Real Survival Stories - Glacier Escape: Trapped Under the Ice

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

Two friends embark on an awe-inspiring trip into the mountains. But then, one false step sends Jim Davidson and Mike Price plummeting into a crevasse. Trapped deep beneath the surface of a glacier, surrounded by sheer walls of ice, Jim will come to realise there’s only one way he can possibly escape… Many thanks to Jim Davidson. For more about this epic story, read The Ledge: An Inspirational Story of Friendship and Survival by Jim Davidson and Kevin Vaughan. A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started with a 7-day free trial. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 June, 1992. Mount Rainier National Park, Washington State. A bald eagle soars through clear blue skies.

Spread out below is a vast wilderness of snow-capped peaks, pine forests, and sparkling alpine lakes. Bright sunshine glints off the frozen face of Mount Rainier, one of North America's tallest and most spectacular mountains. Its awesome summit of black volcanic rock is encircled by sweeping sheets of ice, glaciers that spill out into the surrounding woodland. It's a picture of serenity and natural beauty. But deep beneath the ice field that covers Mount Rainier's lower slopes, 29-year-old Jim Davidson is fighting for his life.

Somehow, he has just survived a 30-meter fall. He's on his back, squinting up into the darkness, trying to make sense of his surroundings. Though Jim doesn't yet realize it, his best friend and climbing partner, Mike, lies nearby. The two men were tied together with a rope. The only light comes from the hole in the ice way up above, the same hole that Jim fell through with Mike close behind. But before he can get his bearings, Jim feels snow falling onto his face. Just a little at first, then a lot. I started paddling my hands in the air to keep my face clear,

but I couldn't keep up with it and the snow began piling up on my stomach, on my chest, and then a huge chunk was coming down at me. I could see a little bit of light above me and then it flickered and then went dark and then something really big hit me. I was completely buried by snow. I felt this huge impact of weight on my chest and stomach and legs. And there I was in a pile of snow, buried over my head, and everything went completely silent and completely dark. And I realized, I'm buried alive. Jim thrashes about wildly, trying desperately to wrench an arm free.

I thought, this can't be. Somehow I just survived that huge fall and now I'm buried? This isn't right. I'd taken avalanche training classes and they tell you if you're going to get buried in an avalanche to put your hands above your head to make a small air pocket. I'd managed to get one hand above my face and so I had a little air pocket about the size of a soccer ball and so I had a little air pocket about the size of a soccer ball and I could breathe a little bit. Jim coughs trying to clear his airways of slush. He breathes in gratefully but the danger isn't past. Far from it. I tried to push with my arms and legs but it just felt like I was held down by a thousand cold, wet hands.

With only a small air pocket to sustain him, he has mere minutes to avoid suffocation. 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 and suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Jim Davidson, an amateur mountaineer from the States, blindsided by a disaster that would strike fear into the hearts of even the most experienced climbers.

Buried in a pile of snow, with the fate of his partner unclear, Jim is stranded, trapped in an icy crevasse and running out of oxygen. With the clock ticking and darkness all around, he will begin a desperate attempt to dig them both free. I'm John Hopkins. From Noisa, this is Real Survival Stories. June 21, 1992. In Washington State, Jim Davidson and his friend Mike Price are hiking through Mount Rainier National Park. It's a beautiful summer's day. The air is fragrant with the smell of pine needles. The snow crunches softly underfoot.

As they round a bend in the trail, Jim peers up beyond the treeline. Looming over their heads is the summit of Mount Rainier. For Jim, ascending this colossal mountain will be the pinnacle of his climbing journey so far. I'm originally from Concord, Massachusetts, and I grew up there in my first 22 years or so. And I grew up working for my father's painting company. So I climbed ladders

and walked on roofs and painted high church steeples and high electrical towers. But I was reading books about mountaineering, particularly about Mount Everest. And I was just amazed by these mountaineering stories and also polar exploration stories. So I kind of had this distant vision of the big mountains in my mind. Jim's fascination with climbing inspires him to attend graduate school in Colorado, in the heart of the Rockies. It's there that he begins mountaineering in earnest. It's also where he meets his climbing partner, Mike. I met Mike Price when we were both going to graduate school at Colorado State University. And he was kind of a quieter person than me,

but he was really sharp. He was getting his master's in English. So he was well-read. He had a really sharp wit. So we were always kind of trading insulting jokes with one another and playing little jokes off each other's words and things like that. After conquering many of Colorado's peaks together, the pair set their sights on even higher mountains within the United States and around the world. We knew that we needed to get some more big mountain experience. So we picked out Mount Rainier in the state of Washington.

