Real Survival Stories - Alaska Adventure: Cut off in a Frozen Wilderness

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Three friends venture into the depths of Alaska. Tackling some of the most extreme weather on Earth, they’re attempting to reach North America’s highest peak. Nigel, Steve and Anthony are experienced and well-prepared. But a series of unexpected twists will plunge them into a gruelling battle against howling tempests and debilitating frostbite - all at 20,000 feet. An act of incredible individual bravery may be their only hope… A Noiser production, written by Chris McDonald. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the director of The Greatest Showman comes the most original musical ever. I want to prove I can make it. Prove to who? Everyone. So, the story starts. Better Man, now playing in select theaters. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn ads. Choose from hundreds

of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. It's May the 16th, 1999. Mount Denali, Alaska. 20,000 feet. A dark veil of cloud engulfs North America's highest summit. A swirling snowstorm shrouds the upper slopes. Vicious 70-mile-per- hour gusts roar across the mountain.

On an exposed, snow-covered plateau, three British climbers are caught in the storm's freezing grip. Two of them, Nigel Vardy and Anthony Hollinshead, wield axes. They are desperately chipping away at a narrow crack in the ice, trying to widen it. Their friend and expedition leader, Steve Ball, stands behind them, swaying unsteadily, shaking violently. Snow flurries around them. Their goggles are fogged, they can barely see. But they keep it their task.

Nigel glances back at Steve. They must get him out of the tempest. It became very apparent very, very quickly that Steve was starting to get really cold, really cold. And here comes a time of taking very life-changing decisions in a very short time. Ordinarily, Steve would be helping, but he simply cannot move. I could feel myself becoming hypothermic early stages. You know, my teeth were chattering, I was shivering. I knew I needed to get out of the cold and into the ice before this became a serious problem.

Each strike of the axe sprays them with jagged chips of ice. Despite the chill, sweat lashes down their foreheads. Eventually the hole is wide enough. Nigel and Anthony help Steve slip his backpack off and gently maneuver him inside. Scurrying in after him, they block up the entranceway with their packs, shutting out the howling wind. Flicking on their head torches, they turn to Steve.

He is trembling and muttering something unintelligible. All Nigel and Anthony can do is wrap their arms around him in the hope that the warmth of their bodies will save him. But Steve soon loses consciousness. Will he ever wake up again? And with a situation so dire, will Nigel and Anthony survive much longer themselves? Mistakes were high.

Mistakes were like in death. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet British mountaineers Nigel Vardy and Steve Ball.

Alongside their friend, Anthony Hollinshead, they're trying to conquer North America's loftiest peak. Caught in the grip of a terrible storm, they'll find themselves trapped at 20,000 feet, higher than any previous rescue in the United States. With hypothermia and frostbite setting in, it will seem that their fates are sealed. I came to terms with, I'm in a really beautiful place and if this is the end, then there'll be no more violence to it, there'll be no more pain to it.

I'll just fall asleep and I won't wake up. Acts of incredible self-sacrifice, ingenious communication techniques and unexpected twists will all play a part in the three men's story. And none of them will emerge from the ordeal unscathed. I'm John Hopkins. From Noisa, this is Real Survival Stories. It's Tuesday, April 30, 1999, in Alaska. By far the largest US state, Alaska covers a total area of over 660,000 square miles, making it greater in size than Texas, California, and Montana combined.

The UK could fit inside it six times. Everything in Alaska is big. It contains vast stretches of wilderness, over three million lakes, and its largest glacier is more than twice the size of London. On top of all that, quite literally, is Mount Denali. At over 20,000 feet, it's the highest peak in North America. Denali, sometimes known as Mount McKinley, is the centerpiece of the Alaska Range Mountains, a narrow 600-mile stretch of peaks in the middle of the state. Sore-toothed white tips pierce the skies and reflect off the surface of wide lakes below.

In the center of this vast range, Mount Denali Base Camp can be found, around 7,000 feet up on the expansive, snow-covered Kehiltner Glacier. Here, 30-year-old Nigel, 42-year-old Steve and 33-year-old Anthony are assembling their tents. The cold is biting. Frosty wind whips against the fabric. The camp is a hive of activity. Climbers are sorting equipment or poring over maps. There's a buzz, a sense of nervous energy.

