Real Survival Stories - K2 Disaster: Alone in the Death Zone

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

Catastrophe unfolds on one of the deadliest mountains on Earth - the mighty K2. When a massive ice fall hits the peak and their ascent spirals into chaos, Wilco van Rooijen and his teammates will find themselves trapped at extreme altitude in the ‘Death Zone’. But it’s not just the dizzying heights that Wilco must contend with. When a hasty decision robs him of one of his senses, he will be forced to make a drastic, death-defying choice… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cian Ryan-Morgan. For more on this story read Wilco’s book Surviving K2. 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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Wayfair, every style, every home. It is the evening of August 1st, 2008. In the northernmost reaches of Pakistan, along the 500 mile fault in the earth where the Indian subcontinent smashes into the rest of Asia, we'll find a verse. vertical world of ice and rock, the vast Karakoran range. With over 60 peaks exceeding 7,000 meters, the Karakorum contains the greatest concentration of high altitude mountains anywhere on the planet. And of these, none is taller or mightier than K2. Stradling the border with China, the world's second highest mountain looms imperiously over the snow-capped peaks that surround it.

an immense slab of glaciated granite, puncturing the troposphere. Due to its exposed northern location, K2 is notorious for its severe and unpredictable weather. For much of the year, the mountain remains shrouded in a mantle of freezing mist, pelted by blizzards and raked by high-velocity winds. As a result, K2 has acquired a fearsome reputation among mountaineers. In 1953, an American climate named George Bell, reeling from his failed attempt to reach the summit, described K2 as a savage mountain that tries to kill you. And indeed, it can sometimes seem as if K2 possesses a will of its own.

Its slopes forever shifting and rearranging themselves with great roaring avalanches and thunderous rock force, as if the violence, tectonic forces that created this. mountain are still reverberating. But tonight, the slopes of K2 are quiet. A day of fair weather has passed into a still, clear evening, and from base camp to summit, a heavy silence hangs in the thin alpine air. For the eight climbers picking their way down the sloping snowfield east of the summit, these are good conditions to make a descent, a rare window of calm. And then The mountain wakes up. At about 8pm local time,

a massive chunk of ice detaches itself from the lip of a hanging glacier a few hundred feet below the summit. A terrifying roar thunders in the darkness as several tons of broken, fragmented ice go shrieking down the slope. Though it misses the climbers on the snowfield, the falling ice crashes directly across the marked route they intend to follow, obliterating everything in its path.

The fixed ropes, the ice screws, the root markers, all are swept away in the deluge. By the time it stops, the icefall has erased everything that the climbers are relying on to get down, leaving them stranded. Dutch climber Wilco van Rojan is one of them. Imagine you're coming back from the summit, convinced that the roe, ropes are there, that is just a matter of clicking into the ropes, following the lines and get back, and you can't find the ropes. Nobody could have imagined that your rope would be gone.

Normally a rope is breaking and then you see some flaps hanging, you fix it and you go on. But in this case, the rope was all the way gone. We were trapped. 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 40-year-old mountaineer Wilco Van Royen.

In the summer of 2008, Wilco is leading an expedition up one of the world's most iconic mountains, the colossal K-2. Things are going to plan until the descent, when a massive icefall leaves the climbers stranded without fixed ropes. Oblivious to what exactly has happened, Wilco and his fellow climbers will spend hours searching for the ropes, all the while running down the clock on how long their bodies can safely exist at this extreme altitude, the so-called death zone. There is a limitation for every human being because we can't. survive at eight kilometers high. There is the lack of oxygen you will die. The only question is, what kind of period can you survive? Soon it won't be just the dizzying altitude that Wilco is contending with. Besieged by cold and plagued by dehydration, the Dutchman's situation

will go from bad to worse when a hasty decision robs him of one of his senses and he is forced to make a drastic death-defying choice. It was to be or not to be, so, So for me, you know, it was not a rational decision. It was just my gut feeling, you know, that I knew if I don't take action right now, I'm done. I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Podcast Network. This is Real Survival Stories. It's July the 30th, 2008, 17,000 feet above sea level. In Pakistan's Caracora Mountains, amid an amphitheater of sore-tooth granite ridge lines,

