Wow. Amazing that he survived the fall and almost equally amazing that he crawled back out to his car. Not that that was the right thing to do or not but an impressive feat nonetheless.
Now for some fun math. I cite as my source for my calculations the all-knowing Wikipedia. Always factually correct. I know. I read it on the internet.
Terminal velocity of a sky diver = 122mph
That's .034 miles per second for all you math aficionados (I'm not one, I just play one on the internet)
Our victim states (according to the crack reporting customary to many a news story these days) that he fell about 600-700 feet total including a period of about 10 seconds in the air. Let's have some fun nit picking. Shall we?
At .034 mps for a total of 10 seconds, our sunny adventurer would have fallen approximately .34 of a mile during that one period alone. As we know, a mile is 5,280 feet. Thusly, he would have fallen about 1790 feet. Ok, we could subtract some for acceleration at the beginning of the 10 seconds but still....
Oh and the article also states that he fell when an ice shelf (cornice?) gave way but the victim states that his binding released. One or the other or both? Confused.
In all seriousness, really glad this turned out well and what a story to tell the grandkids some day. Sounds like he roughly knew what he was doing and had an unfortunate accident. And I can definitely see how people assume that the weather they have in the valleys must be typical of the mountains too. Course, we see that all up and down the trail and in the mountains, down south too.
And I really wish I could get my oldest child to solve a fun math problem like that, even if the answer is really just a swag. Ohhhh, I think I just found me a good brain teaser for on the trail...