Real Survival Stories - Avalanche at the Mine: Buried Under a Machine

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

Les Morlang is a mechanic at a gold mine in the mountains of Colorado. In November 1985, he’s racing to complete some essential construction work before a blizzard rolls in. But he and his colleague Jack will be caught off guard. As a devastating natural disaster descends, they’ll become separated… leaving Les entombed beneath fifty feet of compacted snow and ice… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Carla Flores, Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or 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

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In the skies above southwest Colorado, a heavy mantle of cloud which has been steadily gathering mass all afternoon, finally breaks. Snow streams down like ticket tape, blinding flurries that swirl and eddy in the 50-mile-an-hour gusts. On a steep hillside, among the frozen peaks of the La Plata Mountains, a scattering of timber lies strewn across the surface of the snow. A mechanical loader, toppled onto its side and half buried by deep, fresh drifts, continues to rumble and splutter, belching coils of black smoke into the blizzard. That sound, that monotonous drone of machinery, is what 31-year-old Les Morlang clings onto. Because where he is, stunned and disorientated beneath 50 feet of snow, it's the only thing telling him which direction to dig.

The loader, thankfully, told me which way to go. And then after I kind of got adjusted and then got my torso free to breathe, that's when I decided. I could dig out after I got the moxied into the brain, I guess. Fueled by desperation and guided by the distant rumble of the loader, Les begins to frantically claw at the snow above his head. But compressed by the weight of the deposits above, the clumps around him have started to firm up, hardening like setting cement. Les must hack and chisel at the snow with his fingertips,

then push it down past his body before squirming into the space he has created. Gradually, he establishes a kind of rhythm. What I'd do is after I got my torso loose a little bit, so I could kind of turn and start digging on my incline. And I had a little system. I'd reach up one, two, three, would push it down to my knees, and four was pack it. Millimetre by millimeter, Les inches his way towards the surface.

At times the claustrophobia becomes overwhelming, triggering the impulse to scream and thrash his limbs. But Les has to keep his composure. Panicking will only use up more precious oxygen and cause him to asphyxiate faster. Besides, even if his voice could penetrate the fathoms of snow separating him from daylight, There's no one up there to hear. That's a pretty lonely feeling up there. You might as well be out in the Alaska tundra with no help.

Just nobody can get to you. 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 a fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet 31-year-old Les Morland. In November 1985,

Les, a mechanic at a gold mine in the mountains of Colorado, is racing to complete some essential construction work before a blizzard rolls in. While keeping one eye on the approaching storm, Les and his colleague, Jack, are operating a mechanical loader when they are caught off guard by something that no forecast could have predicted. a devastating natural disaster that descends on the mine where the two men are working. They will become separated, and Les will be left buried beneath 50 feet of compacted snow and ice.

My hard hat and everything in life was back behind me. The first thing, you're just trying to breathe, but the pressure on your chest doesn't allow you anything. Disorientated, running out of oxygen, and with nobody around to help, Les will have to claw his way to the surface. In more ways than one, he will have to dig deep. Think the flashbacks and seeing my son and my wife, I had to get out. Said it a thousand times, don't ever give out. There's always hope.

If you can move that little finger, move it. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is real survival stories. It's 1 p.m. on November the 17th, 1985. Fringing the eastern border of Colorado's high plain, a wild, beautiful region of winding canyons and rolling copper-colored hills, the La Plata Mountains are a jagged chain of alpine peaks

that rise like a prehistoric spine from the earth. Winter has arrived in the high plain, and a recent blizzard has left its mark on this uniquely dramatic landscape. The red sandstone cliffs are banded with snow, and the sprawling sandflats shiver beneath heavy blankets of white, pinpricked here and there by a solitary snow-dusted cactus. Meanwhile, up among the lofty peaks of the La Platters, a deep freeze has set in. These are just the first throes of winter, but already the pine forests lie half buried by deep drifts,

their boughs slumped and spangled with silvery frost. Above the timber line, things become starker still. The mountaintops are encased in ice, their white silhouettes faintly embossed against the pale, overcast sky. Just below a treeless ridge line, where the wind has sculpted the snow into a precarious overhanging cornice, two men trudge along a footpath carved into the hillside. 31-year-old Les Morland, dressed for work in rubber boots, hard hat and overalls, walks alongside his colleague Jack Ritter.