a collection of tents stands on a snow-flected plateau. of shingle and moraine. This is K2 Basecamp, the staging post for those attempting to conquer the world's second tallest mountain. On this summer's evening, base camp is busier than usual. Weeks of bad weather have prevented any summit attempts on K2, which has caused a backlog of frustrated climbers. Eight separate expedition teams have converged on Basecamp where they can do little but sit

and wait and hope conditions improve. Among those anxiously checking the forecast is Dutch mountaineer Wilco van Royen. When there is no opportunity in the weather, sometimes K2 is never been climbed, not every year like Mount Everest, because the snowfall is heavier. So there are many years that K2 haven't been climbed because there was not a window in the weather system. Wilco walks to the edge of camp and looks north through gaps in the swirling cloud towards the looming bulk of K2. The mountain south face is an almost perfect pyramid of ice, shaded black in areas where huge fists of granite punch through the snow. Wilco is 40 years old.

He has spiky silver hair, glacial blue eyes and a single hoop earring that glints in his left ear. He is the leader of an international expedition team, which has been stalled here at base camp for almost three months. They've spent some of that time prepping routes and making practice climbs on lower peaks. But there's only one real reason they're here. And with July almost over, the truth is unavoidable. They're running out of time to summit K2. Most of accidents happened in August.

So we said to each other, we won't climb in August. You are too late. The humidity is getting higher and higher, the avalanche danger, etc., etc. At just over 8,600 meters or 28,000 feet, the summit of K2 sits squarely in the path of the subtropical jet stream, a fast-flowing vortex of air that circulates year-round and batters the mountain with brutal hurricane-force winds. In July, the jet stream shifts north, providing a brief window of relatively temperate weather for climbers to make a dash for the summit. This year, the strong winds have persisted longer than usual, creating the backlog at base camp. The climbing teams must be on their toes, poised to take advantage of even the slightest uptick

in the weather. But seizing that opportunity is a delicate balancing act. Warmer temperatures can bring their own set of dangers, increasing the risk of icefalls, collapsing snow bridges and avalanches. As they near August, the window of opportunity shrinks. Soon, it will slam shut altogether. But just as Wilco and his team are beginning to resign themselves to disappointment, the forecast suddenly improves. In this case, it is unbelievable. Our weather forecastman predicted on the 31 of July would it almost be hardly no wind on the summit. That was our last and biggest opportunity in this three months. So all the teams knew Okay, we have to go on the 31.

Action stations. In the pre-dawn darkness of the 31st of July, Wilco and his team joined the 30 or so other climbers embarking from base camp to the next waypoint. Wilco has made two prior attempts to summit K2. Both were unsuccessful. Now, as dawn breaks over the Karakoram, you can only hope that it will be third time lucky.

Wilco van Royen grew up in Utrecht, a picturesque canal-line city in the Netherlands. It's an ironic part of the world for a mountaineer to call home. With over a quarter of its surface sitting below sea level, the Netherlands is one of the flattest countries on earth. It required childhood trips to Switzerland to spark Wilco's passion for mountaineering. I was raised in an average family. My father was a hard-working man. to all the sisters, and my daddy had a passion to go every year to the mountains.

We went to the Swiss Alps. We didn't do extreme things, just, you know, walking till approximately 3,000 meters or whatever. Inspired by these family holidays, young Wilco continued to nurture his newfound passion back home. He joined mountaineering groups in the Netherlands, meeting like-minded Dutch climbers and signing up for guided expeditions in the Alps. It wasn't long before he was getting his professional qualifications. I did my primary course and advanced courses. Finally, I became an instructor.

Met my best climbing bodies, actually. And the most important one is Kas van de Gevel. I climbed actually all the difficult north faces in the Alps, like Aigenortfees, Grandes, Jurasas, Matarore. Alongside his climbing partner, Cass van de Gevel, Wilco completed some of the most iconic routes in European mountaineering. But he always had his sights set on bigger challenges. In 1995, aged 28, he joined an expedition to Asia to explore new routes of the notoriously difficult K2.