At over 14,000 feet, Mount Rainier will be by far the tallest mountain Jim has ever climbed. Provided everything goes to plan, it will take them four full days to reach the summit. Jim is grateful to have Mike by his side. Jim is a highly capable recreational climber, but Mike is the more experienced of the two, with a more advanced set of skills. Mike was a better climber than me. He actually worked as an instructor for Colorado Outward Bound, taking young people out into the mountains and the deserts, and he was on a search and rescue down at McMurdo Base down in Antarctica. And he'd been climbing for four years more than me, for

a total of 14 years. So I felt pretty strong in my climbing, but Mike was clearly the more experienced and stronger climber of 14 years. So I felt pretty strong in my climbing, but Mike was clearly the more experienced and stronger climber of our team. After hiking to the base of the mountain, Jim and Mike prepare for the ascent. Their plan is to scale the north face of Mount Rainier, up a steep technical route called the Liberty Ridge. But before Jim and Mike can embark up the rock face, they must first traverse the enormous icy glaciers that cover Mount Rainier's lower slopes. They have decided to make this trip at the height of summer. While this ensures beautiful clear weather and longer days, it also means that the snow underfoot is soft and unstable, making the trek heavy going. But it's not the slush itself that bothers them. It's what might lie beneath.

With every step, they must probe the ground with their ice picks, testing for weakness. Every few hundred feet, their picks slip through the snow and disappear. As they inch forward, feeling their way, the climbers are able to mentally map a jagged chasm in the ice underneath the snow, a crevasse. Hundreds of mountaineers have lost their lives, falling into the deep, deadly fissures around Mount Rainier. Some of the holes go hundreds of meters beneath the surface of the glacier. lives, falling into the deep, deadly fissures around Mount Rainier.

Some of the holes go hundreds of meters beneath the surface of the glacier. Mindful of this, Jim and Mike are roped together, so that if one of them falls, the other can anchor their axe in the snow. Thankfully the first day ends without incident. Jim and Mike set up camp on the glacier. Having left behind their tents to reduce the weight of their packs, they unroll their mats and sleeping bags and bed down beneath the stars. Despite the day's exertions, Jim lies awake for hours, staring up at the glittering constellations.

At nighttime, when you camp that high on the mountain, it's kind of an interesting mix of light and dark because the stars burn so bright. It seems like they're almost throwing light down onto the ground. And there's a little bit of light that reflects off the glacier. And so you see this sort of white glow coming off the glacier. And even though we need to sleep, we'll just sit there and stare at it because it's just so amazing to be in a place like that.

The next morning, they continue their ascent. Jim and Mike have left the glacier behind now. They're on to the steep, technical part. And the conditions are perfect for climbing. Beneath the cloudless sky, Jim and Mike work their way methodically up the north face of Mount Rainier. It's tough going, but they encourage each other every step of the way.

And finally on that fourth day, we got up just with the sun and we left our packs behind because it was easy terrain ahead. And just with our ice axes and the rope and one quart of water to share between us, we did the last 800 feet of low angle snow to the summit. We both admitted that it was a really challenging climb for each of us and we felt like we couldn't do it with anybody else. So it was kind of the, it took both of us working together to get up there. We were just really happy to be up on top of such an amazing mountain and

having completed such an amazing route. Standing atop the summit, towering over the landscape, they can almost touch the sky. The friends take in the view. The morning sun casts its golden sheen over the pine forests and valleys. It's the feeling all mountaineers chase. When you're on top of the world, anything seems possible. But they can't stay up here long. They must still complete the long journey down.

As we say in mountaineering, the summit is only halfway there. You've still got to get back down off the mountain. So we kind of gather ourselves together and we descended that 800 feet back to where our big backpacks were, picked up our gear and then traversed sideways at the constant elevation of about 14,000 feet and traversed around to the north side of the mountain and got on the main trail.