Les is a mechanic and electrician at the Bessie G, one of the many gold and silver mines that run through the hills of La Plata County. I would do all the mechanical and millwright, like setting up the air system and electrical and water. You have generators outside the mine by the portal, and that runs everything inside. So my job was to keep all the motors going and things the electrical. We had a pretty nice mine. Les and Jack have come to check on the progress of a work crew who were supposed to be finishing the construction of a snow shed over the mine's entrance, known as the portal. When completed, the snow shed will protect the portal from snow,

enabling the miners to work longer into the unforgiving winter months. But when Jack and Les arrive at the work site, they make an unwelcome discovery. The rest of the crew has already packed up and left, presumably driven down the mountain by the adverse weather. And we come back from town and that was about 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, before we got back to the mine, and nobody was, there, everybody had to laugh. We were kind of at it stand still, but they were supposed to have this done.

And it wasn't. Jack asked me, he said, you want to try it? And of course, I'm all in. I'm just a kid. If you want something done right, and more to the point, done quickly, do it yourself. And so Jack and Les get to work, anxious to make the most of the three remaining hours of daylight. Les gets behind the wheel of a loader, while Jack fills the bucket with timber. Les then begins ferrying the wood up to the mine's entrance, trundling along the rutted track from the lumber pile to the mine shaft.

As he steers the vehicle, Les glances up at the frigid, chalk-colored sky. It feels like it could start snowing again any minute. They'd better get a move on. The last thing they want is to get stranded up here. Les Morland was born and raised in nearby Silverton, and just a little bit of it. like the hills of southwest Colorado, he is tough, rugged, and weather-hardened. The son of a livestock farmer, Les spent much of his boyhood helping out on the ranch, rounding up cattle and harvesting sugar beets. Well, I grew up on a farm here locally, and we've been here all our lives.

I had two brothers and one sister, and our family wasn't that tight net. My mom and dad didn't talk that much. I didn't realize that dad was just hanging in there until we graduated, and then they were getting a divorce, which they did. Though family life wasn't always harmonious, Les describes happy memories of childhood, wrangling cattle on horseback during the week, and racing motorcycles on weekends.

At school, Les wasn't exactly a model student. Growing up on a farm, the emphasis was always on the practical. Traditional academic subject, could feel a little abstract, too far removed from the hard, scrabble reality of life. As soon as he was old enough, Les left school and entered the world of work. He trained as a land surveyor doing topographical mapping for a local firm. The job suited Les, appealing to his logical, pragmatic mind. So that was my formal education.

It was about eight years of survey. I really liked it because English, when you go to school, makes no sense. Mathematics work, and you can do it from different directions and make it work. So I love mathematics, but I'm really a mechanic at heart. In 1974, aged 20, Les married his high school sweetheart Anita. A few years later, the couple moved from the Silverton area to the town of Green River, Utah, Les took a job as a mechanic. Though just four hours northwest of Silverton, Green River is a world apart,

a dusty one-stop-like town in the middle of Utah's high desert. But as it happened, Les and Anita wouldn't stay here for long. One day, Les got a call out of the blue from an old family friend back in Colorado, a guy named Jack Ritter. I got to know Jack, through Jeff's his son and my young. younger brother were buddies, girl chasers together. We were all pretty close. All of their family and all of our family got along well. It's better than family because they weren't related to you. Jackie was always quiet, always a listener. Jack is a veteran Colorado minor turned

contractor. These days he runs a company that buys up old, disused mines and gets them operational again, using modern methods to extract every last ounce of remaining low-grade ore. Ever since the discovery of gold in Colorado in 1858, enterprising fortune seekers have set up mining operations in the foothills of the southern Rockies. By 1985, after more than a century of intensive extraction, most of those operations have closed. The region is littered with abandoned mines. However, with the advent of modern mining and refining technology, a new industry of mine reclamation has flourished in recent years.