It was his first experience of a mountain of that scale, and it ended disastrously. Wilco was almost killed by a rockfall and had to get airlifted off the slopes. When I was in the hospital, the only thing I was thinking, I had really, really bad luck. And everybody was telling me, no, you were really lucky because you're still alive. So I broke my bone in my face. I broke my arm, lost one and a half liters of blood. So everybody was saying, it could have been your death, you know. And of course I said, yeah, it could be.

But never in my mind I was doubting, you know, that I would go back. Wilco's accident merely galvanized his desire to someday return to K2. But in the meantime, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea. there to sharpen his skills. I did, you know, the three poles, North Pole, South Pole, Everest, got the Explorers Grand Slam, so climbing all the highest mountains of all the continents and skip to the North and South Pole. And then I thought, okay, now I'm ready to go back to K2. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer.

That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, joined thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. This August on the Noiser Podcast Network, Jane Austen's Stories returns. This time, Dame Julie Andrews will be reading another beloved classic, Emma. Step into the village of Highbury, home to the handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse.

Witness the delicate art of matchmaking, where appearances can deceive, and true affections are not always easily guessed. On short history of, we're herring around the world with the groundbreaking journalist Nellie Bly, and grappling with the surreal with Salvador Dali. On real survival stories, we're in the shark-filled waters off the coast of Florida, and trundling down the Bardsville track deep in the Australian bush. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes investigates the disappearance of a missing star rugby player in The Adventure of the Missing Three-quarter. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

By 2006, Wilco had become one of the world's most accomplished mountaineers and adventurous. Eleven years had passed since his first failed attempt to climb K2. By every metric, he was now a much stronger and more skilled climber. And yet, Wilco's second attempt to summit K2 also failed. He attributes this to a lack of cohesion among the expedition members. It wasn't a success because we were not a real team. We were a bunch of individuals. And then I realized, okay, you know, if I really want to go back again,

then I should invest, you know, in a real team. By 2008, Wilco had resolved to give it another go. This time, he would carefully assemble the team himself, handpicking a crack squad of elite climbers. he knew and trusted. Among the members of Wilco's current team are his long-time climbing partner, Cass van de Gevel, Irish mountaineer Gerard Macdonnell, and Pembourg Gilghi, a vastly experienced Nepalese Sherpa. This is a team with serious pedigree.

And yet? I knew that it was not automatically guaranteed that I would come back from this mountain because K2 has still statistics on one on four. you know, if you're climbing with eight people, probably you have a big chance of losing two people. Though 800 feet shorter than Everest, K2 is considered far more difficult to climb and at least six times more deadly. It is steeper, more isolated, and due to its more northerly location, exposed to more extreme weather, with harsher winds and colder temperatures. The fatality statistics bear this out. As of 2008, for every four,

people who reach K2's summit, only three will make it back down alive. Any climber must come to terms with this very real risk of death, particularly if, like Wilker, they have families waiting for them back home. If you say goodbye at home, for me in that case, you know, to my wife and my boy of seven months, you have to write at least a letter to make sure that if you are not coming back from this mountain and your boy or my boy in this case that he can still read this letter and hopefully he will understand why his daddy this was doing and it's not easy because when I'm on the airport and saying goodbye to my wife it's not so easy because you don't know if you're coming back

but of course you do it because you have a lot of experiences you have the best budgets you have the best meteorologists the best climbers ultimately all any climber can do is prepare for wilker Preparation is about learning the scope of his capabilities and measuring those capabilities against any hypothetical setbacks. There is a limitation for every human being because we can't survive at 8 kilometers high. There is a lack of oxygen you will die. The only question is what kind of period can you survive? Is it one day, two days, three days? You try to do it in one day.

That's okay. But what will happen if it's not successful in 24 hours? So when I was training, I tried to imagine what can happen on this mountain if things are not according the plan. And I can guarantee you, expeditions are never according the plan. It's the early hours of August 1st. Wilco and his team are making their way up the wind-blasted southeast flank of K2. In darkness, lit by headlamps, the climbers picked their way along the shoulder, a steadily rising mile-long ridge of thick snow bounded on both sides by precipitous drops.

