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This episode is brought to you by Honda. When you test drive the all-new Prologue EV, there's a lot that can impress you about it. There's the class-leading passenger space, the clean, thoughtful design, and the intuitive technology. But out of everything, what you'll really love most is that it's a Honda. Visit Honda.com slash EV to see offers. It's June the 21st, 1998, the summer solstice. It's around 1.30 p.m. in the state of Washington in the northwest of America.
A vast blue sky resides over Mount Stewart, the highest peak in the Alpine Lakes wilderness. Surrounded by pine forests, the mountain stands at over 9,000 feet tall, its giant slopes elegantly marbled with patches of slowly melting snow. Today, on the longest day of the year, with the sun high in the sky, Mount Stewart truly is a sight to behold. But right now, a disaster is unfolding on its slopes.
Fifteen hundred feet up its northern face, 29-year-old Dan Smith finds himself groggy, disorientated, and in big trouble. He's taken a blow to the head and is momentarily blacked out. As he comes to, something is not right. Everything is the wrong way up. The afternoon sun is shining below him. Rockfield's snow and an endless forest seem to be suspended in the sky.
After a few seconds, it becomes apparent that Dan is dangling upside down, hanging hundreds of feet in the air. A sudden jolt of fear, and he starts trying to move, to get his bearings, to right himself. Around his waist, a climbing rope grips tightly, leading to an anchor point on the mountainside. It's the only thing preventing him from a fatal headfirst plunge. Dan goes to grab the rope. If he can reach it, he can pull himself upright.
But as he tries to move, it becomes obvious just how badly hurt he is. It was in the worst pain I've ever experienced. It was really, really bad pain. And I screamed. My screams echoed off the walls and it really frightened me. Dan's blood stains the granite walls and drips into the void below. Signs of the devastating accident that landed him here. He starts slipping into shock.
It was a sensation unlike anything I'd ever felt. It felt like I was sliding into a bathtub of perfectly warm water. That water just alleviated every bit of pain. It was actually really blissful, really beautiful feeling. - But this dull, pleasant feeling actually means he's slipping away. Now, there are no more screams echoing off the mountain.
Just an eerie silence as Dan's body goes limp and lifeless. 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 Dan Smith.
While enjoying an idyllic midsummer's day in the wilderness of northwestern America, a freak accident suddenly leaves his life hanging by a thread. 1,500 feet up, devastated by vicious injuries and in shock, things are looking hopeless. I remember thinking it just isn't going to work. But I also remember thinking, I don't care. I was so shocky and so out of it. I was just utterly unconcerned. I was seriously injured. I think...
It was really kind of on a razor's edge. But Dan isn't alone in his struggles. Perhaps with help from others and a rallying strength from within, he can keep battling on. Though every time he seems to be out of the woods, some new danger presents itself and threatens to overwhelm him once more. I'm John Hopkins. From Noisa, this is Real Survival Stories. It's early on June the 21st, 1998, around 7 a.m.
In Washington state, the sun is rising across the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, a 400,000 acre landscape of greens, blues, whites and grays. Cragged granite mountains slope downwards to crystal clear lakes surrounded by pine, cedar and fir trees. This wilderness area is in the very northwest of America, near Seattle, and just a three hour drive from the Canadian border. So even in the height of summer, there is a slight chill this morning.
Striding energetically through the natural splendor is 29-year-old Dan Smith. He has just started what's going to be a gorgeous four-hour hike, surrounded by trees, valleys, marshes, and running water. But for all the varied landscape around him, Dan only has eyes for one thing, his prize at the end of the trail, Mount Stewart.
It's the second tallest peak in the Central Cascades mountain range. And getting to its summit means tackling some extremely rugged, icy, and sheer granite walls. Just the way Dan likes it. Growing up in Seattle, hiking and climbing were part of his life from an early age. Seattle is a big climbing town. You can see Mount Rainier looming over the city on a clear day. The first Americans to climb Mount Everest were from Seattle.
