they tried to find help.
Unfortunately for Balch, he hadn’t had time to put his shoes on when they fled the tent. He now found himself scrambling from fallen tree to fallen tree trying to avoid the carpet of hot ash half a metre deep. His feet began to get severely burnt and his progress was slow. It made sense for Nelson and Ruff to hike out as fast as possible to raise the alarm.
Balch continued west, wading in the river as much as possible. After 3 km (2 miles), he ran into a local man, Buzz Smith, and his two sons. Smith lent Balch a pair of canvas tennis shoes and they trekked on. A logger joined their party and finally, after a full day’s trekking, they were spotted at 6 p.m. by two rescue helicopters.
Dan Balch walked 18 km (11 miles) barefoot through the burning forest.
Plucked to safety
Balch urged the rescuers to go back for his friends, but he had a tough time convincing them that Nelson and Ruff really were alive in the position he was indicating. Finally a helicopter flew off to pick them up.
‘I showed them on their map where Brian was. They looked at me like I was crazy.’
Nelson and Ruff had been trekking all day through the carnage and were utterly exhausted. Their relief at seeing the rescue helicopter was overwhelming, but it almost turned to despair when the pilot didn’t spot them. They had to use their clothes to stir up dust to get noticed.
Although Nelson and Ruff could now be whisked to safety, they refused to get into the helicopter unless somebody went back to pick up the injured Thomas.
Balch was airlifted to St. John Medical Center in Longview and treated for extensive burns. Thomas also was taken there for surgery on his hip. With Balch heavily sedated for his pain, it was left to hospital staff to tell his parents that their 20-year-old son wasn’t at the beach after all.
Lucky to be alive
Although the world knew it was coming, the eruption of Mount St Helens surprised everyone with its violence. At 8.32 a.m. on 18 May 1980, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake rocked the volcano and the entire northern face of the mountain fell away in a gigantic rock avalanche. The avalanche created a gap in the mountain, and the pent-up pressure exploded laterally in a huge blast of pumice and ash.
The avalanche quickly grew in size as it crashed down the mountain, reaching up to 240 km/h (150 mph) and destroying everything in its path. But this was soon overtaken by the blast of pumice and ash which scorched northward at 480 km/h (300 mph) and was a raging hot 350°C. Everything within a 516 km² (200 mile²) area was devastated. The plume of ash towered 16 km (10 miles) into the atmosphere. The eruption lasted nine hours.
Fifty-seven people, mostly scientists or local residents who refused to move, were killed.
The Kindest Cut
| JOE SIMPSON’S LEG WAS ALREADY HIDEOUSLY BROKEN WHEN HE FELL DOWN A MOUNTAIN CREVASSE AND HIS CLIMBING PARTNER LEFT HIM FOR DEAD. BUT SOMEHOW HE CLIMBED OUT OF HIS ICY TOMB AND CRAWLED FOR THREE DAYS AND NIGHTS WITHOUT FOOD OR WATER TO REACH CAMP ONLY A FEW HOURS BEFORE HIS FRIENDS WERE DUE TO LEAVE. |
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| DATE: 1985 SITUATION: CLIMBING ACCIDENT CONDITION OF CONFINEMENT: STRANDED ON AN ANDEAN PEAK IN A STORM, ONE CLIMBER WITH A BROKEN LEG DURATION OF CONFINEMENT: 3 DAYS MEANS OF ESCAPE: CRAWLING/CLIMBING TO SAFETY NO. OF ESCAPEES: 2 DANGERS: DEHYDRATION, FALLING TO DEATH, HYPOTHERMIA, STARVATION EQUIPMENT: CLIMBING EQUIPMENT |
The Cordillera Huayhuash is still a popular destination for expeditions.
The dilemma
If Simon Yates cut the rope that held his friend Joe Simpson, he knew Joe would die. Simon also knew that if he didn’t cut it, Joe would eventually pull him from the mountain and they would both die.
He cut the rope.
But Joe did not die.
A new route to the top
Born in 1960, Joe Simpson discovered his natural climbing ability in the hills outside his boyhood home of Sheffield. At 14 he read The White Spider by Heinrich Harrer, a classic mountaineering text about the first climb of the North Face of the Eiger. It fanned the flames of a passion that would push him on to ever harder ascents in the mountains of Scotland, the Alps, the Himalaya and the Andes.
In 1985, Joe Simpson was in Peru with his climbing partner Simon Yates to make a first ascent of the West Face of Siula Grande (6,344 m; 20,813 ft). With them was Richard, a traveller they had met in Lima. They trekked for two days to set up their base camp by a glacial lake. From there they would walk in and climb the peak while Richard took photos of the mountains and looked after their camp.
Descent to disaster
Several teams had previously tried and failed to climb this face. Simon and Joe were successful, but bad weather had slowed their ascent, forcing them to use all their stove’s fuel. They would not be able to melt snow for drinking water on the way down. With the euphoria of their achievement fading they set out to descend via the difficult North Ridge.
Joe was leading with Simon roped 45 m (150 ft) behind him when he reached a tricky ice cliff. Joe decided to climb down the cliff using his crampons, ice axe and ice hammer. He got a good hold with the points of his crampons and dug his axe in to the ice wall. But as he was trying to get a perfect hold for his hammer, there was a crack and Joe’s world turned upside down.
He fell facing the slope and both knees locked as he hit the base of the cliff. There was a crunching split in his right knee and he screamed at a surge of unimaginable pain. Thrown backwards by the impact he slid down the East Face of Siula Grande head first on his back.
‘You’re dead… no two ways about it! I think he knew it too. I could see it in his face.’
Somehow he stopped and looked back. His left leg was tangled in the rope. His right was twisted into a sickening zigzag. The tibia had smashed up into his knee joint and shattered it. There was no way he could walk, let along climb. The pair were 5,800 m (19,000 ft) up on the ridge and alone. The mountaineer inside him knew that he had just been given a death sentence. The man who was looking at his own grotesquely swollen knee did not want to believe that.
Mountaineer climbing a glacier in Cordillera Huayhuash, Peru.
As soon as Simon saw the damage, he knew Joe was going to die too. On his own, Simon could probably get down, but if he tried to help Joe then he might also die. Their eyes confirmed all that with each other in an instant.
But they acted differently. Joe wasn’t going to lie back and die. Simon wasn’t going to abandon his friend.
Joe