Falling Into Killer Crevasse | S4 E11 | Full Episode | I Shouldn't Be Alive

it's every mountaineer's worst nightmare falling into a hidden [Applause] crass 80 ft down when no one can hear your cries out the I could hear the fear in my voice one climber must conquer his fear and a sheer wall of ice you can't climb this nobody in the planet can climb this in an epic struggle it was just absolute sheer Terror he must escape before the sun sets or he'll freeze to death I was going to climb until I got out or until I was [Music] dead Mike somebody help us [Music] ain't that a sight best friends and mountaineering Partners Jim Davidson and Mike Price are fulfilling a dream to climb Mount Rainer one of the highest mountains in the US it's going to be a crazy Mad day you ready let's do it Jim let's do it bro the two men have been climbing together for 4 years I first met Mike in 1986 we're were both going to Colorado State University we had a like mind and uh similar love for the mountains as Jim and Mike have scaled mountains all over the US their friendship has grown deeper Mike had a great deal of mountaineering experience I looked up to him as a better climber than I more experienced but Mount rer will put their climbing partnership to the ultimate test as they plan to scale The Fearsome Liberty Ridge I think what excited both of us was it was going to be a step up in our friendship and our [Music] partnership on the third morning of their Trek they're ready for the final leg of their trip up to the 14,000 ft Summit climbing Fosters very intense relationships we experience the difficulties we experience the rewards and you're sharing it with one person who you like and whom you trust a great deal for Jim this is his toughest climbing challenge yet but being attached to his far more experienced friend Mike means he's in safe hands you okay Jim oh man this is tough check your balance a little I would look at the climb and go wow I I don't know if I can do this it looks a little steep a little scary I can't do it bro just come over a little and Mike would gently push me forward you doing good I thought well if Mike thinks I can do it then I probably can Mike's expert leadership means that their final push to The Summit goes without a [Music] hitch just as I pulled myself onto the ice cap Mike was sitting down with a big grin on it welcome to Liberty [Music] C their reward is spectacular views on a perfect day it can be a very spiritual experience where you're up there and you actually feel connected to the Earth and to something even bigger and to have those magical moments in the mountain you have to put forth the work and you have to be willing to accept some risk for Jim and Mike making it to the top is the ultimate [Music] High having realized their dream they're now ready to get home to their families but first they face a tricky decision the most standard DEC routes are on the south side of disappointment Cleaver that would have worked fine for getting down but would put us on the opposite side of the mountain from where our car was so they decide instead that it would be much quicker to take the shorter Northeast route down it's a straightforward 8h hour Trek back to base hey Jim yeah I don't want you thinking about a nice cool beer hey lay off but Jim and Mike are also aware that they must stay alert they know that hidden just under the snow the landscape is a Minefield of cracks and gullies the worst of which are huge crevasses all of the glaciers on reineer have creases the these big cracks in the ice sometimes they're open and you can see them and sometimes they're hidden over with snow and as the hours pass the risk of creases increases the sunm softens the snow weakens the ice that can make the route itself more likely to [Music] collapse but Jim knows that being attached to his friend by a rope means that if he does fall Mike will dig in and use his body weight to save him they are literally holding your life in their hands all right it's a little deeper here okay that creates a very intense Bond and a very intense [Music] friendship but an hour into their descent they realize that the route they've chosen catches the full Heat Of The Sun as we descended down we started getting hot very quickly and we could feel the sun beating down on us as the temperature rises the surface snow is now weakening all around them fast our boots would sink in deeper and our ice axes would sink in deeper Jim and Mike are now only inching forward baby steps J we'll do in these conditions one false step could be deadly just take it easy J and all of a sudden I sensed something W below me the ground just dropped off we got a big Cass here buddy we're not going this way okay Jim take it easy let's try going left a little okay it's been a close call and Jim now realizes that real danger is lurking all around them I probed the ground in front of me and it felt solid take it easy now Jim yeah we're good and I stepped forward and sank up to my ankle on the snow whoa I probed a second step and my ISX felt solid so I stepped forward now we're good my face smashed up against the snow and I realized I wasn't going to be able to stop myself I yell falling I swung my arms and legs around in the darkness and I realized this is a big crass if Mike can't get a grip in the slushy snow then nothing can stop them both plunging to their deaths it seemed to progress very slowly I had time to think about what was happening and what might happen and how we were going to land it was just absolute sheer Terror I was tied to Mike so I thought when another second or so the the Rope will get tight and catch as Jim speeds downwards he knows Mike only has a few feet left to dig in and break his for I thought 10 ft 20 ft 40 ft Mike should have caught me by now I put my hand out and I could hear how fast I was moving by the high screaming pitch of the nylon glove dragging on the wall in the darkness and when I swished around