Skier Captures Footage of Daring Rescue of Brother Trapped by Avalanche

A GoPro video of a man skiing off a cliff to save his brother is going viral again thanks to Reddit.

The video first surfaced a few months ago. Davis LaMair, his brother Edwin, and a friend were on the slopes at East Vail Chutes in Colorado on Dec. 22, 2013. The brothers start at the same point but head downhill in different directions. Davis, who has the camera affixed to his head, stops as soon as he reaches a cliff.

"Is that an avalanche?" he asks another skier who is off camera. "That's Edwin in an avalanche! Yo, I'm dropping, I'm dropping."

Davis skillfully moves off the cliff, down the slope, and over to his brother. Edwin is mostly submerged in snow. After knocking off his skies and ripping off the camera, Davis digs Edwin out to safety.

Talking to the website BroBible, Edwin recalled the incident that almost took his life.

"The slide took me downhill and the front of my skis hit the tree trunk, and I fell headfirst downhill into the slide," he wrote. "I slid another couple hundred feet through small trees, still headfirst, my legs get thrashed back and forth whacking the trees."

Edwin did not realize the injuries he sustained until after his brother dug him out from the snow.

"After I had calmed down somewhat, I tried to stand up and realized neither of my legs could bear weight," he said. "I had felt my knee ligaments getting destroyed in the small trees in the upper part of the slide."

With the help of a search and rescue team, the three men were able to locate help and get Edwin to the hospital. He suffered no broken bones but believed at the time that he tore his ACL.

Edwin is thankful to be alive, and that his brother and a friend were there and acted quickly. Just two weeks later, an avalanche in the same area killed one person and injured three.