A skier buried for more than four hours beneath an avalanche at Stevens Pass in Washington State cried out to God for help and his wife tracked his location from their home through her phone app.
How many of us have been in situations where God was our only resort and strength? Maybe it was a scary medical diagnosis or a financial crisis that left us helpless. We cried out to God because there was nowhere else to turn.
Michael Harris did the same thing — except he was doing it from under several feet of snow, completely unable to move, with no way to call for help. And God heard him.
Harris had spent most of February 26 skiing Big Chief Bowl at Stevens Pass. He followed another skier down the slope, then shifted about 10 to 15 feet across the bowl chasing fresh tracks.
“That’s when everything changed for me,” he said.
Snow slabs cracked above and below him and the avalanche took him for a ride.
He fell back on his avalanche training and started swimming with his arms, trying to stay near the surface. It worked just enough — he ended up buried under several feet of snow but with a beach ball-sized air pocket right in front of his face.
Everything else was locked in place. “The sensation was being encased in cement,” he said. His Apple Watch sat right there on his wrist. His iPhone was in his jacket pocket. Inches away, both of them. He couldn’t reach either one.
That’s when Harris relied on his faith and had a desperate conversation with God. “I said Heavenly Father I am in a bad way,” he recalled. “Please let someone know how to find me because I knew that if I was fully buried there was probably no signs that I was there.”
Meanwhile his wife Penny was home in Bothell, and something just felt off. He wasn’t answering calls or texts, and the worry kept building.
“You get a feeling something’s just not right,” she said. “I followed my intuition, saw his location, checked it a couple times and saw it wasn’t moving.”
She called ski patrol, got in the car and drove to the resort as fast as she could. She pulled up the Find My app and showed rescuers exactly where his signal was sitting still on the mountain. Ski patrol headed into Big Chief Bowl with an avalanche rescue dog.
They got to him four hours after the burial. Four hours. Avalanche experts say survival chances drop sharply after just 15 minutes, so the math really doesn’t add up here — unless you factor in the One who was listening the whole time.
When rescuers dug him out, they were stunned to find him still conscious. His body temperature had dropped into the 70s. He was rushed to the hospital with hypothermia, pneumonia, a lung contusion, kidney injuries and a broken leg that needed seven screws, a plate and a bone graft.
The surgical team started calling him “Miracle Mike the Avalanche Man.” He’s owned it ever since.
Penny was praying out loud and screaming the whole drive up. “Not now, now is not the time. I need him, we need him, wherever he is, whatever mercy you’ve got be with him, I’m coming,” she cried out. And the prayers were answered.
His daughter Lauren shared on a GoFundMe page that he faces 14 to 16 weeks of recovery. “It is a true miracle that he survived and didn’t sustain life altering or life threatening injuries,” she wrote. “I have been thanking God since the incident that he is still here with us.” The fundraiser has raised over $30,000 to help cover medical bills, since Harris is the sole provider for his family.
Under all that snow, Harris said one thing kept his mind from going to a dark place — his family. “They were the only thing I thought about.”
He wants his story to mean something beyond his own survival. “If my story can make people want to drive toward better connection, think about their families different and think about how they connect with God in their life, then it’s all worth it for me.”
This story shows something beautiful about the bond between Michael and Penny, and their shared relationship with God.
We know how fragile marriages have become today. So many couples demand their own space, guard their privacy, mind their own things and might not even notice if their spouse is late coming home or unreachable for a while. But a God-centered marriage doesn’t work like that. They don’t live like two separate people — they are one.
Harris is alive today because he had his location sharing turned on with Penny. That small decision made it possible for her to track him when it mattered most. God used that bond between them to save Harris.
Let’s keep Michael and his family in our prayers as he recovers from surgery and gets back on his feet.
WATCH: Skier Buried in Avalanche Prays for Help as Wife Uses Phone App to Find Him