Mines deemed exhausted and no longer profitable have been given a new lease of life by the next generation of fortune seekers. People like Jack Ritter. When Jack rang Les, he told him he'd recently acquired the Bessie G, an old gold and silver mine in La Plata County, inactive since the 1990. Jack told Les that unlike most of the sites he reclaimed, the Bessie G was nowhere close to being exhausted. Jack knew about so many mines and everything. He knew this one had the best record and amount, and there was never a mother load foul, so it's still there.

Back then, we could get two and a half ounces per ton, and that was minable. That was, we could make money. Jack wanted Les to come and work for him as a millwright, a kind of industrial mechanic stroke electrician. Jack made a persuasive pitch, but Les wasn't convinced right away. The job would be unpaid until such a time as the mine started making a profit, which could take months. After giving it some thought, Les presented Jack with his terms.

We were working for our... sales for free. And I had a new house that I built, and I told Jack I'd come and work for him if my house is paid for. If you pay the payment, I can handle everything else. And that was the deal. Now it's three years later, and still the Bessie G hasn't yielded enough gold to make a profit. With only a year left on their contract, the pressure is mounting for Jack and Les to find the mother load. that elusive deposit of untapped ore rumoured to dwell somewhere inside the mountain. If they don't, then everything they've invested, all this time, money and perspiration will be for naught. It's why they're working so hard to keep the mine open through the winter.

They simply can't afford to down tools until spring. But as they work on the snowshed, trying to maximize every second of daylight, nightfall isn't the only thing nipping at their heels. A further blizzard is forecast, and if they don't protect the mine's entrance before it hits, it will mean another unaffordable setback. Les sweats through his work clothes as he stands in the bucket of the loader, raised high of the ground, laying lengths of wood across the unfinished frame of the snowshed. We have a loader. It's on tracks, and we would carry our wood on it,

and then we would raise it up with it, and that's where I would. was I was inside the bucket. Maybe like 10 feet off the ground, 10, 12 feet off the ground. Jack reaches down for another length of timber. He turns and, stretching, passes it up to Les. He handed it up to me, and all of a sudden there was a little blast of snow about a pickup load. And it knocked me down in the bucket, and Jack, are you all right? Yeah, I'm all right.

everything. There was our warning we didn't take heed. Shaken, Les gets to his feet inside the bucket, blinking snow from his eyes. He squints up the mountain beyond the portal, but there's no sign of a bigger avalanche following this little one. The vibrations of the loader must have dislodged some surface powder, a loose drift, no harm done. Brushing snow from the folds of his overalls, Les gets back to work. A few minutes go by. Jack hands Les another length of timber, the final one, and just as he goes to place the plank,

the earth rumbles and growls. But because of the engine of the loader, a constant thrumming in their ears, Les and Jack don't hear it coming. Not until it's too late. In the fraction of a second before the avalanche hits, there is time only to adopt a half-baked brace position to instinctively turn from the roaring white cloud

and raise their arms to protect their faces and windpipes. And then the mountain engulfs them. I don't remember, I really don't know what was going on or anything, you're just fighting for a breath. It's about 5pm on November the 17th, 1985. In the La Plata Mountains of Southwest Colorado, the blizzard that has been threatening all afternoon has finally made landfall. Snow streams from the sky, an opaque cascade that twists in the wind. On a remote mountainside, below a curved treeless ridge, a few lengths of timber lie scattered across the surface of the frozen ground.

A mechanical loader, still emitting smoke, has toppled onto its side and is slowly being covered over by the steel. deadly falling snow. But of the two men who were working here just moments ago, there isn't a trace. The avalanche, a massive one, struck without warning, consigning the men to a grim fate, a swift burial and an unmarked grave. Meanwhile, somewhere beneath the surface, Les Morlang is being crushed by the weight of 50 feet of compacted snow and ice. My heart hat and everything in life with the back behind me. At first thing, you're just trying to breathe. But the pressure on your chest doesn't allow you anything.