Rather than returning down the steep Liberty Ridge, Jim and Mike decide to follow an easier route back. They will descend onto the glacier and follow the footprints of other climbers back through the snow. They drop down to 13,000 feet, then 12,000 feet. By midday, they are only about an hour away from getting off the glacier. Then it'll be a simple walk through the woods back to base camp. Thoughts turn to warm meals and hot drinks. With the finish line in sight, they reach a narrow section known as the corridor.

And the corridor is a spot where the ice is kind of compressed between two glacial ridges, and so it's considered to be relatively crevasse-free, pretty much a snowy slope. And we were following the tracks down, and Mike was standing on the tracks and we needed to zig to the right and so I started to move off to the right a little bit and I stepped off the trail by about two steps. So I was probing with my axe as normal and the snow felt solid and sounded solid and as I moved forward suddenly my foot started sinking into the snow.

Well, I thought it was just a soft spot that would firm up underneath my foot soon, but it didn't. I sunk in up to my shin and then up to my knee. And that's when I realized I'm no longer standing on a solid glacier. I'm standing on a weak snow bridge that spans across a big hidden crevasse. Jim bellows a warning to Mike as he sinks further into the snow. Jim strikes out with his ice axe, trying to anchor himself. But the tool cuts through the slush like a hot knife through butter.

With the bright sun beating down, the snow is too soft to provide any purchase. Then, suddenly, Jim sinks beneath the surface and plunges down into the darkness. My ice axe cut right through the snow, and I fell into the crevasse, and everything went dark. And I was scared, but I was tied to Mike, and I knew that any second now, the rope would get tight, and Mike would stop my fall. But Jim doesn't stop falling. He tumbles down through the void, the icy walls of the crevasse racing by. The rope connecting him to Mike should be taut by now. Instead, Jim seems to be accelerating, plummeting deeper into the chasm. And then I felt the rope jerk once, and I slowed down a little bit.

And I thought, Mike must have stopped me. This is great. I'm going to come to a stop. But a split second later, the rope goes completely slack, and Jim drops like a stone. I didn't know what it meant right then, but as I look back now, I realize what happened. My partner Mike had been slowing me down for the first 40 or 50 feet of the fall. But when he got pulled to the lip of the crevasse, he couldn't stop either because the snow was so soft and wet. And he got pulled over the lip of the crevasse and tied together, the two of us were soaring all the way into the depth of the crevasse.

Jim and Mike are in free fall. In the darkness, Jim braces for the inevitable impact. I couldn't see it in the darkness, but I could feel an ice wall skimming past my gloves, and I heard the nylon dragging against the ice, and as I fell faster, the pitch went higher and higher. So I was going faster and faster. And I thought, oh man, we're going to hit really hard. And then all of a sudden, boom! 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. his chest and has him pinned. Jim tries to shift the weight, but as he does, he feels snow falling on his face. Lightly at first, then harder.

Squinting up at the dim daylight far above, he makes out a formless mass tumbling towards him. An avalanche of loosened powder. I started paddling my hands in the air to keep my face clear, but I couldn't keep up with it, and the snow began piling up on my stomach, on my chest, and then something really big hit me. I was completely buried by snow. I felt this huge impact of weight on my chest and stomach and legs, and there I was in a pile of snow, buried over my head,

and everything went completely silent and completely dark. And I realized I'm buried alive. Being buried by an avalanche is one of the most treacherous scenarios a climber can ever encounter. Once snow stops moving, it can set like concrete. And then, even if the submerged individual is just a couple of feet deep, any movement is all but impossible. Somehow, Jim is still thinking clearly. This mental clarity quite possibly saves his life. I'd taken avalanche training classes, and they tell you if you're going to get buried in an avalanche to put your hands above your head to make a small air pocket. Jim carves out a small pocket of air to breathe. But it's only a temporary solution.

He's already been buried for ten minutes. If he doesn't dig himself out soon, his oxygen supply will run out. Jim thrashes his limbs about. The snow is still just about soft enough for him to loosen his right arm. He claws at the snow above him and finally, with an upward lunging motion, thrusts his head out into fresh air. But he's still buried from the neck down. He needs help. Fast. And then I remembered Mike.