With their tents pitched, the men glance up at the huge slabs of rock and soaring snowy crests that surround them. The mountain range acts as a barrier to the flow of moist air from the Gulf of Alaska, resulting in some of the harshest weather on Earth. To the northeast, they can see the enormous, daunting slopes of Denali, one of the most difficult climbs in the world. But the three Brits are ready. Steve and Anthony have been climbing together for years and have had their sights set on Denali for a long time. Mountaineering has been my passion since very early on.

And Denali was a particular interesting mountain for me. Of all the mountains in the world, it was the one that I wanted to climb the most. People say, oh, what about Everest? But Denali had a special feeling for me. It's remote. It's just such an amazing massive rock and ice and snow. There's beauty in the landscape, which I appreciate and I want to be there. Steve co-owns a small factory back in the UK, which helps to finance his passion. He prepares and trains fastidiously, a man who thinks far ahead.

Nigel is also an enthusiastic climber, but is younger, with less experience. And, unlike Steve, he's more here by chance. But it was a chance he wasn't about to let slip. We met at a dinner party, if I remember rightly. And as we're chatting away, Anthony mentioned, well, you know, me and a friend of mine, Steve, are looking to do a trip to Alaska. How are you fixed?

And I said those very dangerous three letters of yes. Yeah, I'd love to come. You know, yes, it's the most dangerous word in the world. While Nigel is a newcomer to the team, he's still well prepared for the climb. Teamwork will be key, though Nigel is very clear about who's in charge of the expedition. It was Steve's idea to do this. We basically classed Steve as leader, even though we all did things, we all worked together, because you can't do everything on your own on a mountain. But to me, Steve was the leader, and myself and Anthony together. But again,

we're a homogenous group. We all climb together, we're all on the same rope. So it's a bit of a sort of a democracy, but somebody in charge as well. Steve's greater experience and technical strengths could be crucial should things get dicey. Naturally, he's been studying the mountain in detail. After careful thought, he's happy with their planned ascent. The mountain has various routes up it, and we were going to climb it expedition style. That's moving up the mountain, carrying your camp with you and setting up camp at various stages on the mountain. As darkness begins to fall, the three men take a final look over their supplies. If all goes well, it'll take them roughly two weeks to reach Denali's

summit, an epic 13,000 foot ascent, plus another week to get back down. They'll be scaling vertical ice walls, crossing melting snow bridges, and navigating crevasse-filled glaciers. Just to access the route, they need to pass through an area so prone to avalanches, it's known as Death Valley. And of course, there's Denali's infamous weather to contend with.

But they're prepped for that, packing strong tents, sleeping bags, and heavy clothing. They've also packed a radio should things go south. The men complete their checks, share a drink from a bottle of whiskey, and with warm bellies settle down for the night.

It's early evening on May the 15th, two weeks later. Nigel, Steve and Anthony have been climbing for 16 days. It's gone well, and aside from the occasional distant sound of an avalanche, there's not been any real danger. The biggest shock came on day five, when Nigel slipped and fell into a crevasse. But the climbers were primed to respond, and he escaped without injury. As leader, Steve made sure of it. You are very aware of what the dangers are,

and you try to go through as many scenarios as you can to try and avoid an incident. But we trained for it. We learned how to self-rescue from crevasses before we went. We practiced at it. Everybody knows what to do. By day 13, they finally made it to the last campsite of their ascent, somewhere between 16 and 17,000 feet. It's a small ledge beneath an overhang, 4,000 feet below Denali's summit. Since then, bad weather has halted their progress. But after two days of hunkering down and conserving energy for the final

push, it looks like their luck is about to change. As evening on May the 15th draws in, the sky is clear. They check in with base camp via radio and get the forecast. It's confirmed. Tomorrow will be their best chance to summit. Normally you wouldn't climb 4,000 feet of ascent in a day. It's too long a day. But the camp that we established at 17,000 feet was a safe camp and anything above that, if a wind came then you'd just get blown off the

mountain. We decided it was safer for us to camp at this point and have the hard days climbing when it came to our summit day. The climbers decide to take on the summit, alpine style, moving light and fast, carrying only essentials. It's the only way to tackle such a big climb in a single day. It's a gamble, but that's the nature of the beast. They settle down for the night. With the climb of a lifetime ahead, they're going to need all the rest they can get. Get groceries delivered across the GTA

from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows

to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. Early morning on May the 16th, around 18,000 feet, Nigel sinks his axe deep into the ice and pushes down hard on the tips of his crampons, testing their purchase. The three climbers are scaling a sheer wall of rock-hard snow. Nigel is at the front, with Steve and Anthony 15 feet behind. They're roped together.