The men advance cautiously, skirting around crevasses, prodding the snow with their ice axes to test the ground. The going is slow, and made even slower by the crowds of climbers in front of them. With around 30 people en route to the summit, this is one of the busiest climbing days in K2's history. By the time Wilco and his team finally reached the top of the shoulder, night has given way to a morning of bright sun and blazing skies. It took, of course, much longer than we anticipated because, you know, of this traffic jam. So we moved on, the weather was brilliant, it was unbelievable, there was hardly no wind, you know, the sun was shining.

Eventually the shoulder rears up into a steep couloire known as the bottleneck, a near vertical gully of snow and ice sandwiched between two stacks of dirty broken rock. As Wilco and his team near the base of the bottleneck, their progress grinds to a halt. Wilco glances up. What he sees is disconcerting. An ugly tailback of maybe 20 or so climbers all funneled into the narrow cleft at the base of the gully, waiting their turn. This shouldn't be happening. Last night, an advanced team of Sherpers and local guides went to establish fixed ropes along the length of the bottleneck to allow the following teams to pass through quickly. Evidently, this advance team was delayed. They haven't finished setting the ropes, and now the rest of the climbers have caught up with them.

Not only that, but it seems certain individuals are less confident with the techniques required to scale this obstacle, slowing everyone down. down. In the so-called bottleneck, you have to climb a steep ice wall actually with two ice axes. But with all respect, I won't mention the names, but there were climbers. They really couldn't climb with the two ice axes fast enough through this difficulty. So it took a while and you can't pass each other, you know. So they were holding up the rest. As they tried to keep warm at the base of the bottleneck, Wilco lifts his gaze.

to what sits directly above it. The sarac, the blunt, protruding edge of a hanging glacier, jutting out above the galley, a tottering, teetering shelf of suspended ice some 600 feet thick and over half a mile wide. Over the decades, as the glacier inches forwards, huge pieces of ice have cleaved off the sarac and tumbled down the bottleneck, smashing away anything or any one. in their path. In recent years, the Sarak has been quiet, with no reports of icefalls. But as Wilco gazes up at it now, gleaming in the morning sun, this giant, frozen edifice, appears precariously poised, looming ominously above the climbers below. Over the course of the

morning, some climbers turned back, spooked by the delays. After all, the later it gets, the likelier it is they'll be descending at night. when the dangers multiply tenfold. Even some members of Wilco's own team call it quits, but he holds his nerve. At last, the congestion in the bottleneck clears, allowing the rest of the climbers to pass through. They continue all day, slogging up the final 1,300 feet,

until eventually... Finally, we reached the summit after 17 hours of climbing. With the sun just beginning to set, Wilco stands on the pinnacle of K2, the mountain that has thwarted him twice before. The view from the summit is spectacular, hundreds of jagged peaks stretching away in all directions. Wilco uses his satellite phone to call his wife at home in the Netherlands to tell her the good news. Then, after snapping some triumphant photos, Wilco and his three remaining teammates, Cass, Gerard, and Pember, turn their attention to the long way down.

Scaling a mountain is just halfway. That's a big, big difference with trail running or maritons because then you can give everything till the finish line, but on a mountain you have to go back as well. With daylight fading, Wilco and the others begin the descent. Within moments, evening darkness has swallowed them. As they trudge across the immense snowfield, that comprises the final summit push on K2,

the members of the team drift apart. Each man retreats into his own world, focused on the lonely task of getting down the mountain in one piece. Several hours later, Wilco reaches the traverse, a horizontal climb along an ice wall that leads to the top of the bottleneck. But when he looks for the fixed ropes installed by the advanced team, he can't see them. Strange.

He stands there, his headlamp, a solitary beam in the blackness, squinting into the gaping void below. Imagine you're coming back from the summit, convinced that the rokes are there, that is just a matter of clicking into the rokes, following the lines and get back, you know, in the middle of the night, and you can't find the ropes. Wilco backtracks and veers off to the right. Maybe he's just disoriented. He trudges east across the snowfield until he spots. a headlap. Coming closer, he sees that it belongs to a climber from a different team, an Italian

named Marco Confortula. He is with Wilco's teammate, Gerard MacDonald, but the Irishman is in a bad way, suffering from the effects of the cold. Wilco consults with Marco who suspects they must be in the wrong place. Even if an avalanche had damaged the ropes, there would still be some trace of them, loose, tattered strands flapping in the wind. They can't just have disappeared. Nobody could have imagined that your rope would be gone. Normally a rope is breaking and then you see some flaps hanging, you fix it and you go on. But in this case, the rope was all the way gone.