If I fell in, he must have fallen in too. So I yelled into the darkness, Mike, Mike, I'm buried, dig me out! Because I figured somehow in my mind that he was nearby and that he was okay. And when he answered back, he didn't answer back with words, he answered back with a groan. And I knew he was hurt, and he was was okay. And when he answered back, he didn't answer back with words, he answered back with a groan. And he knew he was hurt, and he was hurt bad.

Priorities have shifted. Jim needs to save his partner. He manages to free both his arms. Still half buried, Jim starts shoveling snow away from the area where he thinks Mike is trapped. And eventually I pushed off enough snow that I found Mike's face nearby. He too had been buried under the snow, but he was critically injured and he couldn't move.

And by the time I cleared his face off, he wasn't breathing. And I started going to my training. I put my fingers against his neck to try and get a pulse and I couldn't feel anything. And I put my cheek against his because his head was right near pulse and I couldn't feel anything. And I put my cheek against his because his head was right near mine and I couldn't feel any breath and I was screaming at him and pinching his cheek to try and get a pain response and he wasn't moving. And I think it had been, I don't know, 10 or 15 minutes that we'd been trapped under the snow and he hadn't been breathing the whole time

and I realized I had to start doing CPR on my friend. Jim tries desperately to resuscitate Mike, but the chest compressions don't seem to be working. Jim strains to lean across and starts performing mouth to mouth. And I kept up the CPR for, I don't know how long, 10 minutes, 15, 20. And I kept hoping that a miracle would happen, that he'd suddenly come awake and that everything would be okay, but that's not what happened. I couldn't bring myself to stop for a while. I kept hoping that a miracle would happen, that he'd suddenly come awake and that everything would be okay, but that's not what happened. I couldn't bring myself to stop for a while. I kept it up even when I knew that he was gone. I checked again for his pulse and I couldn't feel anything.

And eventually I had to stop. And when I stopped, I knew that Mike was dead and I was trapped alone in the snow. Jim is half submerged in snow at the bottom of the crevasse, stranded, without his partner, and without any real hope of survival. Tears roll down his face as he rests his head on Mike's chest. The minutes pass as he sits there in the darkness. But even in the very depths of despair, the human instinct to survive eventually kicks in. A little kind of voice in my head was like a survival voice screaming at me.

I was yelling, get out, get out of the snow. So I realized that the voice was right jim forces himself to start moving eventually he manages to dig his whole body free he gets to his feet and stretches out his arms the cave walls are only about two feet apart he peers left and right expecting to make out the crevasse floor underfoot, snaking away like an alleyway between two buildings. But all he can see, past a certain point, is a black void. It dawns on Jim that they're not at the bottom of the crevasse at all. They've landed on a narrow ledge, partway down the abyss.

We were on a small ledge, partway down the crevasse, and the crevasse itself stretched deeper and deeper into the darkness. How far down it was, I couldn't see, but the walls got narrower until they got about one foot apart and then several inches apart, and I couldn't see beyond that. And I realized if this ledge collapses, we're going to go in even deeper. And I wondered how deep we were.

Jim looks up. High above him, a hole they fell through, points to the only way out. And I started looking up the walls, and I looked up and up, and the walls were about two feet apart where we were, and they leaned back at about a 70 degree or maybe 80 degrees, so the wall spread further apart. And when they got about eight feet apart from one another, they both went dead vertical and went up, up, up. And then towards the upper part of the crevasse, they kind of leaned in towards one another. And so there was an overhang up there. And way at the top of the overhang was a small circle of light. That circle of light was the hole in the snow bridge that had collapsed beneath my feet. And the way back to that hole, back to the surface, back to the world, that was 80 feet above my head.

And I said out loud, oh man, Mike, we're in trouble. We are in big trouble, because there's no way I could climb a wall like that. No way. He needs to act. But how? Even now, it's his friend and mentor he has to thank for providing the solution. Mike had always taught me to keep an emergency ice screw right on your person so you'd have it. Not in the pack and not with your partner. So I took out my emergency ice screw and I

put it against the wall and I started turning it against that rock-hard ice, 80 feet beneath the glacier. Jim secures himself and Mike to the ice screw. At least now if the ledge collapses, we'll be hanging from one ice screw. We won't go in any deeper. If he ever makes it out of this hole, Jim wants to ensure that Mike's body gets back to his family. He owes him that much. Then a thought occurs to him. It's a long shot, but maybe there are other mountaineers up on the surface who can hear him. Jim cups his hand around his mouth and shouts for help. But when I yelled, I could tell

that the crevasse walls were kind of swallowing the sound, and the entire crevasse above my head was capped with this snow bridge, and so that snow bridge is going to prevent the sound from leaving the crevasse, so I didn't think my sound was getting out of there, and also I could hear the fear in my voice. Hearing my voice out loud was revealing my own fear to me. And that made me even more scared. Jim remembers the safety car they filled out with the park rangers before setting off up the mountain. Maybe the rangers will notice that Jim and Mike haven't returned and come looking for them. But even if they did, the odds of being found are vanishingly slim.