This is a tricky bit of climbing. They're in a notorious couloir, a steep, narrow gully, called the Orient Express. With rock faces either side, it's a tight, claustrophobic route, with a 1,000-metre drop below. The clear skies that greeted them at dawn have clouded over, and the wind is picking up again. My fingertips were getting a little bit tingly. Now, some of that can be due to altitude,

and some of it is the cold, but to be honest, I can't remember feeling cold at that point. You've got to keep moving. Steve is a lot faster than me. There's no two ways about it. He's a much better climber than me. He came up. Perhaps he thought, I'll take over, and now I just come on. There's no two ways about it. Much better climber than me. He came up, perhaps he thought I'll take over and, and Nigel, come on, we need to push the pace along.

With Steve motivating them, by late afternoon, they're at an altitude of 19 and a half thousand feet. The vertical wall they're scaling finally begins to curve and flatten, and Nigel, Steve and Anthony clamber onto the final ridge, a vast white plateau, colloquially known as the football field. From here, it's just a few hundred yards walk up a steady incline to the top. But as soon as they step out onto the rise, a weather front smacks them right in the face.

70 mile per hour blasts of arctic wind tear down the slope, carrying a blinding mass of snow and sleet. The weather came in with a vengeance and the wind picked up so much that you would have to scream to each other to be heard. Immediately, the three men are forced onto their hands and knees, plunging their ice axes into the snow for safety. Looks like the forecast was off the mark. With the finish line so close, they try to push on, inching towards the summit. But even Steve, who's dreamt of this longer than any of them, is forced to concede defeat.

At this point we had a bit of a conflab about what to do, whether we're going to go on or go back. You look around and all you can see is blizzard conditions. Look the way back we came and you couldn't see where to go. Everything was obscured. The cold is overpowering. Visibility almost zero. One wrong foot and they could easily vanish down the slope.

Still roped together, the three men push blindly across the plateau, occasionally shouting back and forth to jig everyone is okay. But then Steve fails to respond and alarm bells sound. Obviously, you want to be looking all after each other as well. And it became very apparent very, very quickly that Steve was starting to get really cold as well, really cold. And here comes a time of taking very life-changing decisions in a very short time. We just had to take a decision of what are we going to do and how we're going to do it and we need to take that decision right now. And at the base of the summit cone we saw some broken ice. It's not quite like a crevasse, but it's an opening.

The ice cave is just what they need, a temporary refuge to wait out the storm. Nigel and Anthony begin chipping away at the opening with their axes, trying to widen it enough to get inside. All the while, Steve's condition is worsening. At this point, I was starting to get really cold. I was standing still. I wasn't working and I could feel myself becoming hypothermic early stages. You know, my teeth were chattering. I was shivering. I knew I needed to get out of the cold and into the ice before this became a serious problem. Eventually the hole is big enough to slide through.

Nigel and Anthony get Steve inside first. Then they block up the entranceway with their rucksacks. Inside the cave, the icy walls shimmer under the light of the men's head torches. Nigel and Anthony turn to Steve. He's white as a sheet, breathing in shallow rasps, mumbling incoherently. They need to warm him up, but there is nothing in their sparse gear to help. Tents, clothing, stoves, sleeping bags. It's all back at their camp, 4,000 feet below. Steve manages to mutter something to Anthony, a plea for help.

I said to Ant, just keep an eye on me, mate. I'm really cold and, you know, just keep an eye on me. So he pushed me into the far end of the cave, wrapped his arms and legs on me. So he pushed me into the far end of the cave, wrapped his arms and legs around me. We just did lots of hugging and telling appalling jokes and trying to keep spirits up, staying awake the best you can and just trying to sort of keep mind, body and soul together. And it was quite a while before we took a decision to try and make a call to the rangers. After some debate, Anthony and Nigel decide to check in with the mountain rangers

