A skier and her dog were caught in a sudden avalanche in the Pyrenees Mountains of Andorra after a routine backcountry run went dangerously wrong. Skier Ares Masip accidentally triggered the slide, which swept both her and her husky, Cim, down the mountainside.
The incident was captured on Masip's helmet-mounted camera and shared on Instagram. As she skied down the slope, the snow beneath her began to rumble without warning.
Within seconds, she lost her balance and fell as the avalanche broke loose. In panic, Masip was heard, terrified, shouting her dog's name, “Cim, Cim”, hoping to warn him away from the danger.
The husky ran towards her instead, after which Cim was pulled into the moving snow and carried downhill. The video showed Masip sliding along with the avalanche debris, while the dog was visible at a distance, also being dragged by the flow of snow.
After several tense seconds, the avalanche came to a halt. Masip slowly stood up and brushed the snow off her skis. Both appeared unharmed.
In a caption shared with the video, Masip explained that the incident occurred in the Cim de l'Hortell area at around 2,400 metres elevation, on a north-east facing slope. It was a location she knew well, having skied it multiple times that season.
“This year I went down 7 or 8 times. And, of the last 5 days, today was the third time,” she said.
Avalanche risk that day was officially rated low to moderate, and fresh ski tracks on the slope added to the impression that conditions were safe, she said.
Masip said these factors led her into what is known as a heuristic trap, a mental bias where familiarity and repetition cause people to underestimate real risk. “It's not that the conditions were safe,” she wrote. “It's that they looked safe.”
“It's good to remember that risk zero, simply, doesn't exist. Today it was a scare and a good lesson on a personal level. If it helps someone not to let the guard down in a ‘trustworthy' place, it will be fine,” she ended her post.
The first recorded deadly avalanche in the eastern Spanish Pyrenees occurred in 1444, when a massive slide destroyed the village of Gessa in Catalonia's Val d'Aran, killing most residents and forcing the village to be rebuilt.
Another major avalanche struck Gessa in 1600, followed the same day by a catastrophic slide that completely wiped out the nearby village of Unha, killing 15 people sheltering in a house believed to be safe.