We were trapped. It's around midnight on August 1st, 2008. When subjected to altitudes above 8,000 meters or around 26,000 feet, the human body starts to ravage itself from the inside. At these elevations, the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere is so low, the body must constantly fight to stay alive. The heart beats faster. Non-essential functions are suppressed.

Breathing becomes deeper and more frequent. Deprived of oxygen, the brain struggles to focus. Decision-making can become erratic, and a task as simple as tying a shoelace can begin to feel impossibly complex. Mountaineers refer to this band of elevation as the death zone, because there is only so long that the body can endure such punishment. Oxygen depletion will eventually lead to loss of consciousness and death. How long this process takes varies from person to person.

But the window is generally believed to be about 16 to 24 hours. As soon as a climber steps foot inside the death zone, the clock is ticking. Wilco, Marco and Gerard have now been in the death zone on K2 for 36 hours. They are stranded somewhere above the bottleneck, unable to find the ropes required to climb down. And now they have a decision to make. Do they attempt to descend in the dark without ropes, or risk spending another night in the death zone? What I did together with Gerard McDonald's and Marco Confortola, we said, listen, we have to take a rest.

Tomorrow, you know, it's a new day. We knew that the weather would hold on. And finally, when the sun is rising, we will find the rokes. Decision made. The three climbers settle down in the deep snow. Their backs to the wind. As the night draws in, the temperatures plummet to minus 30. cold enough to freeze the tears in the men's eyes.

They huddle close and try to stave off hypothermia by clapping their gloved hands together. They'd only there at fire. But the truth is, even if they had the wherewithal to light one, they couldn't. Up here, there isn't enough oxygen in the air to strike a match. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk.

Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. Your playlist might get you through the workday, but have you ever wondered how your ancestors spent theirs? What work helped them build a life? How did they adapt as the world around them changed? With Ancestry, you can search select historical occupational records for free for a limited time and discover the stories behind the jobs in your family tree.

You've got questions. We've got ancestors. Search free until August 31st. Visit Ancestry.ca for details. Terms apply. A few hours later, the sky starts to brighten. As the three men struggle to their feet, the ice encrusting their climbing sea, cracks into shards. They ease their bodies forward, straightening their frozen joints.

At this elevation, everything slows, brain function, physical movement. But for these experienced mountaineers, haste is critical. Their survival depends on getting down the mountain as soon as possible, back to an elevation where their bodies can recover. Wilco wades through the deep drifts, over to where the snowfields slopes away into a vertical drop. He scours the length of the ridge, but there's still no sign of any ropes.

Growing impatient, Wilco lifts his climbing goggles to get a clearer view of the terrain. And then I made another mistake. I was raising my classes a little bit too much to see if there are ropes yet, yes or no. And then I got snow blindness. A burning sensation stabs at Wilco's eyes. He snaps his goggles back down.

but the damage has been done. Ultraviolet light is more intense at altitude, and without protection, the sun's glare of the snow will inflame the outer surface of the eye, resulting in severe pain and temporary loss of vision. Wilco turns and looks for the other two, but it's like viewing the world through a pain of frosted glass. His pulse quickens.

Snow blindness tends to get worse over time. Before long, he could lose his vision in touch, entirely. And up here, that's a death sentence. It was to be or not to be. So for me, you know, it was not a rational decision. It was just my gut feeling, you know, that I knew if I don't take action right now, I'm done. Nobody is carrying me down. Wilco calls out to the others, but they barely respond. They're too exhausted, too preoccupied, searching for the fixed lines. Wilco doesn't have time for that now. It is imperative that he

gets down the mountain quickly with or without ropes. He turns and starts gingerly backing down the sloping edge of the glacier, feeling his way with the teeth of his crampons. Soon he is descending a near vertical ice cliff, but descending it to what? He can't even say for certain what side of the mountain he's on. The only direction that matters is down. After dropping around 300 feet, Wilco comes across a rope. It's not one he recognizes. Maybe it was placed here by another team following a different route. He gratefully clips into it and continues inching down. But he's only gone a few more feet when, glancing to his right, he is met by a horrifying scene.