On a glacier this long, maybe five miles long on the Evans Glacier, there's got to be hundreds of crevasses or thousands. And I realized they're never going to look in the right crevasse. If we're going to get out of here, I'm going to have to climb out. There's no two ways about it. If Jim is going to survive, he's gonna have to climb out of the crevasse himself. He mentally traces possible routes up the towering wall of ice. But every time his eyes reach the top, he stops dead.

The overhang, a horizontal shelf of ice that juts out over the wall and up to the surface. It's way out of his league. I was a good ice climber, but you'd have to be a world-class climber to try and tackle something overhanging like that. Especially with the kind of ice tools that we had back in 1992. So I thought, that's it. There's no way I'm climbing out of here. Hopelessness spreads through his body like a wave of nausea. I thought about not even trying. I thought about just laying down

and waiting for the cold to come that night and just let the cold take me. But I realized I couldn't do that. My partner Mike had given his all to save me. He saved my life. So I felt like I owed it to Mike and to his family and to my family as well

to try and get out. Even if I died in the attempt or didn't survive my injuries, at least if I got out, they'd all know what happened to us. So I figured I had to try. Jim estimates he probably has around five or six hours of daylight left. When the sun goes down, the temperature inside the crevasse will plummet. Every second he delays, the odds of survival grow slimmer.

Jim gathers his gear and stands at the base of the wall. I just had to get past the fear. So in my mind's eye, I could see Mike kind of sternly looking at me, telling me, get on the wall, start the climb, start the climb now before it's too late. So with that, I jumped on the wall and I started climbing as fast as I could. Periodically, he feeds more rope through his carabiner, providing more slack. This is called belaying. It's something climbers usually do in pairs. Now, working alone, Jim must improvise. To his amazement, his self-belay system works.

He starts climbing with more confidence. But as he ascends, the walls get steeper and more difficult to hold onto. Gritting his teeth, Jim swings his ice axe and goes to move his foot higher, but as he does, his crampon slips. When I fell, I dropped back below my ice screw. I fell about six feet. I slammed against the wall, hit my head a little bit, got a little stunned, and I realized that I dropped back below my ice screw, I fell about six feet, I slammed against the wall, hit my head a little bit, got a little stunned, and I realized that I could no longer keep free climbing by swinging my ice tools and kicking my feet in. I was going to have to start doing the aid climbing. Jim changes tack. Aid climbing is where the climber fixes an ice screw every few feet, then uses ropes attached to these screws

to pull himself up the wall. It's slower and more arduous than free climbing. Jim enters a state of complete concentration. Small technical details absorb his focus. After two hours, he reaches the halfway point. He feels a sudden rush of optimism. Maybe he can do this. But when he reaches into his pocket, he makes a gut-wrenching discovery. He has just used his last ice screw. I was roughly halfway up the wall, about 40 feet up, but now I had no ice screws left.

And I realized that I was mostly hanging off the top ice screw, and the lower ice screws weren't doing me very much good anymore. They weren't part of the anchoring system. And that's when I realized I was going to have to repel or abseil back down the wall, take out those bottom ice screws, and go back up to the top. So that meant from now on, to make any progress,

I was going to have to go up and down back up to the top. So that meant from now on, to make any progress, I was going to have to go up and down and up. It's a crushing blow. He thought he was halfway done. But in fact, the climb was about to reach whole new levels of physical and psychological difficulty. And that's when it got even harder. Because when I would go back down the wall, I would move closer to Mike and I would wonder if I was doing the right thing.

