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Hi listeners, it's John Cuban here. Today I want to introduce you to a brand new podcast from Noiser. It's called Real Survival Stories. Real Survival Stories brings you astonishing tales of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. Stranded in the desert. Lost in the jungle.
It's November the 19th, 1982, in the southern Alps of New Zealand. A fierce blizzard rages across Ayoraki Mount Cook National Park.
Battered by savage gales and gripped by sub-zero temperatures, the entire mountain range has been swallowed up by a freezing vortex of snow, wind and ice. Surely, nothing could survive in conditions like this. But, 12,000 feet up Mount Cook, huddled inside a 4 by 5 foot ice cave, 23-year-old Mark Inglis fights to defy the odds.
Encrusted in thick layers of frost, Mark tries desperately to sit still and conserve what little body heat he has left. Alongside Mark is his climbing partner, Phil. The two mountaineers have been marooned here in this cave for almost three days. At first, they were confident the blizzard would pass quickly, but that confidence has waned. Malnutrition and hypothermia have eaten away at their resolve. Nobody's coming to rescue them in this weather. They need to at least try to escape.
before it's too late. With numb, stiffened fingers, Mark fastens his helmet and harness. Once he's rigged up, he crawls from the cave mouth and inches his way out onto the face. Immediately, the shock of the cold snatches his breath away. As Mark peers down over the ridge, the snow and the wind envelop him in a chaotic swirl of white. The young New Zealander is confronted by a grim, unshakable reality.
that in this weather attempting to descend the mountain would be suicide. You knew that if you got too far away from that little cave, you got exposed out there on that face, right in the teeth of the wind, that you'd die. There's no question. And so you climb back in, climb back in and you just wait for a bit longer. And we set ourselves up, you know, and just sat there and listened for the wind.
listen for an opportunity to climb out. Sitting in that ice cave, you know, it'll haunt me in dreams at night. Their only option is to hunker down and try again tomorrow. That is, if they can survive another night. 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. The show that brings you astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. In this episode, we meet Mark Inglis, a 23-year-old search and rescue mountaineer, a young New Zealander whose job is to rescue other people. But on a routine practice mission, he'll find himself in deep trouble. A freak storm will turn what should have been a straightforward climb into a terrifying fight for survival.
In worsening conditions, Mark and his partner will find shelter. But with their rations diminishing and their bodies deteriorating, how long can they hold out? I'm John Hopkins. From Noisa, this is Real Survival Stories. November 1982, South Island, New Zealand. It's an ordinary night at the search and rescue team headquarters in Aoraki Mount Cook National Park. The warm buzz of conversation fills the small alpine hut.
Static hip-hop music crackles from a battered transistor radio. In the corner of the room, an old convection heater clanks and whirs. Mark Inglis takes a swig of beer and grins broadly. The 23-year-old is living his dream. Climbing has been Mark's passion since childhood. And even though the job of a search and rescue mountaineer can be dangerous, there's nothing else he'd rather be doing with his life.
You know, in New Zealand growing up in the 70s and 80s, there was only one sport in New Zealand and it was rugby, really. And I was the skinniest little piece of whitebait you've ever seen. And so I was so lucky in that right from the age of about 11 or 12, I had a mentor, one of my teachers, and he was a mountaineer.
You know, and I just immersed myself in the culture of the mountains, of mountaineering. And so I started climbing when I was 12. So by the time I was 19, I was at Aoraki Mount Cook and I was part of the search and rescue team there. You know, it really was the ultimate job for a young mountaineer. On this mild spring evening, Mark and his colleagues are in particularly good spirits.
They're welcoming a new member of the team, a young man named Phil Doole. Tall, broad-shouldered and softly spoken, Phil is something of a gentle giant, an introvert to Mark's extrovert. The two men are similar in age, and Mark takes an immediate liking to him. It's not long after Phil joins the group that Mark suggests they do a climb together. An ascent of Mount Cook, or Aoraki as it's known to New Zealand's indigenous Maori population, would be perfect.
the ideal opportunity for the two new colleagues to bond. In their line of work, this could mean the difference between life and death. Phil and I sort of had overlapping circles of friends, but we'd never climbed together. And so it was as much to get to understand each other, how we climbed, because...
