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Show 25 November 2009 Russell Jacobs fifteen hundred feet of real steep, steep hard snow, uh, one of the members said, "well, we can't go down. It's a whiteout." And I thought to myself, well, you're crazy, we have to go down. And so, he climbed up a ways and found a vertical crevasse that we climbed into. MD: Um-huh. RJ: And spent the night. And he got frostbitten feet. Uh, another guy got frostbitten feet. I was snow blind, not knowingly until the next day. We spent twelve hours in the crevasse. And, uh, you can't sleep. Uh, if you sleep, you'll just die, freeze to death. We, uh, we burrowed in on a block of ice that was attached to a wall. We couldn't see the bottom of the crevasse. And then we had our ice axes, which we had two each, and we put them in the wall opposite us, and then tethered us to those ice axes just in case the ice block ... MD: Gave way? RJ: ... gave way. We wouldn't go down with it. The next morning, those ice axes and the ropes that tethered us to them were coagulated with ice crystals as big as your thumbnail. And every part of those tools and rope were covered. You couldn't see the rope, uh, because of the coagulated ice crystals. Pretty spectacular. It's an amazing place to be. So that was one of my forced bivouacs. MD: Um-hum. RJ: Probably, probably the coldest one. MD: And those moments during, uh ... not pleasant obviously? RJ: No, very cold. Uh, you get, you have to rock all night long to keep warm. And my thought during the time we were there is just to tell stories. Just to stay awake. You 6 |