Three climbers lie slumped against the side of the mountain, tangled in their ropes, their faces bashed and bloody. They have obviously suffered a terrible fall. When I was going down, I was coming along some trapped climbers. They were hanging in the rope. They were falling the night before. They couldn't save themselves. I had some communication because they lost the shoes, they lost their gloves.

I gave my spare gloves. But I couldn't help them because I was snowblanned. Clearly, something terrible is unfolding on K2. A catastrophic natural disaster. Whatever happened to the fixed ropes, it has left multiple climbers trapped. In the chaos, rash decisions are being made, hasty, improvised attempts to descend down untested routes. But Wilco, barely able to see, is in no condition to stay and assist others. In fact, trying to help in his state could make the situation worse for everyone. So,

difficult though it is, he continues to drop down the side of the mountain. Soon, the rope runs out, And once again he must descend untethered, seeking out grooves in the rock with his wet gloves. On he goes, inching lower, his breath rasping in the oxygen thin air. With fuzzy eyes, he glances down past his trembling crampons. He's able to make out a sheer rock face plunging away into shadow and swirling snow. And then I was trapped because the mountain is that steep, you can't go any further. or looking in a black hole. So I was looking up, you know, screaming to my mates,

but I didn't hear me anymore. I didn't have the energy to climb up again. My way was ending. Wilco is truly stranded. He rests his forehead against the rock and shuts his eyes. I knew that it was not automatically logical that I would survive. So it could also be my last mountain. But it's hard to say, but I could embrace it as well.

But deep inside me, of course, I was telling myself, I'm a father, this can't be the end. I was really angry because I was really thinking, how can I be here isolated, alone? Where are my climbing bodies? But getting angry or frustrated will only waste his strength. Instead, Wilco decides to expend a few more precious drops of energy on something truly important. He pulls out a satellite phone and dials his wife. That was the moment that my wife for the first time was having contact with me after the call from the summit that we were on the summit.

You can't imagine what it is, you know, to sit at home with a boy of seven months old knowing and reading on the internet what was going on because the first casualties were there already. But the interesting thing was that my wife was trying to motion. me, you know, instead of getting angry, you know, you are a daddy, you have to move on, etc. For Wilker, hearing his wife's voice, even from thousands of miles away, is a source of enormous comfort. He reassures her that he'll call again in 24 hours and hangs up. He returns the phone to his pocket and tries to formulate a plan.

But it's hard to even stay awake. He is so utterly depleted. After this telephone conversation, I was losing conscious. You are completely at the end, you know, your battery is completely empty, so I lost conscious. Wilco comes to after about half an hour. He inhales deeply, pulling as much frigid air as possible into his lungs. But it's like breathing through a straw.

He needs to stay alert and come up with a plan. What are my options if I keep... Sitting here, that's not an option. If I move on, there is a big chance that I will fall, but, you know, better falling than staying. Wilco peers around, his damaged eyes straining. To his right, the mountain bends sharply towards what appears to be a gauntlet of granite slabs

and broken icy ledges. It looks daunting, but passable. He sets off, edging diagonally, across the hair-raising incline. Periodically, he turns and checks if he can see the lights of Camp Four twinkling below. But a thick fog has descended, further impairing his vision. He stumbles on for hours. Eventually, the light starts to fade, and Wilco has little choice but to stop for the night and improvise some form of shelter on the side of the mountain. Without a tent or sleeping bag, All he has for insulation is his thick down coat and frozen balaclava.

A really difficult part, you know, full of ice. And you won't look at your watch anymore because you're completely out of your mind. I tried that night to call my wife again. But because of my snow blindness, I couldn't find the right buttons on the telephone, you know, to call the right number. And I was really upset and angry. Wilco plunges and ice sacks into the slope, fastens a rope around it, and secures himself in place. Then he hunkers down and surrenders to sleep.