And you're sort of surrounded by it. And I started going to the mountains with my parents when I was quite young. And by the time I finished graduate school, I decided that that's really what I wanted to do with my life is just climb mountains. So it came almost addictive. I would climb something and the next time out, I had to do something bigger, something harder, something more challenging. Dan's singular focus on climbing influences almost every major decision he makes.
Though he studied microbiology, he eschewed a career in academia. Instead, he now takes sporadic carpentry jobs to fund his climbs. Dan even credits climbing for forging many of the relationships in his life. I don't have friends. I have climbing partners, and that's better because it's such a trusting relationship.
Although it's not maybe emotionally close, like we don't talk about our feelings, but just that trust you have with one another and you kind of look out for each other. Hiking alongside Dan right now is one of his best climbing partners. Strong, fit, and in his mid-twenties, Nick Straight is a reliable companion during dangerous ascents. A chance meeting at an alpine recreation center first brought the two together. I was throwing my skis in my pickup truck,
And I saw this kid, this broad-shouldered, athletic-looking kid, and said, "Oh yeah, I just soloed this route." And I knew the route because I'd made the first ascent of it a number of years prior, and it was not a particularly easy route. So I was kind of impressed. And yeah, we went out and we did a bunch of rock climbing, and he was very, very skilled.
very strong, very fit. And from there, we just started climbing bigger and bigger things. Soon, their partnership is a formidable one, and big plans are afoot. Alaska, the Andes, eventually the holy grail of climbing itself, the Himalayas. But those far-flung places will have to wait. For now, their sights are set on something much closer to home, but no less of a challenge.
We wanted to climb the hardest routes in our home range, the Cascades, to make sure that we were ready for the next step. And we identified the Girth Pillar as the most difficult alpine route. As Dan and Nick continue their trek through the wilderness, they discuss the climb ahead. Their chosen route, the Girth Pillar, is a giant bulge of granite, about 400 feet tall, which juts out from the face of Mount Stewart.
To reach it, they'll first need to ascend a glacier, which is lower down the mountainside and a tough ask in itself. And once at the top of the glacier, it's then onto the rock section, scaling the girth pillar's cracked, slippery vertical face. A daunting task, but they have the know-how and, importantly, a plan.
Plan was to get up, do the ice climb, jump onto the rock portion and climb as much of the rock climbing as we could before it got dark. And then we'd find a ledge somewhere and tie in and sleep on the mountain.
And the second day, continue to the summit, descend, come down the Sherpa Glacier, which is separated by a big ridge. And it's lower angle, so we could down climb it fairly easily and then hike back out. So two days, two day trip, one night on the mountain. The glorious morning grows ever brighter. The sun ever warmer as it rises. Pine cones crunch beneath Dan and Nick's feet as they navigate the undulating terrain.
At one point they have to teeter along a fallen tree trunk to cross a creek, but they barely stop to soak in the atmosphere. The mountain is their sole focus. It's late morning as they finally emerge from the tree line and come face to face with Mount Stewart for the first time. Spirits are sky high, but ahead of them is a climb that will prove far more dangerous and life-changing than either of them could have ever predicted.
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It's an intimidating slope of hardened snow, hemmed in on both sides by masses of dark rock. Ascending this will lead them to the Girth Pillar. Cold emanates off the glistening icy surface. It's almost vertical, stretching nearly 1500 feet into the sky. For many, scaling this part of the mountain would be too much. But Dan and Nick are up for the challenge, and even plan on making it more extreme. They are going to climb most of it unroped.
It's not a decision Dan has arrived at lightly. I take into consideration when I'm climbing, it's like, what is the likelihood of something bad happening and what are the consequences? And when we adopt tactics like we're going to climb unroped because it's faster, the risk of falling off is less than the risk of being hit by a rock or an icefall or an avalanche. As well as increasing their speed, climbing without a rope also adds to the thrill of the ascent.
