'We were completely buried:' A family recalls the haunting moment an avalanche overwhelmed their car

By John Roach, AccuWeather staff writer

Shaune Golemon was cruising down the highway on Sunday with his wife Tram riding shotgun and their 9-year-old daughter Kiera riding in the back seat. It was Kiera who noticed it first. A massive avalanche was barreling down the side of a mountain -- and headed directly for their 2016 Toyota Tundra on Colorado's I-70.

“She said, ‘Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!’” Tram Golemon told AccuWeather in an exclusive interview. “I turned to Shaune and said, ‘Avalanche! Avalanche!’"

Shaune, who was behind the wheel of the pickup truck, “thought about trying to outrun it, but that didn’t seem like a smart option,” he said. “I said, ‘Tram, there’s nothing we can do -- hold on to something."

The Golemons were involved in the second -- and most serious -- of two avalanches that swept across I-70 on Sunday. Their truck and dozens of other vehicles were trapped by the fast-moving avalanche that struck them on the passenger’s side and pushed their vehicle across the road and onto the median.

“At first, we didn’t realize we were completely buried,” said Shaune. “My first thought was that I need to turn off the truck to start conserving oxygen.”

But they saw “a little light” coming through the moonroof “and I told Tram, ‘OK, we’re not completely buried, we’re going to be OK,” Shaune recalled.

Tram then peaked her head through the moonroof as a couple of inches of snow fell into the truck through the opening. “You couldn’t see anything but a field of white snow, except cars were piled up behind us,” she said of that first glimpse of the aftermath.

As things settled, Shaune realized the snow on the driver’s side was piled on the door to about a foot below the window, so he brushed away enough to muscle his way out of the door.

The digging out began and reality settled in.

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“It was like a field of devastation,” Shaune said. “It wasn’t just clear snow; there was debris and tree limbs and rocks, dirt, soot.”

The Golemon family spent the next two hours digging out and helping others with their vehicles until the roads were finally clear enough to move on. Shaune even shot some cellphone video in the moments after he made it out of his vehicle, the footage showing a scene that looked almost apocalyptic.

Still … “There were two snowplows to clear the road and one of them got stuck,” Tram said.

And just when they thought it was safe to go back on the road again, emergency personnel talked about their concern for a possible third avalanche on I-70. “I told Tram to roll up the windows because if that third one goes, we’re not going to have a lot of time.”

Fortunately, the Golemons made it home safely, though their trip to their Johnstown home wasn’t a typical two hours but 6½ hours that day, ending at 2:30 a.m. Shaune was “exhausted but still wired in my head” when he posted his dash cam and rear cam video to Facebook and went to bed at 4:30 a.m.

Not long after, he was awoken by “my phone ringing off the hook with instant messages and e-mails,” he said.

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His videos led to a whirlwind couple of days for Shaune, an ATT IT professional and Tram, a restaurant manager. “I have mixed feelings about it personally,” said Shaune, 42. “It’s exhausting. I’m looking forward to getting a good couple nights’ sleep and getting back to normalcy.

“But it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience so it was kind of exciting at the same time,” he said.

And, as for their daughter Kiera, who first spotted the avalanche headed their way -- how likely is a road trip to go skiing again?

“She already has said, ‘I’ll never give up skiing. I love it!’” said Tram, 32.

“She was excited – she loved it,” said Shaune. “Meanwhile, we were breathing hard, just sighing of relief.”