it felt kind of empty and I realized that my wrist Loop had slipped off my hand my iac's gone now there's no way I can stop myself then my brain told me that I'd Fallen 50 ft I thought no I can't be right if if I'm in 50 ft and this 50 ft a rope between me and Mike that means he's right at the lip of the crass and I'm going so fast now he's going to have a heck of a time catching me I thought come on Mike dig in dig in because I knew that he was getting close to the edge I felt the Rope jerk once and then go slack and at first I was confused I didn't know what that [Music] meant [Music] it was um a sense of helplessness and sort of a soft sense of sadness like well now there's literally nothing we can do [Music] the violence of Jim and Mike's 80ft fall has triggered something every climber dreads an avalanche I was stunned for a second or two Jim is completely traed and is unable to move I could feel the weight pushing down on my body I can't believe it I survived that fall and now I'm buried alive he has only a tiny pocket of air around him and will suffocate in [Music] minutes you really can't control the fear it just surges up I couldn't see that I was going to be able to get out of the snow I was probably felt truly helpless at that point now I just have to sit here and wait for the end of my life when my oxygen runs my oxygen Runs Out in desperation he summons every last atom of strength to try and find a way out I try to focus all my mental power and physical power on just my right hand I pushed with all my strength just on one spot just pushing my right arm up Jim has survived but there's no sign of Mike Mike say something buddy I heard Mye cancer back I heard him nearby [Music] and what I heard was a groan Mike Mike I knew that he was hurt and he was hurt bad with no one to break his fall Mike has suffered the full force of the 80 foot truck Mike I heard his breathing get more labored and more labored Mike answer me buddy I started digging at the snow faster say something buddy I heard Mike exhale once and then he did an inhale and I thought no no no no it can't be that he's not breathing I must have just missed the sound of him in ining and exhaling Mikey stay with me buddy Mikey Mikey I couldn't quite believe what was in front of me but I had to accept the reality I had to accept that he wasn't breathing and I had to do something about it stay with me buddy m [Music] I didn't get any response I could just feel this surge of fear boiling up in Fr inside me I did one more check of pulse and his wrist and his neck and look for breathing signs and I saw none no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no come on buddy wake up we're getting out of here come on mik God damn you my hands started to shake and my upper body started to shake and the emotion started creeping up on me after 4 years and hundreds of hours climbing together Jim has just lost his closest friend I just SLP my head against his chest and I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes that my friend was gone Jim is alone trapped 80 ft down a colossal cerse and without his climbing partner his chances of Escape have gone somebody help me somebody somebody help us hello somebody help hello it unsettled me I could hear the fear in my voice down here somebody help the got after screaming for hours Jim is finally forced to accept that so far down he can't be heard I thought no one's going to come find us and so I pretty much stopped yelling after [Music] that no one will even know he's missing for at least another 18 hours but by Nightfall temperatures would drop to a deadly minus 40° they realized if I was in here when it got dark I wouldn't be alive the next morning and that's when it really hit me that if I was going to get out of here I was going to have to do it myself I was going to have to do it today Jim knows he only has a few hours to scale an 80ft sheer Cliff or he'll freeze to death and it's the most difficult terrain he's ever seen the ice walls went vertical and then they started peeling back Inward and leaning inward in an overhang we're in trouble here buddy without thinking I just said all out oh Michael we're in trouble man we are in big big trouble not in a good way buddy there's no way I can climb that maybe the best climber in the world on their best day can climb it but I'm not that good a climber that's it we're done as Jim resigns himself to his fate he realizes it's a miracle that he's alive at all and he has Mike to thank for it Mike was slowing me down and it was Mike slowing me down that allowed me to survive that incredible fall [Music] [Music] Jim knows that unless he attempts to escape from the cerse Mike's death will have been in vain I could see him in my mind's eye just saying start climbing you can do this let's go but as he begins to try and move he makes an alarming Discovery very slowly I began to be aware of a bad pain in my left shoulder and a lot of blood came out of my mouth now I didn't know what that meant I was afraid that um I had some severe internal injury but one of his ice axes has been lost in the fall if he doesn't find it he'll never make it out as he searches around Jim makes a terrifying Discovery he and Mike have landed on a fragile snow Bridge likely to collapse at any minute we weren't on the bottom of the crass we were stuck partway down the Kass but 10 ft below him Jim spots something the missing isce he knows he's faced with an horrendous Choice I'm not going deeper in the scass where it's tighter more dangerous scary if I go down there I might not be able to come back up I thought there's no way I'm going down there but when I thought about it there was no other answer I realized if I wanted any hope of climbing up I had to go down there first that took a lot of willpower to back over that edge and lower myself deeper into that Cass a single mistake the ISX will be lost and there'll be no way back for Jim [Music] felt like IID turned