Reader\'s Digest Australia - 05.2019

READER’S DIGEST

May• 2019 | 45

hanging over a chasm. He had landed

on an ice shelf suspended above the

blackness. Overhead was a pale halo

of blue-white light, seven storeys up,

where he had punched through the

crust of snow. The entire right side

of his body had been crushed. He

couldn’t move. But he was alive.

JOHN ALL WAS NOTsupposed to

be on Mount Himlung. A month ear-

lier, he had been at Mount Everest

Base Camp sharing black tea with

a young Sherpa. Asman Tamang, a

shy father of a nine-month-old, was

climbing Everest for the first time,

and All teased him, saying Tama-

ng would make record speed up the

mountain. All had climbed Everest

before, but this time he was lead-

ing an expedition of scientists to

Everest’s sister peak, Mount Lhot-

se, to collect evidence of ‘black dust’,

emissions from factories thousands

of kilometres away. For All, a profes-

sor at Western Kentucky University,

the mountains were a second home

• the rare place where the two-metre-
  high former triathlete could combine
  his love of physical adventure with his
  scientific curiosity.
  On the morning of April 18, All

woke to the ground rumbling. An

ice shelf had collapsed, sending a

chunk of ice the size of an apartment

building tumbling down the side of

Everest. Sixteen climbers were killed,

Asman Tamang among them.

Everest and Lhotse were shut

down for the season. All and his two

partners headed to nearby Mount

Himlung to continue their work.

FROM HIS ICE SHELF20 metres

deep in the Earth, John All gasped

for breath and tried to gather his

thoughts. Climbers fall into cre-

vasses all the time, but those who

survive usually fall only a short way,

aren’t by themselves, and aren’t badly

injured. All knew of only one person

who had made it through such a long

fall and climbed out by himself: the

mountaineer Joe Simpson.

All realised he wasn’t on a shelf but

a chunk of ice that had fallen through

the fissure and become wedged be-

tween the walls. In an ever-moving,

ever-shifting glacier, how long would

it stay wedged? He rocked his body

slightly and a jolt of pain radiated

through him, leaving him dizzy.

He had 15 broken bones in total,

he would learn later, including six

ALL’S FACE SMASHED INTO SOMETHING

HARD AS HE PLUMMETED DOWNWARDS

MAP: TATIANA AYAZO