A pulverizing force tightens around Les's body, blocking his airways and squeezing the life from his lungs. His mouth and nostrils are packed with snow, inducing violent coughs and spasms. A horrible pressure builds inside his head as the giant, A mound of frozen precipitation settles above him. Fortunately, Les' hands are up around his face, not pinned down by his side, and by slowly curling and uncurling his fingers, he is able to carve out an air pocket, a few centimeters around his mouth and nose, enabling a trickle of oxygen to pass between his gritted teeth. He hungrily sucks air, a string of spittle drips down his face. It is only then that Les

realizes something. He is upside down. His legs awkwardly spayed above his head. Because of the pressure on you, you're kind of like in a weightless situation. You can't tell where the gravity is unless you have some speed. So anyway, that's live around and then I realized, well, I'm upside down. Les hangs there, suspended and immobile, as his head fills with blood and his heart thumps against his ribs in a staccato drumbeat of panic. There is a tingling numbness as the pervasive cold starts leaking into his body. An almost imperceptible luminescence filters down from the surface, tinting the snow around Les's face, an eerie glacial blue.

High above him, he can hear the distant rumble of the loader. Does that mean Jack is up there somewhere? Maybe trying to dig him out? With all the energy his compressed lungs can muster, Les bellows Jack's name. But in the cramped space, his voice is a stunted, echoless yelp, immediately snuffed out by the snow. He tries again. Each cry for help tinged with ever greater uncertainty.

Not knowing if he's live or dead or somebody's going to help you, you know, there was nobody else up there. That's a pretty lonely feeling up there. You might as well be out in the Alaska. tundra with no help. Nobody can get to you. Buried beneath 50 feet of freezing snow, Lesz's body is being put through immense stress. As oxygen levels drop, the heart beats faster to compensate, increasing the body's need for air, and thus creating a deadly, vicious cycle. Nearly two-thirds of avalanche victims die this way,

asphyxating in a fit of claustrophobic panic, and few will survive more than than half an hour. After several minutes of fruitless yelling, Les' initial instinct to call for help has given way to a new resolve. If Jack isn't able to dig him out, he is going to have to do it himself. The loader, thankfully, told me which way to go. And then after I kind of got adjusted and then got my torso free to breathe, that's when I decided I could dig out. Les begins the less than straightforward task of flipping his body the right way round. He writhes and wriggles, flexing every muscle and straining every ligament trying to make some room around his torso. Compressed by the weight of the avalanche, the snow has started to set around him, like a plaster cast, hardening into thick cement.

Finally, after a solid shift of concentrated squirming, there is enough room around Les's chest. around Les's chest to free his elbows. With the full use of his arms, he bashes away more snow, building a pocket of space large enough to rotate his body the full 180 degrees. Then, angled slightly to the horizontal, he starts to dig. What I'd do is after I got my torso loose a little bit so I could kind of turn and start digging on my incline. And I had a little system.

I'd reach up one, two, three would push it down to my knees, and four was pack it. Soon, Les establishes a rhythm. He loosens the snow above his head, pulls it right down, then tramples it with his boots, and so on. Loosen, pull, trample. Loosen, pull, trample. repeat. The hours pile up. Les's hands, shoulders and forearms become machine-like in their consistency. Intense physical exertion is one way to stave off the immediate effects of hypothermia, but it won't protect his vulnerable extremities. And it's Lesz's hands that soon start to

suffer the most. He is wearing a pair of galvanized rubber work gloves, but after several hours of digging, his fingers feel like raw, bloody stumps. He has to periodically stop and warm them by shoving them inside his overalls and tucking them under his armpits. At one stage, he starts ripping pieces of his t-shirt. I was ripping up my shirt as I'd go along, and then when they'd get cold, then I'd go for a back piece, rip it out, and wrap them around my hands. Somewhere above his head, Day turns to me.

night, then passes into day again, and still Les keeps digging. By now, the loader has fallen silent. All Les has to keep him company is the sound of his own labored breathing. There are times when it seems like he could dig forever and never get out. But whenever his determination begins to waver, he pauses, steals himself and continues, focusing on survival not for his own sake, but for the sake of others. I think the flashbacks and seeing my son and my wife, I had to get out. I had to get out. I just, I couldn't labor with a new house payment and all that stuff.