In the coming months, we're going to have to jump out of a helicopter onto a steep ridge or onto an ice face or abseil down a rock face to pick up someone who's bent or broken or sometimes a body. So on November the 15th, Mark and Phil shoulder their packs and head off into the dark. Their plan is to spend the night in bivvy bags at the foot of Mount Cook. Before dawn breaks, they'll begin their ascent up the east face before making their way along the summit ridge.
Mark is familiar with the route. It's the perfect level of difficulty. Certain stretches will test their skills, but ultimately it shouldn't pose too great a technical challenge. Mount Cook National Park is the nearest thing you'll find to the Himalaya, outside of the Himalaya. We thought we'd do the east ridge of Aoraki Mount Cook. You know, it's a steep technical ice climb.
It's really exposed, it comes out right on the summit of the middle peak of Aoraki Mount Cook, over 3,600 meters. A marvelous climb, it's a really elegant ice climb. They must still have their wits about them. Aoraki Mount Cook has steep rock faces, plunging crevasses, and frequent avalanches. Above all, the mountain is notorious for its unpredictable weather.
In the blink of an eye, conditions can switch from bright and sunny to whiteout blizzards and some of the coldest temperatures on the planet. The east face is notoriously exposed, with very few places to shelter. But Mark isn't worried. He's checked the forecast, and although there's a storm brewing somewhere off the coast, it's not due to make landfall for another couple of days. 24 hours, at least. By then, he and Phil will be well clear. At least they should be.
We thought we had a 24-hour window and so the only thing we could really do was climb light and climb fast. And that's what we set off in the dark to do. At the foot of the East Face, Mark and Phil buckle their helmets and fix their crampons to their boots. Looking up at the pre-dawn sky, there isn't a cloud in sight. At 3,700 metres, Aoraki Mount Cook is the tallest mountain in New Zealand.
On clear days, these slopes provide awe-inspiring panoramas of the surrounding Southern Alps and a spectacular group of peaks known as the Grand Plateau. The Grand Plateau is the amphitheatre of climbing for New Zealand really. It really is an amphitheatre and the higher you get, the more incredible the view. You're ascending into an environment of steep ice and snow
You've left behind the last plant. The only thing you have as company really are amazingly the seagulls that circle and fly in amongst the uplifts way up there. Why a seagull on the top of a mountain? I just don't know. In the interest of speed, Mark and Phil have decided to carry only the bare essentials, just the clothes on their back and what little food and water they need for a single day's climbing.
No radios, no sleeping bags and no cooking equipment. Nothing that would add unnecessary weight and slow them down. With such lightweight packs, Mark and Phil make rapid progress through the morning. But as they continue up the mountain, they start to run into challenges. The ice was what we call dinner plating. And so you'd go in with your ice tools, your technical ice axe, whack into the ice, standing on the very points of your front points on your crampons.
But what was happening was that the ice would just shatter and they'd just slide down, knock your feet off. It was really technical climbing and it slowed us right down. Soon they start to realise that the weather is changing around them. The temperature is dropping and a storm is starting to gather overhead. The weather was changing, you know, you could hear the roar of the wind up higher on the summit, coming across the summit above us.
And as we came up just below the summit of Middle Peak, we stuck our nose over the top and that's when we realised that that storm that was supposed to be another 12 hours away was actually right on top of us right then. In a matter of minutes, the bright clear morning sun has been swallowed up by foreboding black clouds. The atmosphere between Mark and Phil has switched in an instant. They need to get off the mountain, fast.
Any concept of going up the summit ridge, the 100 metres or so to stand on the high summit, that was well and truly gone. All we need to do is get down. We looked down below us and there was 12 hours of technical climbing, you know, below us. We couldn't go back down the way that we'd come. Thick snow is now swirling about them. They can barely see two inches beyond their own noses.
In desperate need of an alternative route down, they quickly conjure up a plan. And that was to try and go down the summit ridge for about a few hundred metres to a place called Port o' Cole, just a wee pass in between the middle peak and the low peak. Then we knew a couple of abseils from there down onto a big ice shelf below it and we'd be fine. The two men inch their way along the ridge.
