Wall of snow heads for mountain workers as controlled avalanche trigger goes wrong

At a first glance of this footage, it looks very bad indeed.

We hear men yelling and see a raging avalanche thundering down the slopes of a snow-capped mountain.

You’d half expect this vision to have come from a camcorder dug up after an extensive recovery mission.

The footage was posted to Facebook by Lionel-Crinou Urech last week, chalking up more than 175,000 views.

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But it didn’t go viral because this was a terrible disaster, just a bit of a blooper on the part of mountain workers.

As we learned from a report from Ski Pass, this was actually the result of a controlled avalanche trigger.

Shot at the Anzère ski resort in Valais, Switzerland, the video shows a whoooole lot of snow coming down the mountain.

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The crew you see being clouded by snow were standing at a pre-arranged observation post, where they could safely watch from a distance.

And while they weren’t really in any danger, they did have to brush off a few flecks of snow.