Just thinking about that and, you know, all the promises you make when you're on the edge of dying. Les perseveres. He isn't especially religious, but sometimes he prays aloud, issuing solemn vow. to the heavens, promising that if he gets out of this alive, he will live a good life no matter what. You're praying hard and promising the good Lord and you're going to get out and take care of your family. After 21 hours, Les has squirmed, wriggled, and clawed his way to within just a few meters of the surface. He can see the murky gray light above, leaking down through the crystalline particles, almost there.

He reaches up, grasping for purchase, but the snow here is softer and collapses under his touch. He has to keep pushing it down hard, compacting it with his boots, and using it as a platform to push off from. I was getting close to the outside. So I'm trying to jump some stuff, but there's nothing to get a hold of. So I'm down in this hole and I'm just flapping my wings like that trying to get out. At last, Lesz punches through. the layer above his head, and for the first time in nearly a day, he is not greeted by more snow, but a sliver of gray sky. Adrenaline surging, he heaves himself through the hole and collapses

in a gasping, shuddering heap. He is out. Quickly he looks around for Jack, but there's no one here. The blizzard is still raging, and horizontal snow buffets his exposed face. He calls for help, The Asky party would venture up the mountain in these conditions. No one is coming. Les shields his eyes from the blinding snow, which clumps in his eyelashes as the wind shrieks and howls in his ears. A grim truth dawns on him. His grueling ordeal is still far from over. He is going to have to survive another night on the mountain.

It's about 5 p.m. Les kneels in the snow His head bent against the blizzard He has managed to retrieve some old receipts And a matchbook from a pocket of his overalls Incredibly the matches are still fit for purpose Though the same can't be said for Les's body Which is frozen stiff

Had matches but my hands wouldn't work I did get the matches strike And burn some of the receipts But I couldn't get any fire really anything going. Giving up on the fire, Les wraps his arms around himself and hunches over convulsing violent shivers. These must be 60 mile an hour winds.

He peers around for somewhere to shelter from the storm, one of the mine's outbuildings or vehicles. But the avalanche has buried everything, erasing all traces of the Bessie G. He looks down at the hole in the snow he has just emerged from. It seems crazy, but he was warmer in there than he is out here. The storm was still cooking pretty good. The only thing I could do dig back in. And so, with no other option, Les does the unthinkable.

He begins digging himself back into the snow pile. Took my helmet off, left my liner on, took it off, and dug with that. So I dug back in and up just a little. and then waited for the next day. Les carves out a holler and hunkers down in his snow cave. It could be hours before the storm passes. He shivers and rocks and tries everything he can to conserve his strength and body heat. At one point, he hears something strange,

a sudden clamor of snuffles and squeaks. There was a pika giving me heck that evening. The little rabbit rats, they're called Pekas. I guess I got into some of his story, I suppose. He was chirping, just chirping at me. But man, was that ever so inviting to hear that? After his long, lonely, silent struggle, the noisy protestations of the Pika are an odd source of comfort,

a reminder that even here, in the most inhospitable of environments, life clings on. Eventually, soothed by the squeaking rodent and completely drained by the exertions of the last 24 hours, Les manages to drift off. But he hasn't been asleep for long when a different sound startles him awake. A faint rumble, building to a climactic roar. It's another avalanche. I can hear it's kind of like crackling and slide sound.

And, of course, I'm in my little hole, and I just figured it would mask me, but no, it's sliding over the top of the old snow. Les braces for the inevitable, but it never arrives. Instead of crushing him, the loose snowpack slides down the mountain in one big chunk, passing over the top of his cave. In fact, this second avalanche might prove to be a blessing in disguise. The second avalanche covered my hole, so it did me a favor. It closed my entrance off.