And oh, what a shock, you know? It's not just the force of the wind, but it's the cold, it's the wind chill. It goes all the way down to what's probably minus 20, minus 30 at least, if not colder, perhaps even minus 50. And so then you really just have to focus. You have to try and bring all of your focus on to each individual movement that you make. You're trying to work against something that's like a living evil force.
The two men are completely exposed on a three-foot-wide strip of ice and rock with sheer 3,000-meter drops on either side. Being blown off the mountain is not the only danger now. The wind was not just battering us about, but it was bringing on hypothermia very, very rapidly.
And once you get hypothermia, once your body starts to chill down, your brain starts to chill, that's when you start making bad decisions. You know, one of the biggest reasons to climb with someone on a mountain is so you can share your brain, so you can have more than one brain working on one problem at a time. But Mark and Phil can barely hear each other over the raging elements. Neither of them has ever experienced a storm as severe as this.
If you ever want to understand it, go and stand close to a railway track when a huge freight train is roaring by. Just that incredible feeling of reverberating through your body. Just the power of the wind, you can feel it. If they could just find a sheltered spot, then they could reassess their options. Finally, they see something up ahead. A dark hole in the ice. It's the entrance to a cave.
and we saw a hole just about the size of the seat of a chair, really, and we just crawled into it so we could get out of the window and we could just sort of have a breath, have a thought before we carried on.
You know, and it was just amazing the difference. As soon as we stuck our head into this little ice cave, this little crevasse, it was just like, ah, somebody had turned a tap off. You know, somebody had turned the screaming wind off and we could actually breathe. And then we could start to understand, you know, do we carry on or do we stay here? There's no way they're descending the mountain in this weather. They're going to have to spend the night here and wait for the storm to pass.
Mark twists around and inspects the cave. It isn't much of a refuge, just a tiny, jagged hollow carved into the ice, barely five feet across and four feet high, just about big enough for both men to huddle inside. The prospect of being stuck here longer than a day or two, it doesn't bear thinking about. But anyway, Mark doubts it will come to that. Conditions are bound to improve soon. All through the night, sleep is impossible. All they can do is try to conserve energy. They will need all their strength in the morning.
the weather's going to change. You know, it's New Zealand. You know, wait 30 minutes, the weather will change. Wait a few hours, the weather will change. And in this case, it did. It got worse. Dawn breaks over the Southern Alps, but the blizzard hasn't abated. It's intensified. The entire mountain range has been consumed, and Mark and Phil are still trapped right in the middle of it. Inside the cave still, Mark and Phil set up a belay.
Ordinarily, this is the most basic of climbing routines, but their fingers are stiff and numb inside their gloves. Feeding rope through a carabiner feels like trying to thread a needle, but eventually, the belay is ready. Phil volunteers to go first. Mark watches with bated breath as his partner shuffles out of the cave and disappears into the blizzard. If Phil can reach a sheltered spot further down the mountain, he can rig up another belay for Mark to follow him.
but then Mark feels the rope tighten in his hands. He spots Phil's red helmet looming through the snow. He's coming back. Phil collapses to the ground inside the cave, shivering violently. He's only made it a few feet. Now it's Mark's turn to try. He backs out of the cave and eases himself down the rock face. Ice crystals, whipped up by the gusts, lacerate his clothes like shards of glass. He strains every sinew just to resist being ripped from the mountain. Phil was right.
To carry on climbing in these conditions would be suicide. He grits his teeth and crawls back to the cave. If you got too far away from that little cave, you got exposed out there on that face, right in the teeth of the wind, you'd die. There's no question. But then, Mark has an idea. He plants one of his ice picks at the mouth of the cave. Then he unbuckles his helmet and tethers it to the pick.
hits a bright orange beacon against the white sheets of snow and ice. At some point, surely, their colleagues in the search and rescue team will start scouring the mountain for them. He only hopes that his makeshift signal can withstand the blizzard. The climbers have arrived at an ominous catch-22. If they leave the cave in this weather, they will die. But the longer they stay here, the worse their physical condition will become. Mark now turns his attention to their provisions.
and a horrible realisation hits him. If the cold doesn't get them, dehydration and starvation surely will. You know, we'd eaten virtually all of our food. We had a wee sachet of drink concentrate left, drink powder. We had a few biscuits. We had, I think, a small tin of peaches as well. And that was pretty much our food.