the tide a little bit that now I was taking some action I'm starting to fight back perhaps Jim realizes his situation is perilous he must start climbing immediately but he's missing a vital piece of Kit I thought to myself well I could use Mike's helmet and it was difficult but I knew that Mike would want me to use all the gear as best I could for the team Jim now faces the most difficult climb of his life one of those doubtful voices in my mind would flare up and say you can't climb this nobody in the planet can climb this he's utterly alone and knows he has only 6 hours to escape the crass I just started feeling a cold wave like flowing from my head down towards my feet all right Mikey and I realized it was fear uh fear just filling me up from the top down I decided I was just going to start climbing and I was going to climb until I got out or until I was dead and I just smashed my dice a down on that first move I think I let out some kind of some kind of karate yell or something and before I started losing momentum I just placed that second tool using only ice axes crampons and screws Jim is now climbing completely alone without Mike to break his fall the slightest mistake could be deadly I realize if that one screw failed or collapsed I would be pitting back down past our ledge even deeper into the crass every inch of his climb is his physical and mental torture almost imagined myself that I'd been swallowed by a monster and now I was starting to crawl my way back up that throat climbing back towards those big overhanging white snowy teeth every second counts unless Jim reaches the top of the cerse by 6 p.m. the nighttime temperatures will kill him [Music] by keeping a rope attached to his friend Jim feels that he and Mike are still climbing Partners I would make it out by Leading a way up this wall and we'd both get out or I wouldn't and we'd both be here but either way we're still a team but after climbing just 20 ft Jim's adrenaline levels are falling each step harder than the last I hadn't eaten anything or drank anything in many many hours now and Mike and I were both both exhausted from the 3 and 1/2 days of Alpine climbing before the Kass accident happened weak and exhausted Jim senses hope draining away I heard this little voice that keep going I could see him in my mind's eye just saying you can do this check your balance a little I felt that he was still sort of remotely coaching me if you will you doing good and uh it wasn't goodbye yet we were still in this together you're doing real good there man after climbing for what seems like an age Jim has barely made it a fifth of the way up but with every step conditions inside the crass are getting far [Music] worse the afternoon sun is melting the the top of the crass pouring freezing melt water down onto JY it was soaked all the way through and it would refreeze on the ropes refreeze on my jacket and now the midday surface heat is creating an even deadlier situation huge chunks of ice are now plummeting 60 ft down towards him the size from a microwave up to the size of refrigerators are bigger as the ice above him continues to melt and Splinter Jim can only pray that nothing hits him sometimes I heard them coming and sometimes I didn't hear them coming it felt like the Kass was maliciously toying with me trying to scare scare me and trying to throw me off [Music] guard with the threat of being killed by Falling ice at any moment Jim now has to move faster than ever but there's a problem the walls are now leaning in towards him I thought boy this is getting really Steep and really hard it was putting a lot of strain on my chest and arm muscles now as he inches upwards Jim knows that the ice screws attaching him to the wall are the only thing standing between him and death but the melting walls are getting more unstable and when I started filling with the gear I had one hand off my ISX my head hit the far wall about four or 5T away and that banged my head pretty bad and then that tipped me upside down and I smashed back into the ice wall below my ice [Applause] screw and now just one ice screw holds him between life and death I realized if that one screw failed I would be puling back down past our ledge even deeper into the crass and I was kind of shook up and panted and kind of got myself recollected but the ice screwed hell like it was supposed to as the walls are now leaning in too far towards him he knows there's only one option he must switch to a different climbing technique Aid climbing Aid climbing on Ice screws is rarely if ever done and I had never done it I never met anybody that had done it Aid climbing involves hanging Loops of rope from a wall screw and using them as footholds Jim knows the theory of it but it's a world away from actually doing it it's brutally physically demanding he's already exhausted and faces scaling 60 ft and an overhang with this untried method were still D he hasn't got the right gear he must improvise with just a few lengths of nylon and five ice screws very awkward very pathetic substitute but it's all I had if Jim is to make it out alive he must now use everything that Mike has ever taught him I was now climbing ice steeper than I ever had in my life without Mike to help him Jim has to constantly climb back down to retrieve his ice screws costing him precious time and energy a after hours of grueling climbing Jim is within touching distance of his last great obstacle the overhang if he can get past it he'll have only 20 ft left to climb but he's beginning to realize that he may be on his last reserves of energy I was physically winding down and I could see myself moving slower and slower at this point I think my body was kind of grinding to a halul Jim's loneliness exhaustion and despair but finally too much for him I was starting to feel so beat up physically and psychologically I wasn't sure that I was going to last long enough I had absolutely no strength out there Jim has