Survivor Stories

I love a good survival story. They always leave me a little awestruck, which is a good feeling in my opinion.

Although I’m always on the lookout for another good survival story, these four stories are the ones that really standout to me.

Beck Weathers

I came across Beck Weathers’ story while reading Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. This 

book recounts the hellish experiences of the mountaineering teams who attempted to summit Mount Everest in the 1996 climbing year, during which fifteen individuals died.

Beck Weathers was a member of Rob Hall’s climbing team. In the “Death Zone” of Mount Everest (in which human life cannot be sustained due to the altitude), Weathers was struck with snow blindness, making him incapable of summiting. Hall instructed Weathers to sit and wait for him to summit; he would then collect him on his way back down. However, a raging blizzard soon struck. The 150 km/hour winds quickly caused the temperature to plummet to nearly -100°C. Hall did not return to collect Weathers (and ended up perishing himself on the mountain side that day).

A small group of five climbers came across the nearly unconscious Weathers and assisted him in climbing down the mountain. However, the white-out conditions and paralyzing cold halted the group a mere 300 yards from camp. The group huddled together for warmth. During a lull in the storm, one of the climbers struck off alone for the camp. A rescue team was soon assembled, and three of the five climbers were rescued. Weathers and one other climber were left for dead.

The next morning, two Sherpas returned see if the climbers were indeed beyond saving. 

After chipping away the ice from their faces, the Sherpas decided that, although both 

were still breathing slightly, it was not worth the energy expenditure to hazard a 

rescue. Weathers was left for dead a second time.

At this point, Beck later recalls seeing his wife and children in front of him. He managed to open his blinded eyes (only one of which was still capable of seeing 1-2 feet into the distance). The nearly dead Weathers stumbled into the camp, much to the shock of those whom he found there.

Weathers survived the ordeal, although he lost both hands, most of both feet, and his 

nose.

omg!!!

Aron Ralston

This climber is best known, of course, for cutting off his own arm with the dull blade of a multi-use tool and a pair of pliers after being trapped for 5 days (or 127 hours ...) by a 1,000 pound boulder in a hot canyon in Utah. He later reported finding the strength to do this after seeing a vision of his unborn son. 

Of course, after amputating his own arm he still had to rappel 20 meters down a sharp cliff and hike nearly 15 kilometers in the baking Utah summer sun.  

Ernest Shackleton 

I will never be able to full express what a hero this man is to me. 

His obsession with Antarctic exploration took him repeatedly to that region of the globe, and he was determined to become the first explorer to transverse the entire continent of Antarctica. Unfortunately, his ship, the Endurance, became trapped in an unseasonably heavy ice pack on January 19, 1915, and remained trapped for the next 10 months. Shackleton and his men soon began subsisting almost solely on penguin and seal meat. On November 21 the Endurance was crushed by the shifting ice, leaving Shackleton and his men stranded on an ice floe. 

They camped on this floe for the next 2 months, repeatedly attempting and failing to struggle closer to land. The ice began to collapse beneath them, and Shackleton and his men escaped in their three lifeboats. They spent five harrowing days at sea in some of the most tempestuous and dangerous waters in the world. They managed to land on Elephant Island, an inhospitable crag of land with no food and no hope of rescue. 

Shackleton soon determined to row one of the tiny boats to South Georgia, a whaling station located 1,500 km away from Elephant Island. He and his chosen five companions spent the next 15 days in some of the world’s most storm-swept seas, with waves that regularly reached 18 meters constantly threatening to capsize the tiny boat.  By luck, will, and excellent navigation, they managed to land on the wrong side of South Georgia island. 

Shackleton took the two most fit men and set out on a 36 hour expedition to cross the largely unmapped craggy mountains and dangerous glaciers of the island. The men used nails in the bottoms of their boots for traction. Shackleton later reported that he felt there were four men on the journey, rather than three. 

They made it to the whaling station. All the men were saved. 

Joe Simpson

This is the story told in the documentary film "Touching the Void." Without fear of exaggeration, I can say that this film changed my life. 

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates took upon themselves the feat of climbing the West face of Siula Grande, a 6,344 m mountain in the Peruvian Andes. They summited the mountain despite bad weather, and began their descent as more storm clouds approached. During this descent, Simpson managed to slip on an ice cliff and smash his tibia into his knee joint, causing an extremely painful and dangerous break. The two men decided to attempt to lower Simpson down the mountain by tying two pieces of 150' rope together. Yates would lower Simpson down the mountain, and when the knot tying the two ropes together made it impossible to continue threading the rope, Simpson would take the weight off the rope by standing on his good leg and Yates would then re-thread the knot onto the other side and continue to lower him. This process worked well enough until the blizzard enveloped the men and made communication impossible. In the darkness and confusion of the storm, Yates inadvertently and unknowingly lowered Simpson over the edge of a precipice, making it impossible for Simpson to take the weight off the rope. The two men remained in this difficult situation for some time, until Yates was forced to cut the rope, or be pulled off the side of the mountain by Simpson's weight. 

Simpson plummeted into a deep and terrifying crevasse. He spent a horrifying night alone in the crevasse, and when the morning came, he was made the difficult decision to abseil further down into the pit in some hopes of finding an exit. He eventually, miraculously, managed to climb back onto the glacier via a steep snow slope. For the next three days, he wound his way across the treacherous glacier with no food and almost no water by crawling, hopping, and dragging his excruciatingly painfully broken leg. In a state of pure exhaustion and delirium, he reached Yates' tent mere hours before Yates intended to return home. 

That is MENTAL.