What happens when someone starts falling down the mountain when do they stop falling?
There are many eyewitness accounts of people sliding away, perhaps to be injured and to die. At first they slide slowly, then rapidly pick up speed, often they freeze and fail to try to stop with their ice axe. Perhaps a crampon catches driving their knee into their chest and breaking bones in their leg sending them spinning down. Perhaps they go over a bump and start to tumble. Then they slide at “easily 30 or 40 miles per hour” until they hit trees or rocks below or they go over a cliff and disappear to the glacier below. Sometimes people just slide silently and unseen to their deaths. There are many such accounts in the American Alpine Club’s annual publication “Accidents in North American Mountaineering”.
