South African singer-songwriter JPson had planned to shoot his new music video for his latest single “Breathe” from the snowy slopes of Switzerland. The gorgeous mountain range was set to be the backdrop for the soothing and heartfelt track, but a split second changed all of that.
Read the full story from JP here (injury trigger warning):
“On January 30th, we arrived in Lauchernalp, Switzerland with the aim to shoot a music video for this song over the next 4 days. We had been planning this video for the last 2 months and had everything organised and set to start filming at sunrise the following morning. The night before we checked the weather report and saw that we had some bad weather coming in over the following 4 days which unfortunately would affect our shooting plan. We noticed that there was a small window the next morning which we could use to get some of the snowboarding shots we had scheduled in and therefore we all agreed to use this window of opportunity effectively (so we thought).
We got up that morning before sunrise as planned to capture some timelapse’s and to get ready to make the first lift up the mountain. After 2 hours we finally made our way up to the top of the mountain to find ourselves snowboarding and filming in pretty cloudy weather but good enough visibility to make our way down the mountain a few times so I could get some shots boarding my brother. It was about time for lunch when we decided that we would do our last run down as the weather was getting worse minute by minute, making it very difficult for us to see. As we made our way down filming the last run, we got hit by a serious snowstorm that literally came faster than we could ever imagine with wind speeds and thick snow coming down that I have yet to experience in my 23 years of snowboarding.
In split seconds I completely lost control due to the lack of sight and howling winds and found myself flying down the slope with full speed into a solid wooden pole about 2 metres long and 15cm wide located on the side of the slope. I had collided leg first into this pole with such force that I knocked it completely out of its placement, throwing me on my back about 10 meters away from the impact zone. I was in such shock that I immediately tried to get up and that’s when I felt the bones in my right leg directly below my knee slide and scrape away from each other like two freshly broken branches from a autumn tree. In that moment I thought to myself “oh fuck, I think I just broke my leg”
My brother called the mountain rescue team but because of the snowstorm they were unable to fly a helicopter to pick me up and therefore had no choice but to pick me up with a rescuer sledge, strap me in and ski me down to the cable car. In this moment all I remember my brother saying was “breathe JP, breathe”
After getting X-rays taken down at the mountain station, they discovered that I had broken both my Tibia and Fibula bones meaning that I would need to be rushed to hospital for an immediate operation which would be my first time to hospital and first time having an operation.
While I found myself in a complete daze between drugs and pain, everyone around me was telling me “breathe in, breathe out, everything will be ok”
What blows my mind is that the name of the song which we were shooting a music video for that morning while this all happened is “Breathe”
I am very excited to share this song with the world together with the full video capturing what happened that day, which was shot completely by chance in a way that was definitely not planned”.
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