It gets the heart pumping a little faster, increasing adrenaline and focus. At the foot of the wall, Dan opens his rucksack and pulls out his equipment. But then he sees something is missing and that he's made a big mistake. He's forgotten his helmet. It's a blow. Not like him to overlook such a key piece of kit. He glances back to the forest in the direction of the car. But I thought, well, you know, we're here. You know, I don't see any rock fall. The weather's really stable. I'll be fine without a helmet.
Decision made, they start climbing. Dan swings his hammer into the glacier, chips of ice spraying over him. He tests the grip and feels the reassuring resistance as its long claw takes hold. He kicks his crampons into the wall. The crunch reverberates around the silent valley. Soon he is in rhythm. Hammer, kick, climb, repeat. Dan and Nick make steady progress,
At one point the wall angles backwards. The men are almost upside down. But they make short work of the glacier. It takes them just two hours to scale the wall of ice. It's here, where the glacier gives way to solid rock, that their next challenge rears its head. There is a Bergschrund in their way.
Bergschrand is when the glacier is flowing downhill and the top edge of it separates from the rock pyramid and it creates a very big, deep crevasse. And we got to that and we were looking to find a way over it, thinking, can we rappel into it, climb out the other side? The other side was steeper than vertical. It was overhanging. We only had one ice tool. And so we found a way that we could maybe sneak around on the left on rock.
The Bergschrand looks like a giant, untreated wound running through the side of the mountain, separating the icy glacier from rock above. It's a huge gap between them and the next part of their ascent. Their only option is to circumnavigate the crevasse by climbing around it. They see a rock face off to their left.
Shimmying onto it and then going up and around seems like the most logical plan. But just to be careful, they decide now is the time to rope up. They plan to belay climb. Nick will stand on a ledge anchored to the rock face. He will then feed the rope to Dan as he ascends, so the two will remain connected, which should save him if he falls. With Nick solidly in place, Dan feels the reassuring pull of the rope around his waist.
He sets off, scurrying sideways across the slope, searching for small fissures and cracks to use as handholds. It's intricate, precise work. Here and there, he spots equipment left behind by past explorers. Evidence that previous climbers had discovered just how difficult the route was, cut their losses and lowered down. But not Dan. He powers on.
You know, the rock climbing was not terribly hard and it was not particularly steep, pretty ledgy, pretty blocky, but it was leading in the wrong direction. It was taking me farther out left when I wanted to go back right. Dan seems to be climbing off course. Occasionally his feet slip, dislodging scree and pebbles, sending them tumbling downwards. The warning signs are growing, but he is accustomed to dealing with nerves.
I discovered that as when I was started to do these sort of technical climbs, there was all these voices in my head telling me, you know, get down, you're going to get hurt. You know, this is dangerous. And it was like a whole bunch of small voices just kind of all at once, just kind of telling me I'm being stupid. I mean, that's what keeps people alive, right? But in order to climb, I had to find a way to sort of suppress those voices. Dan makes his way across a few more ledges.
Rocks skitter underneath his feet. Once or twice he tests a handhold repeatedly before committing to it. He's making good progress when he comes to an enormous flake sticking out of the wall. A thin slab of rock, partially detached from the mountain face, offering Dan an obvious handhold. But he pauses, carefully considering his next move. There is something about this rock that's making him uneasy.
I didn't like the look at it. It was huge. It was, you know, probably 8, 10 feet tall, you know, 6 feet wide, 18 inches thick. And it really didn't seem like it was attached to anything. It was just kind of sitting on the wall on a ledge. And so I was very circumspect. I hit it with my fist to see if it was hollow. Dan pounds on the rock. It feels solid. He tries to fit his hand down a crack in its back where it connects to the wall.
He pushes and pulls with all his might to see if he can dislodge it. It doesn't budge. Emboldened, he plows ahead. So I did a maneuver called layback, and you kind of put your hands behind the crack or behind the block and your feet on the wall and use counterpressure to move up. Straining his muscles, Dan climbs up and onto the rock. It feels secure beneath his body, but then there is the ghost of movement.