I'd left him behind, but I felt good that he was on the other end of my rope and he was tied into the ice screw. But I had to keep reminding myself that the best I could do for our partnership was to get out of the crevasse. So I'd have to take that bottom ice screw out and again commit to going upward. And I'd go back up to recover the ground that I just repelled or abseiled down. I'd get to that high point, catch my breath, and then start climbing the wall again. Jim continues methodically up and down and up the crevasse wall.

Finally, after another two hours, he reaches the dreaded overhang. And then I got to the steepest part of the wall, that overhang that I'd seen from down below. I'm about 60 feet up the wall and the overhang juts backwards about three feet. And I'd been worried about it the whole time because I didn't really have a plan

for getting past that overhang. I could put my hand past the overhang, but I couldn't see what I was doing. Jim fumbles blindly. To get past this obstacle, he needs to fix an ice screw to the wall directly above the overhang. After four grueling hours, he doesn't know if he can summon the strength. And I was so weak, I had no strength to really turn the ice screw out there. So I had to kind of re-rig my system. I had to put an ice screw in just below the roof and kind of attach my hips to it up high

so my hips were tucked high underneath the roof so I could bend backwards and just reach out far enough and get my hand out there and get my eyes out there to see what I was doing. Jim strains every muscle in his body to reach out beyond the overhang and twist the device into the wall. hand out there and get my eyes out there to see what I was doing. Jim strains every muscle in his body to reach up beyond the overhang and twist the device into the wall. But just when he thinks he's done it, he loses his footing and falls back down to his last anchor point. Jim dangles there. He can feel the strength draining out of him. Every failed attempt is another costly waste of energy.

From now on, he needs to make every movement count. He musters up the courage to try again. He reaches out his gloved fingers, clumsily grappling with a slippery metal screw. But eventually... But eventually I got that ice screw in enough past the overhang that I could clip into it. And that's when I had to really trust and commit my whole weight to an ice screw that I couldn't inspect very well. The ice screw is in position, but the overhang is still blocking Jim's view. He doesn't know if the tool is securely in place. He just has to pray that it will hold.

Stealing himself, Jim prepares to push off from the back wall and swing himself up and around the overhang. The rope strains as Jim propels himself outwards, but the ice screw holds firm. He hauls himself up high enough to clip his harness into the screw. He has made it past the overhang. He has done it. I eventually got enough strength to pull myself up onto that ice screw and clipped into it with another carabiner, another sling, and that's how I got past that overhang. And I didn't have that plan when I had left the ledge four hours earlier.

I was doing this all with rigged pieces of equipment that I had to make things up with, things I'd read about and tricks I'd learned from Mike and other climbers. It was just enough to get me past the overhang. Jim has completed the most difficult stretch of the climb, but the sheer effort of doing so has left him running on fumes. With just 15 feet left to ascend, he can see the opening. Can his body hold out? As I climbed higher, the angle eased back to 80 degrees, 70 degrees, and I was still

attached to the wall by my ice tools, so there was just no room for error. And I was kicking and swinging my tools, but I was getting weaker and weaker. Jim just keeps plunging his axe into the wall, taking one step after another. Then his head brushes against something solid. And I finally got up until my head was bumping up

against the underside of the snow bridge that had collapsed almost five hours earlier. And I tried to push it with my hand, but it was too thick, so I had to pull one ice tool out and chop away at the snow bridge and widen that hole. He's so close now. And I was chopping away at the snow, and I got the hole big enough that I thought I could crawl through it.

And my head popped above the surface of the snow, just the upper part of my helmet. And I could look around a little bit, and I was hoping maybe there would be somebody there, someone walking by, and they could just give me a hand for that last little bit. But there was nobody there. It was about 5 o'clock now, late on a Sunday and it was June 21st which was Father's Day in the United States and so everybody had left

the mountain to go home and I was the last guy on the glacier. Jim heaves his body up through the opening. He has made it. Out in the air he collapses in the snow.

He fights the urge to close his eyes and succumb to fatigue. Out in the air, he collapses in the snow. He fights the urge to close his eyes and succumb to fatigue. And I got up on my knees and I looked around. I could see way off in the distance, I could see the end of the glacier. I could see green trees and sunshine on those green trees. And I just said once softly, I'm alive. And then I just started crying. I tried to say I was alive again.