And so it was about, well, let's actually just start to ration this because we don't know how long we're going to be here. They also have no fire, no stove, which means no way to make water either. Despite being surrounded by tons of snow and ice, eating it will only make things worse. You can't eat the ice. You can't eat the snow because it chills you down from the inside out. And so you're getting dehydrated at the same time.
at high altitudes like at even 3,500 meters. Every time you breathe out, you breathe out fluid. You breathe out moisture from your body and you're not putting that back in. And so dehydration was happening. The hours pass. Mark sits hunched, trying to ignore his rumbling stomach and parched tongue. He becomes aware of a dull tingling in his feet. He knew this would happen. The cold is beginning to affect their extremities.
We just had those clothes that we were in and so that also meant that we didn't have any way to really warm up our feet. Those 12 hours of technical hard climbing meant that my socks had got wet inside these plastic boots and so I tried to dry them out as best as I could but the liners, just like on a ski boot, the liners had got wet as well and so the feet were getting really really cold.
And so by the after two days, you know, you could tell that we were starting to get frostbite. Every mountaineer fears it. First, blood vessels contract, a process known as vasoconstriction. Next, ice crystals form in the tissue as the body literally begins to freeze. The affected area turns blue, then black, and then Mark knows that if they survive this ordeal, he will lose a couple of toes at the very least. The thing you need to understand is that
We're sitting there as two search and rescue mountaineers. And the thing that we had was we had almost an encyclopedia of knowledge on how to survive. You know, I was a paramedic. I'd studied frostbite. You know, I could see frostbite happening on my own feet. It was the understanding that you can keep your hands warm, but, you know, without opening up your clothes and losing the heat out of your body and risking hypothermia, then, well...
You can't keep your feet warm. And so a really conscious decision early on was that we need to stay alive. So therefore, we need to actually, in effect, sacrifice our feet. Hi again, listeners. If you're enjoying this Taster episode, find real survival stories in your podcast app of choice and hit follow. Darkness falls on day two on the mountain. Morning comes and still no let up in the weather.
The two men are soon arguing over whether to make another attempt to climb down. Phil was pretty keen on getting out and trying to try and get out. But he was a lot stronger than me. He was a lot bigger than me. Because I had this complete faith in my search and rescue team, a team that I'd worked with for many years prior.
And so I had the complete faith that the one thing we shouldn't do is go wandering out in the wind, either get lost or get blown off. We should wait where we were because as soon as the weather cleared, they would know where to come and get us. Mark's arguments win out. They dig in and huddle together. The third day bleeds into the fourth and the weather still doesn't clear. By day five, a dimmer has set in.
An excruciating swelling of their feet and ankles. Where the frozen blood has become trapped, they're passing the point of no return. By about day five, we were in real trouble. By day five, our whole forefoot had started to freeze. The edema meant that technically we wouldn't be able to climb out. And so there was no more arguing about should we get out or not. We were stuck here. Day five becomes day six.
Severe hypothermia is slowing their thinking now. Any hope of salvation is fading fast. Then, finally, on the evening of the seventh day, Mark notices a change in the weather. The wind suddenly drops. It's still gusting, but it's definitely slackened off. Then they hear a different sound. The unmistakable whir of helicopter propellers. Phil scurries up to the mouth of the cave and squints into the blizzard.
Even in the fading daylight, Mark can see the smile break out across his friend's weather-beaten face. They had been found. The weather cleared just enough for a helicopter to take off. There was no hope of it hovering because the wind was still howling by. But by being able to fly past it, they were able to see and see Phil's face at the mouth of that ice cave. In this weather, there's no chance of a rescue tonight. The helicopter is forced to keep moving.
but they don't intend to let Mark and Phil go on suffering. Somebody hurls a bag down from the chopper's open door, but it catches in the wind and sails past the mouth of the cave. The stranded climbers watch on, helpless, as the supply drop tumbles out of view beyond the ridge. The helicopter buzzes off, then wheels back around to reattempt the drop. This time, Phil manages to reach out and grabs hold of the bag. Back inside the cave,
I was able to turn it on and have that first communication
And that was truly amazing. We'd been six and a half days alone in this ice cave, trying to keep the faith, trying to keep the faith that the weather would change, we would be rescued. That was our first contact, and that's enough to bring tears to your eyes. On the radios, Mark and Phil inform the rescue team that they've settled into Middle Peak Hotel. That's what they're calling the ice cave. They've just about retained their sense of humor.
