Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [72]
“Chadwick, slow down. You’re not even hitting the snow.” He was panicking; we were falling behind. “Here, start high and scoop the snow down—it’s easier than shoveling uphill.” Even with both of us toiling, Mark was slipping away. He had been repeating that he was very cold and very tired, and then about a minute of quiet passed.
Chadwick checked Mark’s head again. “He’s not breathing.” With two rescue breaths from Chadwick, Mark resuscitated. I extracted Mark’s left boot from the telemark binding and leash. Five minutes and forty cubic feet of snow later, we disinterred Mark’s right leg from its encasement.
“HELP! HELP! HELP!” We shouted together to our friends at the edge of the debris field. We had done as much as we could, and we needed supplies to get Mark warmed up. Exhausted from the half-hour rescue effort and not realizing the precautions our friends were taking to ensure that they were not swept up by a secondary avalanche, I muttered in exasperation, “What’s taking them so long?”
We rolled Mark onto his left side and sat him up. He lurched back and belched out the air Chadwick had blown into his belly—the rescue breaths had been partially diverted from Mark’s lungs because of his head’s forward position. Smothering his back and sides with our bodies, we removed Mark’s pack and rooted through it for gloves and clothes. Shuddering with the aftermath of adrenaline, Chadwick and I hugged Mark and each other in a seated embrace. We smelled the raw halitosis of fear, mixed with the odors of oysters, clams, fish, and spicy hummus appetizers. Confident of Mark’s survival, we broke into a gale of nervous laughter laced with relief that we were all out and stable with help arriving in minutes.
One after another, the other four members of the Albuquerque Mountain Rescue team who were with us on the trip—Steve Patchett, Tom Wright, Dan Hadlich, and Julia Stephens—skied over to the pit where we were huddled as darkness consumed the mountainside, carrying with them a down sleeping bag, a foam pad, gloves, and headlamps. We wrapped Mark in the down bag, and by the time Chadwick and I had retrieved our skis and what little of our other equipment we could find in the debris, Mark was up and mobile. It was a tribute to his strength and drive that in thirty minutes, he had gone from losing consciousness to skiing back to the hut under his own power.
We had a solemn dinner back at the hut, retelling details of the evening. Several of our friends had seen the avalanche and knew right away we were in trouble. They had gone from cooking dinner in their long underwear and socks to being fully prepared for a prolonged rescue effort and arriving safely on-scene in a half hour—a phenomenal performance. Chadwick had held himself together even through the terrifying stress of rescuing both his partners. I was proud of his fast action, and of Mark’s resilience. While we had each decided to ski that slope, I felt guilty about my own decisions: decisions based on ego, attitude, overconfidence, and ambition, which overrode the combined training and experience of our group. We had survived a Grade 5 avalanche—as big as they get in Colorado. We had survived something we shouldn’t have survived. We had survived, but Mark and Chadwick blamed me for pressuring them to ski the bowl. I lost two friends that Sunday because of the choices we made; Mark and Chadwick left the next morning, and they haven’t spoken to me since.
Rather than regret those choices, I swore to myself that I would learn from their consequences. Most simply, I came to understand that my attitudes were not intrinsically safe. Without fully evaluating a decision for potential danger—i.e., when I had made a decision in which attitude overruled a complete understanding and mitigation of risk—I was