A California man may face criminal charges after a viral video of him snowboarding down a mountain, chased by an avalanche and eventually buried in snow, made the news.
A representative of Sugar Bowl Resort in Norden, California,
told NBC News Wednesday that snowboarder Christian Michael Mares, 29, was in a "very active avalanche area" when he and a friend filmed his wild ride down the mountain. Mares was wearing a personal video camera and his friend filmed the incident from below.
John Monson, marketing director for Sugar Bowl, told NBC that the company has asked the nearby sheriff's office to investigate Mares for trespassing, as the area where he filmed the avalanche has been closed to the public since 2010.
By triggering the avalanche there, "Mares put himself, his friends, ski patrol, and the skiing public at risk," the resort told NBC.
"Given the magnitude and severity of this situation, and the fact that patrol, staff, and public were put at serious risk from Mares' decisions and actions," Monson said the resort would like the situation looked at by law enforcement.
The video was posted to ViralHog's YouTube channel where it received more than 133,000 views by Friday.
"The sheriff's office said it had referred the matter to the district attorney's office for possible prosecution," NBC reported. "The agency has been dedicating nearly all of its resources around the clock to searching for Carson May, a ski instructor who went missing at Sugar Bowl the same day as Mares made his run."
Underneath the YouTube video, many commented that Mares was careless to take such a chance with his life.
"This video is living proof that natural selection doesn't work anymore," one person wrote. "Right off the bat, none of you had avalanche safety gear, so if you'd have been buried, even an inch under, nobody would've found you. You would've died," one person wrote. "I'm just glad nobody else was caught in the slide, you'd be facing a hell of a lot more charges."
Mares told the San Francisco Chronicle that he was unaware he was in an area that was off-limits.
"No one wants to try to start an avalanche," he said. "That'd be absolutely crazy."
Warning: The video below contains strong language.
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