to see if there's any chance of assistance. Nigel turns the two-way radio on, relaying their position and requesting urgent help. He holds it close to his ear and waits for a response. The reply isn't what he hoped for. A garbled voice comes back telling Nigel that his message couldn't be understood. It seems he can hear the ranger, but they can't hear him. I'm trying to transmit with a handheld radio with eight one and a half volt cells in it through a storm at 20,000 feet. Thankfully for us, the rangers are trained to listen for

interference, disturbance, or anything that sounds out of the ordinary. And when you press a radio button, what they call the PTT switch, press to talk, it makes a click. And they kept hearing clicks. And so I got a call back. Is that somebody trying to make contact with us? Please give me two clicks. A system is quickly established. Two clicks for yes, one click for no. After a game of 20 questions, the ranger comes to understand which expedition they are, their rough position, and that one of them requires urgent medical care. Unbearable seconds tick by before the voice crackles through the radio again. It's bad news.

The weather won't allow for any rescue attempt tonight, and they may not get to them tomorrow either. They're told to hunker down for now and radio again in the morning. So I came back into the snow hole, packed the radio back up, and we all got back together and waited the night out. There was nothing else we could do. The stakes were high. The stakes were life and death. It's early morning on May the 17th. Nigel jerks awake, bleary-eyed. He's shivering. His feet are like blocks of ice. He clicks on his head torch and retrieves the radio from his pocket. Then he turns to Steve to check how bad his friend's condition is now.

But quite incredibly, Steve is awake and talking. It's dumbfounding, but he seems to have made a full recovery. Steve was absolutely fantastic. He'd made the most amazing recovery that we could see anyway overnight and was full of the joys of spring. And I've never seen that in the mountains ever. I'd gone the other way. And I threw that night, the frostbite had crept up upon me,

painlessly and silently, like a ghost. Just before 8am, the men emerge from the cave. The sky is blue, punctuated here and there by wispy clouds. The storm has abated, but for how long? With Steve feeling better, and with no guarantee of rescue, this is their best chance to descend to their camp. But as they begin gathering their things, Nigel accidentally knocks the radio down a slope. Luckily, you can see it nestled in the snow.

But as he goes to retrieve it, things take a turn. And as I tried to walk and go down, I suddenly realised that I just wasn't walking properly and like I was drunk. And I fell over a number of times and I fell over and managed to get the radio in the end and sort of clamber back up to where the guys were. When he returns, he's out of breath. His head is swimming.

Maybe climbing down isn't such a good idea after all. Their attention turns to the radio. But when Nigel flicks the switch, nothing happens. Frantically, he presses the button on the side and fiddles with the dials. No good. The radio's broken. I felt incredibly guilty for that. I thought the only means of communication to the outside world that we've got, and I've lost it. It's a massive blow. They're cut off. Help might still be days away, and that's if they can even be found. Climbing down themselves is now their only option.

But Nigel's deteriorating. Anthony and Steve sit him down to do a proper assessment. It doesn't look good. When they peel back his balaclava, they find he has been brutally ravaged by the cold. All his face was swollen, twice the size it was, and his eyes were black and his cheek was black. I think a couple of days before, Nigel had got sunburned on his cheek. I think

a frost had got into that and caused this frostbite. I tried to talk to Nigel and he wasn't very coherent. Aside from the frostbite and hypothermia, Nigel's confused state points to something else, something potentially fatal. I did think that he was suffering from cerebral edema, which is a life-threatening problem for mountaineers. The only way to cure this problem

is to descend and get more oxygen into his body. Cerebral edema is a condition associated with exertion at altitude. The brain swells, causing fuzzy vision, severe headaches, seizures, and eventually death. If Steve is right, it's imperative they get Nigel down the mountain as soon as possible. They rope up, leave their packs onto their shoulders, and begin trekking back down the plateau's gentle slope. But even on this relatively flat surface, Nigel is struggling to walk, struggling to breathe and stumbling constantly.

If you were perfectly fit and well, what should have been an half an hour, an hour's journey just dragged on and on and on. And I felt a great embarrassment. I felt I was letting everybody down. I really did. These guys have put so much effort in and I was this horrible casualty now that was letting them all down and letting my family down and all kinds of things going through my mind. But with a lot of spirit from the other guys and a lot of encouragement, we fought and fought and fought and fought. But it was quite obvious this was going to take forever. After several hours, they reached the end of the plateau. Unfortunately, that was the easy part. It's now clear that descending the Orient Express is out of the question. The vertical, ice-covered drop is going to be too much for Nigel. Their only choice now

is to take a different, longer route down the mountain and hope they run into some help on the way. At around 11am they set off again, but Nigel can barely take two steps without falling. The trio are forced to stop. They take shelter at an outcrop of rocks where Nigel can rest and Steve and Anthony can discuss their next steps. We had to talk about this, Anthony and I did. Nigel was out of the committee now. He wasn't in a position to start making decisions, you know.