That stopped any wind or anything. I'm sure that helped me survive. It's hard to say how much snow has been deposited on top of him by this second avalanche, but he can worry about that in the morning. For now, insulated from the wind, Les huddles in his makeshift igloo and succumbs once again. to the welcome oblivion of sleep. When Les wakes, it's dawn.

A cold blue light leaks down through the drifts as the sun comes up. Once again, Les starts digging his way to the surface. This time, there's only about three feet burying him, and it doesn't take long to reach daylight. You know, I wouldn't up for much more digging. But anyway, I did, and then I could see that light again like a cloudy day and yeah you're just exubering you know breaking out i broke down in a

strong rush man how awesome it is now bright and calm it has finally stopped snowing and the wind has lost its ferocity again he looks around for jack but maybe his friend has already made it down the mountain maybe he has already sent a search and rescue team to come and look for him here at the mine sight. But Les is in no mood to hang around. I'm like, okay, that's it. I'm out of here. I'm not going to wait for anybody, which was the wrong thing to do. If I'd have stayed there, they'd have seen me. Les gets to his feet and begins making his way downhill. To the east, the mountain flattens into a wide alpine valley. If Les has his bearings right, there is a creek somewhere down

there which will be able to follow back to sea. civilization. He staggers through the deep, fresh deposits, eager to reach the compacted snow further down the slope. Anyway, I made it down to the hard pack. I couldn't really tell you how. I rolled tom, I skidded a lot in my rubber suit. That helped. So I made it down to the hard pack. Les picks his way down the mountain. Frostbite gnaws at his fingers and toes, and hypothermia has turned his skin a cadaverous gray. He looks like a dead man walking. Soon he reaches the timber line.

Storm battered pines shiver in the gentle gusts, shedding clumps of snow from their branches. Les weaves through the trees, his sights set on the valley below. He's made it a few kilometers when he hears something, the pulsing thump, thump, thump of propellers. A moment later, he sees a helicopter flying towards him, close enough to feel its down drafts.

He screams through the roar of the engine, frantically waving his arms above his head. It's probably 70 feet from me flying up, and I'm above them watching him go up to hill. But the aircraft doesn't stop. It continues up the mountain, missing Les completely. Furious, he has no choice but to continue his long stagger down hill. about half an hour later another noise stops him in his tracks at first it turns like a thunder clap echoing off the surrounding peaks and jostling the branches of the pines but after a closer listen it becomes clear what's going on they're setting off

explosive charges trying to trigger more avalanches in order to clear the way for rescuers I'm walking down there and I hear these explosions going off and I knew what they were doing because it was like screaming and scratching and a horrible noise. As the explosions reverberate around him, shaking the mountain beneath his feet, Les shelters behind a sturdy looking tree and braces himself. He has already survived two avalanches. Now, in the process of trying to save him, his would-be rescuers are about to set off a third, and surely this one really will,

finish him off. Les cowers behind the tree's trunk, every fibre of his body tense as he awaits the third avalanche. Small stones and fine-grained snow skitter down the mountain as the explosive charges detonate. There is a whooshing sound

and Les turns to see a monstrous white cloud hurtling through the trees. But thankfully it's some distance away. He watches as the avalanche thunder us by. Once the vibrations have stopped, he steps out from behind the tree and continues downhill. Perhaps his luck is finally shifting. Suddenly, he hears the chopper approaching again, swooping into view from beyond the curve of the mountain. Determined not to let the rescuers miss him again, Les clambers to the top of a boulder and screams into the deafening roar of propellers.

