TRAPPED INSIDE A GLACIER
46 | May• 2019
crushed vertebrae. His right arm was
useless, and the ribs on his right side
were shattered. His abdomen felt sore
and stiff, a sign of internal bleeding,
and he had a coppery taste in his
mouth, an indication of possible kid-
ney or liver damage. He touched his
face: blood from gouges in his eye
socket and forehead had congealed
in the cold, stopping the bleeding.
It took All almost ten minutes
just to wrench himself upright and
squirm over to a secure perch on
his block of ice. The effort left him
panting. Already he could feel his
body shivering and his fingers be-
coming numb. By 4pm, the shadows
cast by the high mountain peaks
would leave him in the dark and
unable to climb. His partners weren’t
scheduled to come back to camp until
the next day or the day after. By then,
he would be frozen to death.
He had roughly six hours to make
it to the surface and to his tent, or he
would die.
All, a researcher used to making
a record of everything he does, now
reached in his pocket, brought out his
camera, and pressed record. “Thank
God I stopped on this ledge,” he said
to the camera, his breath ragged,
spatters of blood visible in the snow.
“How do I get back up there, though?”
Above him, the snow was soft; the
air from the crevasse condensed on
the walls and left a surface the con-
sistency of whipped cream. Where he
had landed, the width of the crevasse
was about two metres, but to his right,
100 metres away, the fissure appeared
to narrow. If he was lucky, it just might
be narrow enough for him to ‘chim-
ney’ his way up, or climb by bracing
his body against both sides of the
crevasse until he reached the surface,
all while using only one arm. First
though, he would need to get there,
using his crampons and snow axes to
move across the wall of sheer ice.
All kicked the points of his cram-pons into the ice until they held.
With his left hand, he planted one
axe at eye level, then he reached the
same hand across his body to plant
the other axe as far to the right as
possible. Clutching the first axe, he
shuffled his feet to the right, kicked
his crampons into the ice, shifted his
weight, and then grabbed the second
axe, again with his left hand. His
body screamed with pain, but he had
moved. Now he just had to do this a
few thousand more times.BENEATH HIM, THE CAVERN DISAPPEARED
INTO A BLACK INFINITYPHOTOS: COURTESY JOHN ALL