Elisabeth Malloy looked up and saw the oncoming slab. As the avalanche threatened to swallow her, she tried to swim to the top as she slid down a mountain east of Salt Lake City.
She couldn’t. The avalanche buried her.
“I immediately called for Elisabeth,” said her boyfriend, Adam Morrey, who had been backcountry skiing with Malloy on Saturday.
“There was no response from her,” Morrey, 30, said, his voice breaking as he recalled those first few minutes.
But the two had come prepared. And on Wednesday they sat side by side and told their story to reporters at a news conference.
Describing the avalanche as feeling like a “water slide,” Malloy said she couldn't stop her momentum.
“I was sliding face-first on my stomach downhill,” she said.
Morrey, who hit a tree during the avalanche, said he used a rescue beacon to pinpoint his girlfriend’s location and began digging with an avalanche shovel.
