Authority (‘I was involved so I can tell you’)
When I was 19 years old my family and I found ourselves in what could have been a life threatening event. The year was 2019, and we were drawing to the end of our skiing holiday in Switzerland. It was an overcast day, but as it was our last day there, we decided that we would go to the top of the mountain for some skiing in order to make the most of it. We got the train up the mountain early in the morning and managed to ski with no problems for the first few hours. We noticed the clouds slowly fill the entire blue sky but chose to ignore it and continued as normal. We were on a ski lift going back up to the very top of the mountain when we noticed that the winds were so strong that they were moving the entire ski lift backwards rather than forwards. Luckily the lift still managed to carry us up to the top of the mountain harm free, but as we had never seen winds that strong before we decided that we would get the train down instead of skiing. We walked with all our ski gear to the station that is situated at the peak of the mountain, only to be informed by one of the train guards that there was a snowstorm slowly covering the top of the mountain, and the trains that are built to withstand this kind of whether couldn’t even hack it. We were then left with two options, we could either stay in the train station and wait for several hours for the storm to pass over, or we could slowly ski down the mix of red and black runs in the midst of one of the strongest snow storms the ski resort has ever had to face. After a lot of discussion, and a fair few tantrums from my younger siblings who were rightfully terrified, we decided that we couldn’t miss our flight, and so we would ski down the mountain through the storm. We put all of our gear on, and the second we stepped outside I saw my dad smack down to the floor due to the unexpected wind furiously pushing us aside. This sent my younger brother into hysterics, but we managed to calm him down eventually getting him outside with the rest of us. My dad led us single file down the mountain, with myself at the very back to make sure that no one split off from us. The mix of harsh wind and violent snow was forming icicles to grow on my beard, and freezing my lips shut. Due to the pain I was experiencing from this I stopped for a second to try to warm may face with my hands, I looked up and realised that I could no longer see any of my family. This was because the wind and snow was so strong, mixed with the pale white sky everything in our line of vision was completely invisible unless it was less than a few metres in front of us. I quickly composed myself and began to take long stretches from side to side of the mountain as I made my way down by myself, hoping to find my family again. I continued this method of stretching across the mountain in order to find them for a while before I ended up finding my sister on the floor in the snow. I swiftly got her back onto her feet and screamed through the loud wind for her to stick to me like glue as we continue down the mountain. She gestured in a certain direction screaming something, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying over the snow storm, she began to ski off in a different direction and I quickly followed her, I was then extremely relieved to then find the rest of my family slowly skiing towards the clear end of the snow storm.
Benjamin’s Blog 