When Wilco wakes, the sky remains dark, cloaked in a pall of cloud. Still, disoriented as to where exactly he is on the mountain, he continues to descend, zigzagging his way downhill. A weak, gray light starts to seep into the cloud cover. Dawn. His eyes begin to improve as the altitude decreases. His brain fog slowly clears. He is making progress. Eventually, the mountain flattens out as he reaches the shoulder,

the long snowy ridge leading down to the upper camps. He forges on, hobbling on frost-bitten feet. Dehydration burns his throat and delirium blurs everything, but he doesn't stop. At some point, Wilco lifts his head. and sees in the sprawling gray emptiness a headlap. Moments later, a familiar voice calls out. It's his old friend, Cass. When I came close to this camp, you know, there was one guy standing

and it was my best timing partner, you know, the only one who was still waiting for me because everybody went down on the mountain, but he was still believing that I must be somewhere and he had been searching that night also, it was a big relief. But they are still far from safe. Still, you are on, what is it, 7,700 meters or something, and nobody's going to help you, because it's still, you know, Russian roulette. It was constantly avalanches, falling blocks, you know,

so the best advice was go down, save yourself. So nobody's going up the mountain. Wilco and Cass locate a spare oxygen. bottle, and Wilco gratefully inhales some much-needed O2 into his system. But then another setback. Within the short time, this bottle was empty. And then you're back to basic again. We were completely exhausted, sitting in the snow.

You know, we couldn't just move on from Camp 3 to Base Camp. It was surviving a whole day. Having survived two nights in the death zone, pushing his body to the most extreme limits imaginable, Wilco must now push it a little further. The trek down to base camp is a grueling slog. But as they go, dodging crevasses and navigating steep ice cliffs, Wilco can only marvel at the resilience of the human body. Imagine minus 30, and your body is able in keeping the core temperature

on plus 27 or 28 or 30 whatever degrees. Well, there is no energy in the system. left. We can't design such a technical system, but you know, my body was trying to survive. And that's what we are. We are a human being with human intelligence. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, joined thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of

cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.com. Hello, Greg Jenner here. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode, I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian, and we have a lovely, funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist discredited pseudoscience of eugenics

with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcast. Thank you. Bye. After descending another full day, Wilco and Cass finally reach Basecamp.

Twelve hours after finding each other, the two men stagger into camp. They're both in terrible shape, ravaged by cold and fatigue. But Wilco is able to look past that. They've made it. It was dark already, and of course I knew in big trouble with my feet, with the hands of my partner, you know, were frozen. But believe me, it doesn't matter, you know. You survived.

Down at base camp, they learned further details of what happened. up there. It's even worse than Wilco could have imagined. The sarac, the giant overhanging ice sheet above the bottleneck, collapsed. This ripped away their fixed ropes, leaving at least eight climbers stranded high on the mountain with their planned route down destroyed. Some managed to survive the chaos. Cass and Pember made it down the bottleneck that first night, followed by Marco, and finally improbably by Wilco. Others were not so fortunate. Gerard MacDonald, Wilco's friend and teammate,

is believed to have stayed to try and help other injured climbers. He was tragically killed in the process. After a night in base camp, Wilco is airlifted off K2. He spends one night in a military hospital in the mountain town of Skadu before being flown to Islamabad for further medical treatment. I went to the hospital, they were looking to my toes, and they wanted to start surgery. but our own expedition doctor, he warned us.

He said, just let it go because your body will try to save a little bit skin, but you have to give it some time. And of course, it's painful, but you have to go through it and finally take the surgery in Holland and not over there with all the risk of infection. After deciding not to undergo surgery here in Pakistan, Wilco and his colleagues leave the hospital and head to a nearby hotel. As they step into the lobby,

they're greeted by a scrum of reporters. There were all journalists all over the place because we didn't know but our expedition reached the headlines all over the world, you know, from Al Jiras to NBC to BBC. So, you know, suddenly we were in the middle of a world crisis or something. In the days that follow, more details about the tragedy emerge. In total, of the 28 people who made serious summit attempts