I could barely spit the words out a second time. But he can't lose focus now. He's alone on a glacier without equipment or provisions. Then Jim remembers the ranger station. It's only about a thousand feet further down the mountain. He starts to yell at the top of his voice, calling on reserves of energy he didn't know he had. But I just yelled and yelled and yelled and waved my arms and eventually somebody saw

me and could hear a distant yelling. They alerted the rangers and the rangers put together a team of two rangers and two volunteers and I could see those four climbers slowly working their way up to me. And I knew that they would come up to me, but it was going to take them a couple hours to make the ascent. All Jim can do now is wait for the rescue team. His mind replays the terrible events of the last five hours. As the feeling of numbness gradually ebbs away, he is left with a crushing sense of guilt. I never knew what survivor guilt was, but I could feel it already that Mike was the better climber and somehow he died and I survived. It should have been the other way around, I thought, and I had no idea what I was going to do with myself now.

But I just had to try and stay awake and stay warm as best I could until the rangers got to me. Two hours later, the rescue team reaches Jim. One ranger is lowered into the crevasse to locate Mike's body. When he re-emerges, the ranger informs Jim that although Mike is well secured on the ledge, they're going to have to source more men and more equipment to lift him out. So they said we had to leave Mike for the night, secured as he was. They put me on their rope and marched me down to their hut a couple hours below. And the next day they flew in more men and equipment on a helicopter, and it took them

all day, but they got Mike's body out of the crevasse and back to his parents. And eventually I flew off the mountain myself and was able to, over the course of several days, debrief the Rangers on what happened. Eventually got back to Seattle and flew home back to Colorado, back to my wife. And I made it home, but I was a beaten man. I'd lost my best friend. I was wracked with guilt,

and I didn't know what life had in store for me after that. Back home in Colorado, Jim struggles to adjust back to normal life. But after a lengthy period of recuperation, he starts to get there. He finds a new job, beginning work as an environmental geologist. Bit by bit, his life regains a semblance of normality. Needless to say, the trauma of his experience on Mount Rainier is always with him. Still, I was confused about what I should do with this story.

I thought, if I just let it eat me up, then I could disappear into a bottle of alcohol or a bottle of pills, and maybe my life would be short. And that would be dishonoring all the effort that Mike had put in to save me. Eventually, I realized that maybe what I should do is pursue life as best I could, doing the things that brought me joy again. So I started doing a little bit further backpacking, and I started doing some easy rock climbing. And I realized that maybe it wasn't so much living Mike's life for him, but just honoring the things that he and I had always cherished together. So I realized that by going out and pursuing life and enjoying life and doing the things that brought me fun and joy, that that was honoring Mike's life,

and it was also the right path for me. So after that, I tried to work a little less and be with friends more in the mountains and just try and enjoy life. And when something was going really well, if it was a beautiful day skiing in the high mountains of Colorado and I'd have a beautiful shot of powder through the trees with white snow on the trees and blue sky above,

I would think about Mike and just really go after it and just try and do the turns as aggressively and as fun as I could just to kind of honor the joy in that moment. And that brought me a little bit of peace, and I could sort of feel Mike's spirit with me. Later, Jim will write about what happened on the mountain. His hope is that the lessons he learned in that crevasse might reach those who need them.

The biggest thing that I learned is that the lessons he learned in that crevasse might reach those who need them. The biggest thing that I learned is that when you're encountering something difficult, you carry with you all these sources of strength and support and resilience from your past. The people that taught you critical things, maybe your parents, a favorite teacher, or in the case of me and Mike, a good friend who had taught you how to face challenges and face difficulties. And so those sources of resilience can get us through all kinds of difficulties, whether it's climbing out of a glacial crevasse or facing other challenges in life. Many thanks to Jim Davidson. For more about his epic story, Read The Ledge,

an inspirational story of friendship and survival, by Jim Davidson and Kevin more about his epic story, read The Ledge, an inspirational story of friendship and survival by Jim Davidson and Kevin Vaughn. In the next episode, we meet Canadian outdoorsman Jeremy Evans, a man most at home hiking and fishing in the Alberta wilderness. That is, until 2017, when he stumbles across a grizzly bear and her cub. Scarcely surviving a frenzied attack, Jeremy's left battered and broken, not knowing if or when the grizzly will return. And yet, despite the utterly dire straits, something inside Jeremy will keep him going, driving him homewards.