A quiet crunch, an almost imperceptible wobble under his feet. And before he can react, the rock breaks away from the wall with a loud crack. My stomach dropped and I realized, oh no, I made a mistake. Oh no. And that sick feeling in your stomach when you drop, like when you're on a roller coaster. And then I was airborne. Dan plummets through the air, flailing, trying to grab something to halt his descent.
Dislodged rocks fall from the sky, whistling by him, missing by inches. But then one doesn't miss. A hunk of granite smashes into his skull with a sickening crunch. Dan's vision swims, and darkness threatens to take over. And then a lifeline. There is a sudden jolt at his waist. The rope tightens, and he is yanked out of the path of the falling rocks. But this sends him flying towards the face of the mountain.
The unyielding wall of granite rushes to meet him, and the bone-shattering collision echoes through the valley. It's around 1:30 PM. Dan gingerly opens his eyes. He's only been unconscious for half a minute, but his world has literally been turned upside down. He is dangling from the mountainside, blood rushing to his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the rope that's keeping him from falling.
Instinctively, he stretches his arm out, hoping to use it to pull himself upright. Big mistake. It was in the worst pain I've ever experienced. And because we're kind of in this tight cirque with big granite ridges on either side of me, my screams echoed off the walls and I could hear my own echoes and it really frightened me. Dan's body goes limp. He starts to slip into shock.
It was a sensation unlike anything I'd ever felt. It felt like I was sliding into a bathtub of perfectly warm water. And as I was going in feet first, and as my toes entered the water, as the water sort of crept up around my body as I slid in, that water just alleviated every bit of pain.
It was actually really blissful, really beautiful feeling. It may sound euphoric, but shock is a life-threatening condition. Dan's body isn't getting enough blood flow, which means vital organs aren't getting the oxygen they need. Without immediate treatment, he could die. Luckily, he has Nick. As he drifts in and out of consciousness, Dan is lowered gently, coming to a stop on a jutting ledge.
Nick scrambles down to his side and peers over him, fear blazing in his eyes. So I had been hit in the head, in the forehead. I had a big gash, and I think he said he could see my skull. And as you know, head wounds bleed a lot. Nick, he put a fleece headband around my head to stop the bleeding. You know, my right arm, as I fell, my arm had become tangled in the rope just right around my elbow.
and the rope had partially severed my arm and pulled the skin off, degloved it from my elbow to my wrist. And it was also an open fracture. The radial bone, the head had sheared off and the remnants of the bone were sticking out of my forearm. And so he splinted that arm with a fleece sweater and stuffed his clean socks into sort of the crook of my elbow to soak up the blood and stop the bleeding.
With only basic first aid materials, Nick works tirelessly to address Dan's various injuries. At first, it seems like a fool's errand. The blood continues to pour. Nick applies pressure, pushing down hard on Dan's forehead with the palm of his hand. Eventually, the torrent begins to slow. The valley falls silent, save for the two men's heavy breathing. Now what? They're alone, with no way of reaching the outside world. No cell phones, no radio, nothing.
Nick could descend himself, drive to the nearby town of Leavenworth and return with a rescue team, but that could take most of the day. And late into the night. Potentially too late for Dan. While his bleeding has slowed, it hasn't stopped. Leaving him alone could spell the end. But he also looks in no state to move. The men are between a rock and a hard place.
I remember thinking it just isn't going to work. It's not probable that we're going to get down. But I also remember thinking, I don't care. I was so shocky and so out of it. I was just utterly unconcerned. As they're weighing up their options, the two men hear something, a noise from above. At first, a quiet moan, then a sinister rumble. The slopes around them begin to shake, and then they see it. High up on the north face,
Masses of snow pouring off the ridge above them. They're frozen to the spot as the avalanche gains momentum. The snow roars past Dan and Nick. Fortunately, the avalanche has come from the next ridge along, landing far enough away that the men are unharmed. But the cascade of snow has now carpeted the glacier below, covering their recent footprints. The breadcrumb trail that could have led them safely back down the mountain, that's now gone.
