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Skier Schartner in the Zillertal in Tyrol: "Everyone thought I was dead, but I was still there"
Photo: private
He was the last to enter the slope.
His comrades stood downstairs and looked up at him.
As he started to swing, the snowpack suddenly shifted.
Christian Schartner could no longer react.
The avalanche tore him into the abyss with full force.
After 300 meters the roller came to a stop.
He was buried two meters deep upside down and felt the weight of the masses of snow that enclosed him as tightly as if he had been set in concrete.
He couldn't even move his fingers.
He was buried alive, beginning to hyperventilate in a panic.
Just before he passed out, he heard the call melody of his cell phone in his jacket pocket.
»Play me the song of death« by Ennio Morricone.
His girlfriend at the time had tried to reach him, as it turned out later.
She wanted to know if he was having a nice day.
Schartner's voice trembles when he talks about the accident a few years ago on the Arlberg.
He lay in the icy hole for 15 minutes before his companions could dig him up.
His face was bluish purple from the lack of oxygen.
"Everyone thought I was dead, but I was still there." A rescue helicopter flew him to the hospital.
He only got bruises.
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