But this connection to the outside world brings a whole new dimension to this experience. You know, one of the toughest things that they did was they put Anne on the radio, my wife, you know, and you might think it's a great thing, but in actual fact, it was probably the toughest time that I had that whole time in the ice cave. You went from focusing on just surviving
You went to understanding that your actions are implicating not just yourself, but your family and everyone else at the bottom. And it was the reminder that people were putting their lives in danger to try and get to us. And that was really, really difficult. But the let up in the weather has reassured Mark and Phil that their nightmare is finally nearing its end.
We all just assumed that this is how we wind it up, you know, we'll be out tomorrow. You know, the wind was too strong to be able to rescue us that evening and the weather was closing in again. And so it was, hey, we'll rescue you tomorrow. Just be ready. It's just after sunrise on November the 23rd, 1982, day eight in the Ice Cave. The blizzard has returned with a vengeance.
You're always just looking forward, you're concentrating on surviving.
you're concentrating on that you will get rescued but when you don't get rescued when you get contact with the bottom then you it's almost like you've given away a bit of the responsibility of your life to someone else and that gnaws on you but it also gives you a feeling that you you're going to be rescued the next day it gives you an anticipation that doesn't get fulfilled and that can wear you down really quickly
Those additional food supplies are almost gone. Sleeping on solid ice has given Mark a chest infection. His kidneys are failing due to lack of blood circulation, and he's beginning to lose his grip on reality. Day 10 morphs into day 11 and day 12.
There were times when Phil had to yell and scream at me to lie still, just stay still. I was having delirium nightmares that all I had to do was to walk outside in my bare feet and walk up a long snowy street. And at the top of that would be a nice warm place. It would be the search and rescue team, it would be my family.
We were getting closer and closer to not surviving this. Our brains were still working well enough to understand that our bodies were really starting to shut down. That evening, the two men sit in silence. But then, suddenly, one of the radios crackles into life. Across the radio that night, it was prepare yourself. The weather is supposed to clear in the morning. You know, be prepared.
And so we were, you know, we had our climbing harnesses on still. We were rugged up. We were ready to go. Although I really couldn't do a thing. I had a chest infection. I was really quite ill. And so I was basically just lying there. Phil was a lot more copious and mentis than I was. So he was ready. He was ready for when daylight came. When morning arrives, the storm has lost some of its intensity.
Shortly after daybreak, the pilot calls over the radio, and sure enough, 30 minutes later, the cave is filled by the whooshing echo of helicopter rotors. It's now or never. When daylight came, we could hear the buzz of the squirrel, and we knew it was Ron flying in with the squirrel. We knew that hanging underneath it would be Don, Don Bogey. Don was the other leader of the search and rescue teams, the most experienced search and rescue climber in New Zealand. We knew that he'd be there.
And then just minutes, seconds later, the light in the little ice cave blocked out and it was Don's head coming through. You know, he's got a beard and he looked just like Santa. It was just like Christmas. Don throws down a stretcher and Phil helps Mark get strapped into a bowman bag. Mark's only vaguely aware of what's happening around him as he's winched up through the air to the circling bird.
experiencing it all through snapshot images and sensations. Don's bearded face, the rotating propellers, the roar of the engine. His senses are overloaded. But after so long trapped in the ice cave, it's heavenly. The smell of the inside of a helicopter, of the kerosene burning in the turbine, of the machine oil, of the climbers was just the most... That was the most magical smell that you can think of.
Some hours later, Mark is blinking, squinting up at the rows of blinding hospital ceiling lights as his stretcher is wheeled through the wards. Only now, back down in the world, will Mark and Phil start to learn the full extent of the efforts to rescue them and the press interest that their story has generated. Stuck in Middle Peak Hotel,
They had no idea that Don Bogey and his team had started sending up reconnaissance flights from the very first moment the weather allowed. Trusting that Mark and Phil were still alive, they'd scoured the mountain, steadily narrowing down the list of possible hideouts. Early on, a helicopter had barely avoided crashing headlong into the mountain ridge. Finally, they'd located the survivors on Middle Peak. That's when they dropped the supplies. And then, the closest shave yet.