When I got up on top of that rock, and here they come around the corner of that beautiful music. The chopper's coming right up to me. I raised my hands up and butch Nolan on a little plat again. He raised his hand so I knew they'd seen me. The helicopter swings around before coming in to land on a rocky ledge, the granular snow billowing in the rotor wash. Lesz stumbles over, limping across the ground, until he's close enough to hurl himself forward, reach out with both hands, and grab hold. hold of one of the helicopter's skids. Not until he can feel the solid steel in his hands

does he allow himself to breathe again. He has made it. We ate it for the hospital, and they were laughing and crying and happy, and I was chewing their ass of something horrible. Because I'm out of my mind. I'm asking about Jack, and they're not telling me anything. He fires questions at the rest of the rest of the moment. Where's Jack? Was he rescued first? What condition is he in? But all he gets are sympathetic looks.

A few hours later, Les is lying in a hospital bed, his frostbitten limbs wrapped in gauze when somebody comes in to update him about Jack. Les sits up. When they fell Jack, he was beside the loader reaching up to him. towards the control seat to let me down. And it looked like the weight of the snow pushed him down against the track in a hitting's head until he went pretty quick. It turns out Les was the fortunate one. He will have to process the tragic death of his friend later

because as he recuperates in hospital, the full extent of his own injuries becomes clear. The doctor who first examines Les informs him that his fingers may need to be amputated. The frostbite is too far along. Necrosis is set in. This is a shattering diagnosis. Les is a mechanic. Without his fingers, he doesn't have a livelihood. But before he is wheeled into surgery, his wife Anita, manages to contact Les' own doctor, who intervenes at the last minute.

The doctor over there wanted to cut him off. So Anita called my doctor, and he got a hold of that doctor. And told him, don't you touch him one little bit till I see it. So with that information, I thought, I can get out of here. Before he is officially discharged, Les has a group of friends smuggle him out of his ward and transfer him to a different hospital closer to her. There, the doctors managed to avoid complete amputation. It's a major relief, but even so, he has a long, difficult road to recovery ahead of him.

Looking back now, Les says that he wouldn't have coped without the love and support of his wife. The best thing was being married to Anita. That probably made it closer than ever. You never know you could get closer, but you can when you're in that. kind of situation. And she took care of me. That was like a little infant, basically. In the end, Les does lose a few toes and some sections of his fingers.

Ultimately, it's a small price to pay for survival. But even after most of his frostbidden limbs recover, Les is left to deal with a wider fallout of the avalanche, the wounds that will never totally heal. Jack Ritter's death is devastating to all who knew and loved him. For Les, the survivor's guilt is overwhelming at times. Were it not for Anita, he admits, he might well have descended into a very dark place. Even after everything was all done, I didn't know if I should be alive or not or want to be. But when you have somebody like her, it's easy.

We're high school sweethearts. We've been married 52 years. I don't know why. Somehow we were definitely made for each other. As the years pass, Les tries to honor Jack's memory by emulating him, by following the example set by his old friend. I have to learn to listen more and not talk. That was one of the best things that come out of was being like Jack, because he's gone. 41 years later, Jack and Anita still live in the hills of southwest Colorado.

On clear days, they can see all the way across to the shallow, curved ridge in the La Plata Mountains, where the sound of machinery once rumbled from the depths of the Bessie G. The mother load was never found. The mine was shuttered for good, not long after the avalanche of 85. But Les says he no longer needs to extract gold from the ground, because he is already rich in so many other ways. When he was under the snow, it was thoughts of his family that got Les through. Looking back now, he reiterates the importance of persevering through adversity,

even when the odds seem hopeless. Said it a thousand times, don't ever give up. There's always hope. If you could move that little finger, move it. That's what helped me. It may seem like the end of the world. but don't give up, just crying. Next time on real survival stories, we meet Rebecca Hay.

In May 2016, the 22-year-old gets a unique opportunity, the chance to enjoy a private hot-air balloon flight over the English countryside. But the trip proves to be memorable for all the wrong reasons, when somehow the balloon becomes dangerously entangled in a set of power lines. And this is just the start of Rebecca. What follows is a harrowing battle to defy death in the most challenging of circumstances. It will feature lethal high voltage, a ferocious outbreak of fire, and a stomach churning descent back to Earth. That's next time on real survival stories. Listen right now without waiting and

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