on July the 31st, 11th died on. the mountain. Some fell to their deaths after being cut off by the collapsed Serak. Others were killed by the icefall itself or fell early in the day. It is the deadliest single disaster in K2's history and sends shock waves through the world of mountaineering. As well as the press, worried family members who had been made aware of the crisis as it was unfolding have flown to Pakistan and are now desperate for information about their loved ones. In the hotel, Wilco meets with Gerard's brother and fiancé to break the devastating news. One of the hardest things to do was to tell the family of our teammate, Jay MacDonald,

that Ger was not coming with us and that he was still on the mountain. And his brother and his fiancé was coming to Pakistan and we met them in the hotel. But it's so difficult in telling. that one of your team members is not coming back. Wilco flies back to the Netherlands and checks into hospital. There, doctors examined the extent of his frostbite and determined that in order to prevent the spread of infection, they will have to amputate the toes.

After the operation, Wilco is visited by a team of specialists who deliver a damning prognosis. The specialists in the hospital were telling me, you know, that I couldn't run anymore, that I couldn't climb in the future, anymore. And that was for me, of course, where I was really thinking, if I can't run anymore and I can't climb anymore, what is my life? For Wilco, a future without climbing is difficult to imagine, and one he is not going to give up on easily. Following the amputation, he commits to a taxing

regiment of physical therapy. It's a long road ahead, and he intends to take it one step at a time. It took a while before I could go to the toilet in my own, could run or walk actually a mile, and finally, you know, step by step, my targets, my goal was clear. It takes many months, but eventually Wilco defies the expert's prognosis. A year after the tragedy on K2, he returns to climbing mountains. And in the year since, he has undertaken various extreme expeditions and endurance challenges, challenges, each seemingly more daring than the last.

But even as Wilco continues to write his own story, he holds close the legacy of those whose lives were lost on that fateful day in 2008. On the wall in his home office, there is a photograph of Gerard McDonnell, capturing the moment they reached the summit of K2 together. He is still here on the wall in my office, with a beautiful picture now looking into the sky with his Irish flags above his head, having the biggest smile on his face, and that's how we should remember him. Reflecting on his own experiences on K2, Wilco is the first to admit how unlikely his survival was.

If you would have told me this story before, probably I would have said, now this is not possible. You can't survive three days in the dead zone, but I'm here. Was Wilco's survival a case of sheer luck? A testament to his unusual resilience, or a combination of both. For his part, he also gives credit to the role of something else, something hard to put into words. When he was struggling to stay awake, stranded in the death zone on K2,

Wilco's smartwatch recorded exactly how long he was unconscious. Looking back at the data, it seems this period of unconsciousness coincided with something happening thousands of miles away. This graphic shows that I only close, my house for half an hour. How is it possible that I opened my eyes after half an hour when your battery is completely empty, it's minus 30, without food, without drinking? And later on, it showed that it was the moment that my boy was crying like hell and my wife said later, it seems

that he was saying goodbye to you or something. And I think I believe really that that was the trigger, you know. It was the trigger that I was waking up. again and I'm not saying there is a god but if you can believe in the power of something bigger in nature that people can send you the energy then there is more possible than you think we are too much focused on what we can see but I can tell you magic happens in what we can't see next time on real survival stories we meet Noah Messenger in 2017 the teenager is working in the lush and luxurious environs of the Maryhill winery in Washington State.

One late sunny afternoon, while happy guests sip the local produce, Noah is finishing up his shift and decides to take a stroll through the vineyards to a picturesque spot overlooking the mighty Columbia River. But then one single misstep changes everything, a simple twist of fate with devastating consequences. Consciously, I knew it was going to be bad. I was like, okay, this is definitely breaking bones. I felt my back just like snap first. It was just like intense alarm. I could just feel the immediate snap. Instantly semi-paralyzed with no phone, no food and no water,

all his hopes of survival rest on his colleagues coming to look for him. But as the hours slip by with no sign of rescue, it becomes clear that Noah's only option is to save himself, one slow, painful inch at a time. That's next time on real survival stories. Listen right now without ads and without waiting a week by joining Noiser Plus. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back-to-school season. Save on lunchbox savers like Ziggy's sliced deli-meat products for always 375. And get life brand pure Vita shampoo or conditioner for $8 each.

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