And while they've escaped unhurt, this time it's a clear sign of danger. It was more of a warning that we're in the wrong place at the wrong time and there could be more avalanches and where we are at now is not safe. The avalanche acts as a starting pistol. It's now imperative that they descend together one way or another. Dan is still only semi-conscious, but he must shake himself out of it.
Frankly, I just wanted to go back to sleep. I didn't want to be moving other than I felt bad for Nick and I had to rally for his sake. So I felt like, okay, I have to be a good partner. I have to rally. I have to function in my own rescue. Dan rises unsteadily to his feet, his legs trembling. With his arm out of action and his head spinning, they short rope together. This way, Nick will have more control over his friend's movements.
Tightly connected, they set off back down the glacier they just climbed. The top section has a gentle gradient of around 35 degrees. In theory, this is the easy part of the descent, a walkable section. But after just a few steps, Dan falls. He slips down the slope and comes to a stop in a mound of snow. Blood spills from his head.
and i'd start sliding and i would yank nick off his feet and he would have to roll in onto his stomach and use his ice axe to do a self-arrest and he would slow us down and stop us and it was a horribly dangerous situation for both of us with dan dazed nick pushes on every time they fall it's nick who picks them back up again every time dan screams out in pain nick tends to his wounds and offers words of consolation but nick is suffering too
His muscles burn from their downhill trek, from repeatedly tumbling, hauling the two of them up and carrying on. They've not even reached the most difficult part of the descent yet. It was really a precarious situation. Had something else happened on our descent, had another avalanche come by and knocked us off our feet, we would have been killed. Had I just stopped being able to walk because I'd lost too much blood,
I mean, I was seriously injured. I think I was really kind of on a razor's edge. The initial trek down takes an age. Eventually, by late afternoon, they reach the almost vertical section of the glacier. The ice wall seems to glow a menacing blue, an awesome cold coming off it in waves. They stand at the top, gazing down at 1,000 feet of ice. The height of the Eiffel Tower separating them from the ground far below.
Though the wall is essentially vertical, there are a number of ledges set into it. Ledges that they plan to use to their advantage. Nick starts by thrusting his hammer into the ice and snow. He chips away for a few minutes, carving out a bucket seat, essentially a hollow deep enough to allow him to sit in. When he is ready, he digs his feet into the ice, checks the rope, and starts to lower Dan. With one arm pinned to his body in a makeshift sling,
He would down climb to me.
Down climbing ice is difficult. Down climbing rock is hard. Down climbing ice is even harder. But yeah, he would down climb to me and then we would start that process again. He would chop out a seat, sit down, brace himself, lower me off, you know, using his body weight as an anchor and down climb. So lower, down climb, lower, down climb, lower, down climb for a thousand feet. It takes hours to descend the slope. It's repetitive, painful and exhausting work.
and one wrong move could spell disaster for both men. Eventually, though, the bottom of the glacier is in sight. It's early evening as the sweet smell of pine trees wafts up to greet them. Just one more ledge now, one more burst of energy, and then, finally, Dan plants his unsteady feet on terra firma. With a huge sigh of relief, he sits down heavily on a rock. He watches as Nick lowers himself down the final section.
There is a hint of disbelief on their faces. The plan actually worked. But the truth is, they're far from home and dry. An enormous hike now lies ahead, across uneven ground and over waterways. A hike which took four hours when everyone was fit and healthy. Who knows how long it will take now? Plus, the shock is wearing off, and Dan's pain is increasing, hitting him in sickening bursts. Will he be able to make the journey without passing out?
And then Dan looks up and sees two strangers coming through the woods towards them. This couple, a man and a woman, had been attempting Sherpa Glacier, which is a much easier route up Stewart. And they heard us. They heard us from the very moment the fall came. And they abandoned their climb. And they had waited for us. They knew if somebody was injured, they knew it was probably bad. And they just waited for us.
hours for us. These good Samaritans have come prepared. The concerned couple ply down with extra strong painkillers and hand him a flask of whiskey to help wash them down. Then they set to work, checking over his wounds and treating him. They spent some time re-slinging my arm, resetting my arm with kind of this foam pad folded over it to protect it. Patched up, fuzzy with painkillers and alcohol, the return journey to the car through the backcountry becomes a blur.