We decided Anthony should stay with Nigel and care for him and I would go down and get the rescue or meet some climbers coming up to help out. I was probably the fittest because I'd had a really good night's sleep the night before and I was quite an experienced climber so I stood a good chance of getting down alone. It's not an easy decision and dangerous to go on solo but the fate of his two friends rests entirely on Steve's shoulders. Having been terribly ill just the night before, it's an act of bravery and selflessness.

It was difficult leaving them, because it was just unknown. Would I get down? Would somebody be able to come and help them? I didn't think they'd survive another night out on the mountain. So you've got all this on the back of my mind. There's no guarantee that Steve will find anyone, even on the more popular route. But his plan is just to keep going. It's midday.

With one last handshake, Steve turns and trudges off through the snow, before vanishing into the mist. And I can still remember to this day, sitting in these rocks with my rucksack in front of me and seeing Steve walk off into the clouds. And all I could think was, Steve, where are you going? Anthony and Nigel are now alone and helpless at nearly 20,000 feet. Steve strides across the plateau, hard-packed snow crunching beneath his feet. As he approaches the bottom of the slope, it seems like he has two options. A longer, easier route traversing the top of the ridge and zigzagging his way down.

Or to descend an almost vertical ice wall to speed things along. I got to the top of the ridge and I couldn't quite see where the route went, you know, whether it's a left-hand side, the right-hand side, because we hadn't descended it, I'd got no intimate knowledge of it, although I'd studied the mountain quite

well before we got there and I knew where every route was and how to get there and so on and so forth, but I didn't know the intricacies of the route. By the side of this ridge there was a gully that led down, it was a long gully, I think about 800 meters down and I could see all the way down it and it was vertical at the top and then ran out like a great big slide out onto the glacier. I thought, oh, this is going to be an easier way to get down.

It's just straight down climbing. Decision made. Steve lies down on his belly and eases himself backwards over the edge of the ridge, feet first. He kicks his crampons into the solid sheet of vertical ice. Then, using his ice axes, he begins to descend. He quickly finds a rhythm, axe and crampon working in tandem. Steve descends 10, 20, 30 feet, when out of nowhere there's a sound no mountaineer wants to hear.

And all of a sudden there was a crack in the ice and the ice just sheared off in front of my face. My right eye sax remained in the ice and you have a sling around your wrist to keep it on your body. The sling pulled off my glove, and that went away with the ice axe up there, and I was airborne, falling backwards. I rend this feeling when you know that you're off, and you think, what do I do now? It's mid-afternoon, back near the summit of Mount Denali.

Anthony does what he can to make Nigel comfortable. They move further into the rocky outcrop, huddling together to shelter from the biting wind. For hours, they talk and tell jokes. Anything to take their minds off their abject situation. Steve went off in this incredibly brave rescue attempt and Anthony and myself spent Lord knows how many hours sat between these rocks. I'm in a state of cold.

I didn't know how badly at the time. We put the rope on. We put our feet in the rucksacks, all this kind of thing to try and keep anything from the elements away. And then came, I would say the difficult bit, we heard a lot of helicopters. Now, we're just above something called the Jeanette Basin, and there is a ranger base there that's supplied by helicopter. Time and again, they're forced to listen to the whir of helicopters above. Each time there's hope that help is coming.

Before, inevitably, the sound disappears. All the while the sun drops lower in the sky. By evening, the temperature tumbles further. Both men now sit in dreadful silence, shivering, their breathing short and labored. Then, around 7pm, the sound of rotor blades returns, but this time, much louder than before. And a few hundred yards in front of us, this helicopter popped out of the clouds and flew towards us. So it obviously spotted us at some point or somebody had seen us. This guy knew where to go. And he came absolutely hell raising towards us. He got a static line underneath

with a rucksack on. He dropped the rucksack and disappeared. Inside was a flask of hot juice, another radio. To turn that radio on and talk to a guy called Jim Hood flying that helicopter, who said, guys, get the screamer suits on. They're in the rucksack. I'm going to refuel.

