My legs were draged down deeper because my skis were still at my feet. In the last moment I tried to cover my face with my hands to create some room in front of my face to breath. The snow came to a stop and I was pressed together from the snow, I hardly could breath. In the last moment before I completely went down I saw my husband further down and knew he still was alive which reliefed me.
First I was hardly able to get some air, I was panting, I managed to move my right hand and shoveled some snow aside and could see the blue sky in a small hole above my head. I shoveled some more and managed to get some more space around my thorax and the breathing improved. I was still wearing my sunglasses and I felt the tears in my eyes, i was not crying, I didn't have enough air to sob, there were just tears, not realy rolling down my cheeks but pooling under the eyes. All sort of thoughts went throug my head in this situation. Death ist near, I was thinking about our two kids and my husband which I hoped was still alive. After what felt like light years our guide appeared in my "hole to heaven" and he started to shovel me out, I could hear him pant because of the effort, snow from an avalanche is hard! Shortly afterwards came my husband and after him the rest of the group which was frozen in shock and didn't dare to do anything before the guide called them.
It took about 15 minutes until I was completely out, because I coulden't move my legs, because they were fixed to my skis. When I was out I tried to stand on my left leg, which was burning like hell due to lack of bloodcirculation under the snow masses. I sat down in the snow and was shaking all over, I hardly could talk because I was shaking so badly. I was shaking because of the shock, the cold inside the snowmasses and also psychically. There was an other touring group with their guide which came to help us and the other tour guide took me in his arms and hold me realy thight for some minutes to calm me down. The shaking came in waves, on and off. Later our touring guide accompanied me to a safe place out of the avalanche in the sun. He sat down beside me an looked me in the eyes. He told me that I did well and I thanked him for shoveling me out. Our tourguide is a real mountain bloke with light brown eyes and a suntan and when I looked in his eyes again I saw them swimming in tears. Two tears escaped the eyes, one on each side and slipped down his nose. He didn't wipe them. I was able to see the tears even I was in greatest distress myself and I was astonished about the irony of life.

What an experience, terrifying! Glad you are ok, if a little shaken - a really scary moment!

Did you cry after everything settle down? I've witnessed a few times people don't cry immediate when something major like this happens - but when they calm down and reflect on what happened the tears start to flow - sometimes the crying can be quite intense! This can often occur with a significant other - like with your husband - did he show any emotion?

Did your mountain guide display any other crying characteristics? Emotional voice? Did he acknowledge his tears? I actually like to hear that 'manly' guys cry and allow their tears to be visible to others. Crying has been of greatly benefit to me in generally lately and I wish society accepted male tears more openly than they generally do - so hearing his guy allowing tears to flow I regard as a positive step.

Hope you are recovering from your ordeal.

 

Sounds to me like you are like I am - I don't cry during emergencies, but once they're over I fall apart. I may feel like crying, but it's like something holds me back until it's "safe" for me to let go.