also remember, as we (grandpas and I) were standing there in the air, being perfectly in tune with the nature around me, all around me: front, back, up, down, sideways, everything. I remember the trees feeling connected to my spirit, like they knew who I was, what I was about, almost as if we had known one another before, and there was a feeling of perfect common respect between us as god’s creatures. We were connected. I remember feeling they all looked down on me as I lay there in the snow, my spirit seeing them looking at my body. As they looked at my body it was as if they were cheering for me to be okay. They knew I was in a bad way but they never felt sorry for me, or never had any sort of remorse or anything that would resemble any kind of negative feeling. It was like the trees were there to emit only good.  

I don’t remember any sort of transition in or out of my body. Just waking up back in my body. Although I was smashed to pieces, for some reason I remember the feeling that bothered me the most was not the broken bones but feeling like I was restricted and smashed into a wrong-shaped vessel. Like my spirit was a circle being squeezed to fit into a trapezoidal 3-dimensional container that wasn’t a good fit, or in no way a fit at all! But, none the less, I was smashed, squeezed and prodded back into a terrible-fitting form.

Somewhere between being out of my body and waking up, one friend had located my body and cleared airways for me to start breathing again. He didn’t do CPR to revive me. Once airways were clear, he said, I eventually started breathing on my own. He felt compelled to not do CPR and just sat silently waiting for me to come back.

The physical recovery took years and over a dozen separate surgeries. Nothing in life was or has ever been the same again. Feeling the freedom of the spirit, then being trapped back in this body is miserable. This life really is a temporary thing. I feel like I have to just get through it to enjoy the good on the other side.