Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
This fogbow reminds me of the “angel of death” that I saw many years ago while skiing in, I think the Swiss or French Alps. Our French guide, that early morning as we traversed a gentle upper slope high above a valley, suddenly yelled at us to stop. He was quite agitated and pointed ahead to a completly circular aura much like the fog bow. However where it really differed was that in the centre was a more bright spot and there was a tail hanging down from that central white glow!
As the only good french speaker in the group I was pushed to the limit as in a highly emotional tone he said that “in all my years in the mountains I have never before seen an angel. It is the stuff of legends (something like that anyway). We must be quick and very careful to get a better view.” We quickly kick turned in the middle of the slop and traversed away from the awsome sight. At the far side of the piste we turned again to face our angel. She was still there and he told us to look straight at it and ski slowly towards it. Then the real magic was revealed as the tiny ice crystalls sparkled and flashed past our heads. We seemed to be travelling down a tube towards this floating spectre.
You probably think I am exaggerating by now but this is what we all saw. At the end of this second traverse the guide shouted again to halt. We were all skiing towards a quite steep slope which fell away into the trees – not a very safe place to go. “Encore, encore! traversee vite! vite!” he called and sped away from the sight. We turned once more into the angel which had now faded a lot and was less noticable – though as we started to move, the sparkling tunnel was there. Fifty metres of skiing and the angel had disappeared. But we had seen it and the guide was happy, ecstatic even, and told us to gather around.
“Very dangereux. Zis ange lead many to zair det! Zey see her and zey ski and not see good, not see danger of edge. Zey drop over and get killed. Poof!” (well something like that). “Zee ange she lead zem to zair det. Zat is why she ange of det.”
A couple of days later as we gathered at check in to fly to our various home coutries we were in the bar and someone asked the embarrasing question “If they died how do we know they were following the angel of death?”
Nevertheless it was the most impressive high-altitude effect of light and moisture/ice crystals. It only happens in very particular circumstances and is, everyone assured us, very rare indeed. It disappeared because we had dropped a few tens of metres and the incidence of the sun – which was of course behind us all the time the angel was visible – had changed enough to destroy the special effect.
Does anyone know what it was and have they seen it or heard of it in perhaps another culture and by another name?