Nick and one of the other climbers divide Dan's pack between them. Slowly, darkness comes on and encircles them. Eventually, at around 11pm, they reach the truck. The moon is bright in the sky, illuminating an almost empty parking lot. They thank the couple profusely before Nick helps Dan into the passenger seat. They both take a deep breath. Strange as it may sound,
Now they're back at the car. Dan doesn't seem overly concerned about rushing to the nearest hospital. Despite his injuries and blood loss, they take some time to decide the next steps. So the closest ER room is in Wenatchee from where we were. We're an hour and a half out from Wenatchee. And I remember having a conversation. He's like, we need to get you to the emergency room. Wenatchee is the closest. And I said, I don't want to go to Wenatchee. Seattle is an extra 90 minutes away.
But the hospital in Dan's hometown is bigger than the one in rural Wenatchee. He figures he'll receive better medical treatment there. It's also where his family lives. Choice made, they set off west, towards Seattle. Little does Dan know, but this decision will have unseen repercussions. Once again, placing him in a life-threatening situation. As Nick drives Dan to the hospital, the two men do not appear in much of a hurry.
In fairness, after the day's exertions, they're both spent. I'm out of it. I'm sleeping. And I do remember Nick being so exhausted at one point that we have to pull over to a rest area and he needs to get a nap. So he takes maybe a 30-minute nap. Oh, and somewhere in there, he was hungry, so we stopped at McDonald's to get him a hamburger and french fries. I didn't need anything. Blood continues to seep from Dan's wounds. It drips under the seat, soaking into the fabric. But again, they take a detour.
Rather than heading straight to the hospital, Dan asks Nick to take him to family. "And so he drops me off at my mom's house. I'm like, 'I'm good. You can go. See you later.' And I find the spare hidden key and I let myself in." Stoic to the end, the men part ways, barely registering the remarkable experience they've just shared. Dan lets himself into his mom's house, but then he has second thoughts.
He doesn't want to worry her. It'd be a shock seeing him like this. Instead, he phones his dad, who arrives a short time later. Then it's on to the emergency room. He kind of shook his head. He was used to me doing stupid things all the time, you know, falling out of trees and wrecking my bike. And he was used to that. So it was kind of this look of,
Kind of like a big sigh, like, ah, you dumb kid. And I do remember he had the foresight to bring a whole lot of towels to put down on his seat of his car because he didn't want me to bleed on his car. At the ER, Dan is quickly seen to. The medical staff are impressed at the level of first aid that's been administered. Without Nick's prompt treatment, Dan might never have made it down the mountain alive. He's handed over to a gruff medic, a former Navy man,
He isn't quite so impressed with Dan's story. - He was kind of asking me very accusatory questions and like, well, what happened? I fell off a mountain, like, how'd you get the head injury? Weren't you wearing a helmet? And he asked me, have you had any, you know, have you had any medications? I was like, well, I had this codeine and wash it down with whiskey. And I remember him like giving me this look like, you are so stupid, you stupid kid, what are you doing?
the doctor unsplints dan's arm and tries to straighten it but it won't budge they give him some strong medication for the pain and he passes out the next morning the sun shines through a window at the end of dan's hospital room he turns to see his dad sitting by his bedside he said what happened he said well you had to have emergency surgery they had to
fix this big wound in my scalp or my forehead. They had to resect the elbow. They had to basically do all this surgery to put me back together again. And the right arm was really severely injured. They basically had to sort of just cut the bone back to where it was not shattered. And then they just kind of stuffed it back in. And then they said I was going to need a skin graft on my arm. I have limited mobility in my right arm as a result.