I'll be back. To listen to that voice, to know that somebody out there is coming for you, I don't think I can be back. To listen to that voice, to know that somebody out there is coming for you, I don't think I can describe it. Steve must have done it. He must have found help and raised the alarm. Clasped in frozen hands,

Nigel holds the thermos to his cracked lips and downs the hot drink. Next, they pull the screamer suits out, overalls with a harness attached to the chest. When the helicopter returns a short while later, the purpose of the harness becomes clear. This high on the steep mountainside, the chopper cannot land. Instead, the pilot hovers and lowers a thick metal cable. 100 feet above us or so, there's this helicopter fighting to stay in the air at 20,000 feet in obviously not great weather and at altitude. And Anthony's clipping me on. There's a huge down

draft. And I stuck my hand out to Anthony and shook his hand and I said, I'll see you at the bottom, mate. And then the helicopter very gently lifted me off the ground and into the air. And I'm suddenly gone from a few feet in the air to thousands of feet in the air, trying to grasp onto this rope with what's left of my hands. The journey across the snow-capped peaks and back to base camp takes just seven minutes. The pilot lowers Nigel gently to the ground, where he's helped onto a stretcher. As soon as he's unclipped, the helicopter zooms back towards the summit to retrieve Anthony.

Nigel is safe. He looks around for Steve, to thank him for the enormous part he's played in their rescue. But then he is asked a question that once more turns his blood cold. I'm then taken straight into a tent. And what I can certainly remember from them is people shouting at me, where's your third man? Where's your third man? It's around 8pm. Steve lies halfway down a gully.

His cries for help echoing off the high granite walls on either side of him. Blood soaks through the pristine snow. It's unclear exactly how far he's tumbled, but it's clear his fall was horrific, and so are his injuries. When the ice axe had pulled away from my hand, it pulled my shoulder out of socket as well. It dislocated my right shoulder.

I felt my rucksack hit something, and once my rucksack caught it, the friction just sent me off spinning. I was just flailing about and my left leg hit something and I heard it crack and then shortly after that my right leg hit something and I heard that crack too. Eventually I came into full contact with the ground and started to slide, just kept sliding and sliding and sliding, seemed to be going on forever. Eventually I came to a standstill and I was surprised I'd made it alive to be honest. Both of Steve's legs are badly broken, compound fractures with bones puncturing the skin.

He could easily have bled out, but clear-headed as ever, he manages to fashion a tourniquet. It was bleeding badly and I put a tourniquet on and kept releasing it and then pulling it tight until the bleeding sort of slowed really down. And then I looked at my leg and I thought I'm not going to get anywhere with the leg sticking out to the side like that. So I put my right foot on top of my left foot and I drew my leg back until my leg was back in line. And once the pain had subsided from that, I thought that maybe I could use my ice axe as a splint and tie the ice axe onto my leg to support it, which I did. I wondered if I'd be able to stand up now I've got support on my legs. I was able to stand and my right leg could take the strain,

but as soon as I moved any weight onto my left leg, it just buckled. Steve spends hours crawling, dragging his broken body through the snow. Eventually, his injuries force him to stop trying. For a while, he blows into his whistle and screams until his voice is hoarse. It is no use. Now, as evening falls, all he can do is sit in the cold and think about his friends. All this time I'm thinking about Nigel and Anthony. Nigel's probably dying.

Anthony's looking after Nigel. What does Anthony do? Is he going to get to a point where he thinks, I can't do anything for Nigel now, and if I don't set off and go below, I'm going to be dead as well? I just felt that I'd let my mates down, and they were going to die because I felt

I wasn't able to gain a rescue for them. I looked at the beautiful landscape, and there were clouds forming on this cliff face and they were rolling down like waves and I just thought it was beautiful. The sun disappeared and the stars came out. I knew it could be the end of me. It's the middle of the night and Steve awakes with a violent lurch. He finds himself slumped over on his side, his face covered in snow. The cold is punishing, all-consuming.

