Buried: The 1982 Alpine Meadows Avalanche

This documentary is one of the best that I have ever watched. I remember this event well as I was learning to ski at Heavenly Valley Ski Resort during this terrible storm. Such a perfect storm was created from the weather, the snow conditions, etc. While watching this moving doc, I chuckled, I had tears in my eyes, and I learned a lot about snow and weather and what can create these types of conditions that led to this tragic event. I also really enjoyed the interviews with the surviving people that were in charge at Alpine Meadows that terrible day. Well filmed, well documented, and the subject matter was handled beautifully with grace, homage, and dignity given where deserved. This needs to be nominated for the Best Documentary category!

7.0 stars.

This is a semi-memorable documentary about a really bad avalanche in one of the most avalanche prone resorts in the world. What's the big surprise here? It's obvious that something like this was going to happen in such a hazardous location, and yet, the local "experts" figured they had it under control. It's a sad story of the needless loss innocent lives. These things happened a lot in those days, not so much now 40 years later. We don't see nearly as much of these dangerous occurrences in the United States these days. For some reason our safety awareness has skyrocketed ten-fold since the 80's, yet life expectancy hasn't changed. I find that interesting. This film is very well done. I don't watch a whole lot of documentaries, but got through this one just fine.

This documentary had me riveted to my seat. I have always had an interest in this story, mainly because of how it affected our family. My brother-in-law was a professional skier at the time and his girlfriend was at the resort working that day. She became so worried about the weather conditions, so she called my brother-in-law to come pick her up. The avalanche happened about an hour after they left. It was a miracle she avoided the catastrophe that followed. I've heard this story so many times, and I'm glad someone finally did a documentary about it. Thank you to all those who worked so hard in the rescue efforts.

As someone who isn't a skier, but is active in outdoor recreation (I'd rather snowshoe), and lives in the mountains of Colorado, I was keenly interested in this movie when I saw the description. I was hoping for something great, and it is indeed great.

Told from the perspective of the people involved, and with no third person narration, this story unfolds with the events leading up to, and after, the avalanche.

You get an idea of what the people were like at the time, how much they've grown since then, and how much this affected them. They are at times very emotional, but always with a sense of honesty. They were mostly people (around my age, as far as I can tell) who were having a good time being ski bums, when tragedy struck. How they dealt with the tragedy is the main thrust of the story, and it is told with brutal forthrightness.

Even if skiing or winter recreation isn't your thing, this is still a movie to watch.

I enjoyed the bulk of the documentary. I had never heard of this event, and this was very informative. Great insight into the impact this had on everyone.

However, in the critical points of the story, the background music/sounds were so overwhelming I had to fast forward or turn down so low I couldn't really hear the speaker. Especially the high pitched sounds that are used over and over. Very distracting. Fine line of using sounds to increase the drama and making it so unbearable it has the opposite effect. For a large part of this documentary, the background sounds are simply unbearable. Just let the story stand on its own.