lost a mountaineer's most powerful tool his self-belief I started thinking about [Music] Mike and his parents at home now all I could do was get out of here and let them know what happened to him even though no one would have known if I just gave into the cold and sleep that wouldn't be honoring the people that had helped me and what they had taught me Mike teaching me to always give your best for the partnership you don't give up just because it's [Music] hard you stick with it Jim knows he must find the strength for one final push to the top I made it out and collapsed there and died there that that would be success because they'd find me and follow the Rope back to Mike and so we'd both be found both get off the [Applause] mountain and I watched the spit drool down a little bit and the blood froze in place on the wall and I realized that was actually kind of a marker marking how far i' progressed up the wall there was a psychological game to prove to myself that even though it was painfully slow and horribly scary that I was making [Music] [Applause] progress after 65 ft and hours of Hell Jims made it to the overhang it's the only thing standing between him and the lip of the cerse I knew I was close but to get past it and get out alive he must risk everything now I had a severe problem I couldn't reach past the lip I hand do bro just come over a little and I thought I have to do it I've got no choice Jim's only option is to try to haul himself over the edge of the overh if he makes one single mistake he'll fall to his death I thought ha I've made it I've secured myself to the upper screw and I took my ixs off the lower screw so that I could hang onto it I realized I had just made a huge error Jim has broken a climb as Golden Rule he's attached himself to his chest instead of his waist the chest harness cinched down around my chest and squeezed squeeze the breath out of me some voice in my head was just screaming at me saying it's all over you're going to die hanging from this ice screw I was gasping for breaths I would get one occasionally when I would get one ice tool in the wall I could get a little weight off and I would get two breaths and then I would slip and slump back onto the sling and it would squeeze me tight again I had to get off that ice screw unless he can find one last surge of energy Jim knows he has just seconds left to [Music] live and when I looked back down at our ledge some 60 ft below me now I realized that I was really out there on the extreme edge of what I thought climbing could even be finally having achieved what seemed impossible just a matter of hours ago Jim knows he has only 20 ft to the top and escaped but I was so utterly exhausted from everything I had done I questioned if I was going to be able to have the strength to make that final run to the surface but the last few minutes of daylight are disappearing fast with temperatures inside the crass now dropping dramatically Jim is desperate to end his ordeal as quickly as possible I thought wow if I can free climb I can I can free climb 15 or 20 ft in just a minute I'll be out of here in just one minute and I started to get very energized by it very uh attracted to the idea that with just one minute of energy one minute of effort I would be out I heard Mike's voice just clear as a bell and he was like don't he said you're not strong enough you might slip and if you slip and fall it'll be all over you can't take that risk he knows that Mike's words could be the difference between life and death no matter how hard and timec consuming Jim should carry on Aid climbing I couldn't hold the ice ax up anymore that one or two pound ice a became too much for me to bear and I was trly getting down to the end of my my energies after more than 5 hours and 80 grueling feet Jim reaches the surface but unless he can get a firm grip on the treacherously thin snow he could easily we slide back into the cerse I can't believe at the very last second I'm going to fall backwards all the way back down to where I came from I can't believe it's going to end like this and this emotional voice in my mind was like screaming do something and this voice was pretty confidence said just lunge [Music] I looked back where I had last seen Mike just before the fall and I could see where he was standing and there was a very sharp Groove in the snow that proved to me that Mike had dug in as hard as he could to catch my [Music] fall and then I untied from the Rope by finally untying the rope that connects him to Mike Jim knows that he has fulfilled his duty to his best friend and Mike's family will be able to take his body [Music] home all that emotion that been trapped down inside me for over 5 hours just gushed out and I just said out loud once I'm alive hello Jim's cries for help are finally heard by two Park Rangers and some volunteers that's when I knew that that I had been seen I'm come here and the help was on its way Mike Price's body was recovered the following day and thanks to him Jim survived with only minor injuries but before returning home to his wife he had one last thing he had to do the last day when Mike and I were climbing together we talked about coming off the mountain maybe having a big steak and uh buying a couple beers so I went into the uh [Music] bar and I ordered uh two beers one for me one for Mike thanks and uh I sat there and drank them both since the accident Jim's never lost his love of the murant he now teaches new climbers to respect the power of nature and each year on June the 21st Jim makes a special climb to celebrate the life and times he and his friend spent in the mountains

Channel: I Shouldn't Be Alive

Views: 17,964

Keywords: Ishouldntbealive, documentary, documentaryfilm, documentarytelevision, documentarytv, factual, ishouldntbealivetvshow, realitytv, shouldntbealive, traveldocumentary

Id: 0oW6jDRsIzw

Length: 48min 7sec (2887 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 09 2024