It's nearly minus fifty degrees centigrade. To have any real chance of survival, Steve must stay awake. In this state, if he falls asleep again, he'll likely never wake up. And so he resorts to an extreme strategy, trying to use his own brutal injuries to his advantage. So I sat up and I hit my left leg and got the pain going. The pain surged for about 20 minutes or so before I started nodding again and so I kept hitting my leg and this is what I did all through the night. Again and again the excruciating pain keeps Steve conscious But despite his best efforts, his head eventually drops again, his arms go limp, and he slumps over once more, back into the snow.

It's a bright morning on Mount Denali. It's still cold, minus 17 degrees, but the skies are clear and visibility is good. Good enough for the team of five climbers now ascending the mountain to suddenly spot a flash of colour hidden in a snowdrift. They trudge over to investigate. Shoveling away snow with their hands, they reveal the frozen body of Steve Ball. The body they've been asked to find.

One of the climbers is a medic. He leans closer to the deathly pale face, and he hears something. The faintest of breaths. By some miracle, Steve is still alive. Next thing I know, there's some guys nudging me and feeling me and talking to me. And yeah, there was two Canadian climbers and three American climbers, and they were coming through and they found me.

And they were surprised I was still alive, but I was in a better of a state. The helicopter arrives quickly. It was waiting for their call. Before long, Steve is being airlifted. And moments later, he's flying through the air back towards base camp. He's quickly transferred onto a hospital in Anchorage. There Steve's injuries are assessed by a team of astonished doctors. Normally as your body goes down through 27 degrees your heart shuts down and you either go into a coma or you die. But I was lucid.

So he explained what he was going to do. He was going to cut a little hole in my abdomen and he was going to irrigate inside with warm saline solution to warm my body up slowly from the inside. After a few days in intensive care, Steve is taken to a recovery ward, where he's finally reunited with Nigel and Anthony. It's thought that theirs was the highest ever successful helicopter rescue in US history. But despite the relief and the joy at seeing each other again, all three men have suffered extreme

injuries. Their faces are black, their flesh ravaged by the cold, toes and fingers are still frozen solid. The frost has bitten hard. I eventually lost the bottom half of my left leg below me and the front half of my right foot, part of my heel on my right foot, all of the fingers and thumb on my right hand, half of my hand mid-palm on the left hand, all fingers and thumb gone, and the tip of my nose. Anthony was walking wounded. He'd got frostbite, I think, on three fingertips. Nigel lost quite a section of his nose and the digits, first digits on his fingers, he was left with stubs on his fingers and he lost all his toes.

The three men soon return to England, but recovery from their various surgeries is long and arduous. Their injuries are life-changing. But they refuse to let it define them. In the coming years, after exhaustive rehab and training, Steve and Nigel are able to get out among the hills again. Hiking, and with some adjustments, even climbing. Going through something like this really does alter your outlook on life. Rather than saying, here I am, I can't do this, oh woe is me, what I did was, okay, I'm a bit

different now. So how do we find a way around those issues? How do I find a solution to this problem? How do I work a way around learning to write or learning to climb or driving a car or tying my shoelaces? And I will work it out with patience. Physically, it was absolutely excruciating, but it gave me drive and it gave me an absolutely insane initiative to keep doing this. And that's what I've done for the 25 years since. Steve, Nigel and Anthony's experience on Mount Denali has secured a deep-rooted respect and friendship, one that endures to this day. When they reflect on what kept them alive, they agree that careful preparation and a big slice of luck certainly helped.

But in the end, it was their mental strength that made the real difference. In the middle of the night, all I wanted to do was just roll over and go to sleep. And it would have been so easy to give in to that. I really didn't want to, didn't want to die. I got so many more things I wanted to do with life. I was just determined not to give in, just keep fighting, you know, just stay awake, stay alive, stay awake, stay alive. That's how it was. Having that positive mindset is everything. Having that positive drive is everything. But it has to be balanced as well with some knowledge and experience

if you're going to expose yourself to a climate such as this. And those together will keep you alive. Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Kevin DePaola. At 26 years old, he's still figuring things out. He enjoys a nomadic lifestyle, roaming the United States in his van, seeking out thrills in the great outdoors. But one afternoon, while adventuring through the desolate plains of Santa Rita flat, Kevin's free and easy life unexpectedly leads him into extreme peril. Out of nowhere, he'll find himself battling immense natural forces.

Kevin will need to rely on medical miracles, the unwavering support of a friend, and the incredible kindness of strangers if he is to have any chance of escape. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen to Kevin's story today without waiting a week by subscribing to Noisa Plus.