But it was pretty badly messed up. I mean, it was, they did the best they could, I think. Dan is left to rest. But when he awakes in the early hours of the next morning, it's clear his ordeal still isn't over. Sweat covers his body. It feels like his airways are narrowing, he's wheezing. There is something wrong, something serious. Dan claws at the button by his bed, requesting medical attention. They came in with a crash cart and everything and started trying to figure out what was going on.
And it turns out I had contracted what's called an Acinetobacter infection, systemic bacterial infection that the only place you catch it is in the hospitals and it's resistant to everything. The infection affects the blood and the lungs and can lead to pneumonia. Around one in three people die from it. With his body already weakened by surgery, drastic measures are needed to save him. So I studied microbiology in graduate school.
So when these two doctors were standing over my headboard, I came out of consciousness and I remember them saying, okay, so we're going to start him on vancomycin. And at that time, vancomycin was kept under lock and key. You had to get permission from the CDC to use it because it was a last line of defense. And I remember when I heard vancomycin, I thought, oh, I'm in really big trouble.
For over a week, Dan is monitored around the clock. Drips administer vital fluids and life-saving drugs. It's touch and go, but slowly his condition improves. For the second time in a fortnight, Dan has had an extremely near miss. By the time I was, you know, stable and out of the woods from the bacterial infection, I didn't need a skin graft anymore because my skin had healed miraculously.
I remember, you know, I had two casts on both arms. You know, I had this head injury. And as it turns out, I remember when I swung my feet out of the bed to stand up, when I got out of the hospital bed, I collapsed because I had seriously injured one of my ankles as well. But I remember like thinking, okay, I've got to start training. I was very determined initially.
Very determined to get back to it. And I was not going to let any injury get in my way. The doctors have told Dan he may never climb a mountain again. But as soon as he's strong enough to leave the hospital, he gets right back to it. Within days, he's out among the hills hiking, even though his arm is still in a cast and his muscles are weak from lack of use. He has a climbing trip planned with Nick in a little under six weeks, and he is determined to make it.
When the time comes, the pair venture into the Tetons, a range that's part of the Rockies. But it's there, in Wyoming, that it becomes obvious their relationship has changed. I felt like he was angry at me. It definitely was a turning point in our relationship. We still continued to climb together for years after that, but I felt like he was angry at me for putting him in that situation. Or maybe that's just because I felt really bad for putting him in that situation.
we didn't really talk about our feelings especially nick he's kind of a hard case he yeah he would never talk about his feelings and i didn't really want to talk about mine so when dan moves to boise in idaho eight hours from seattle the pair lose touch there's no drama no major falling out distance simply brings their relationship to an end these days dan still spends time in the hills and mountains
He tries to be a good mentor to his new climbing companions, passing on the importance of being prepared. And while he no longer sees Nick, he says he'll always be grateful to his former partner. Big declarations of sentiment may not be their thing, but on that day in 1998, actions spoke louder than words. If I'd been there with a weaker partner, a physically weaker partner, they would not have been able to get me down. And certainly...
I wanted him to leave me. I wanted him to just go down and call for a rescue. But he didn't do that. He was so committed to the partnership that he got me down at a huge amount of risk to himself. I mean, he saved my life. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. And, you know, we were like brothers. I'll always, you know, appreciate him. In the next episode, we meet John Lane.
When the academic and father of two isn't lecturing on geology, then he's doing what he loves best: exploring deep cave systems all over the world. In August 2006, he and a group of friends decide to check out a cave a little closer to home. It's supposed to be a low-stakes adventure, an excuse for a bit of harmless excitement. When things go south, hundreds of feet beneath the Earth's surface, those stakes are abruptly raised. John will have to call upon every skill in his arsenal
I'm sending my brother money directly to his bank account in India because he's apparently too busy practicing his karaoke to go pick up cash. Thankfully, I can still send money his way. Direct to my bank account.
Yes, I know I'm sending to your bank account. Western Union. Send it their way. Send money in-store directly to their bank account in India.