Another would-be rescue chopper actually did crash, straight into the upper Empress Shelf, two hours' climb beneath Middle Peak Hotel. Upended in the ice, propellers bent out of shape, it's utterly remarkable that no one was injured in the accident, let alone killed. Not only that, to top it all, it was just the very next day that the rescue mission had reached its successful conclusion.
In the coming weeks, Mark and Phil will take in this barely believable tale. One almost as extraordinary as their own. But for now, as he's hurried through the hospital, Mark has more pressing concerns. He's half listening to the muffled voices of the doctors, catching snippets of conversation about the severity of his frostbite and the likelihood of amputation. Mark closes his eyes and blocks out the white noise. But then a familiar voice cuts through the background blur.
He opens his eyes again and sees the face of his wife who smothers him in a tearful embrace. And from that initial relief then becomes all the other bits and pieces, the regret, the worry that you'd put everyone to so much trouble.
The concern of your own incompetence, the stuffing up, because that's what happened, you know. As much as we can say that it was the longest spell of bad weather in recorded history at the time at Mount Cook, that doesn't cut the mustard when you're a search and rescue mountaineer. You have that whole guilt over you as well. Despite the doctor's best efforts, Mark's feet are never going to recover from the frostbite. They're beginning to turn gangrenous.
The news is broken to him that they need to amputate not just his feet, but most of each leg, just below the knee. Phil is facing a similar prognosis. Mark's operation is duly scheduled for Christmas Eve. You know, my life may have changed somewhat when I got rescued, but it really changed in a tangible way on that Christmas Eve, 1982, at nine o'clock in the morning. You know, as we were being wheeled in, all I could think was, just cut the bloody things off.
Let me out of here. The only problem is that you wake up on Christmas Day, you ain't going to grow legs back. That's the first thing that hits you in the mind. Even before you have them cut off, you just can't understand the feeling of lying in that bed knowing that you can't grow them back. The next days and weeks are a desperately dark time.
During this period, as well as his family, Mark is comforted by some of those who know him best, his fellow climbers. And, you know, mountaineers are hard buggers, you know. They're not there to give you sympathy. They're there to smuggle some whiskey into you, into hospital. They're there to smuggle you out of hospital and take you on a drive around the city, you know, on New Year's Day and stopping at a bar, you know, while you're still tied to a wheelchair.
They're people that will give you no quarter. They don't give you sympathy. They give you a reason to pick your ass up and get on with life. And that's really what you really need to do. Needless to say, his chances of ever climbing again are pretty much non-existent. Or so you'd assume. He works hard to adapt to his new condition and slowly but surely discovers a new lease of life.
Remarkably, in the coming years, despite double amputations, both Mark and Phil will make triumphant returns to mountaineering. And Mark will make history at the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney when he wins a silver medal in cycling. He doesn't stop there.
One of the things that I've really come to learn is that whenever you achieve something, it's like standing on a podium. It's like standing on the height of a mountain and you can just see so much more. And that's what getting my silver medal, New Zealand's first ever medal in cycling at the Paralympics was in 2000.
And as soon as that medal went around my neck, I thought, I've got to go climb Mount Kokuken. And I tried a few times and Phil had done some climbing as well, but it was like, let's go and do this. And that's what I did. And then after, it took me two attempts, but standing on the summit of Aoraki, Mount Kokuken, I thought, if I can do that, then I really can do Everest. In 2006, its mission complete.
Mark Inglis becomes the first double amputee to summit the Earth's highest peak. 24 years after his terrifying ordeal on Ioraki, Mt. Cook, he stands on top of the world. In the next episode, we meet Julie and Greg Welch, a couple from Michigan whose serene kayaking trip is thrown into chaos by a devastating wildfire.
Given assurances that everything is under control, Greg and Julie are oblivious as they paddle deep into nature and far away from civilization. Suddenly, they'll find themselves surrounded by a 20-foot wall of flames. Encircled by the towering inferno, with smoke filling the air, they will need a miracle to make it out alive. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Thanks for listening.
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