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Top-3-CRAZY-ways-people-escaped-DEATH · Crime and Horror

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Speaker 1: Today's top story is easily one of the most incredible
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Speaker 1: true stories I have ever heard. But before we get
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Speaker 1: into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange,
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Speaker 1: don't miss any of our weekly uploads. All right, let's
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Speaker 1: get into today's stories. In nineteen eighty three, twenty three
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Speaker 1: year old Tammy Ashcroft was engaged to thirty four year
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Speaker 1: old Richard Sharp. The couple had bonded over their shared
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Speaker 1: love of sailing, and generally they spent more time on
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Speaker 1: the water than on land. In October of that year,
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Speaker 1: a friend approached the couple and asked if they'd be
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Speaker 1: willing to take their forty four foot yacht from Tahiti
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Speaker 1: to Same Diego. Though the trip would be over four
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Speaker 1: thousand miles long, significantly longer than any one trip either
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Speaker 1: of them had ever taken on the open water. They
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Speaker 1: both felt very confident in their seafaring abilities, and so
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Speaker 1: they agreed to do it. The journey started out fine,
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Speaker 1: but at the two week mark, when they were just
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Speaker 1: north of the equator, they heard about a hurricane that
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Speaker 1: could be making its way up to where they were going,
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Speaker 1: and so even though they anticipated it would kind of
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Speaker 1: peter out and actually not even hit them, they decided
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Speaker 1: it was still in their best interest to try to
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Speaker 1: sail completely away from the path of the storm to
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Speaker 1: save for waters. But over the next couple of days,
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Speaker 1: the storm only intensified and continued to change directions, making
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Speaker 1: it really hard to predict where safer waters was going
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Speaker 1: to be, and so Tammy and Richard kept desperately trying
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Speaker 1: to get farther and farther away from the storm, but
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Speaker 1: it was like every time they would change course and
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Speaker 1: get farther away, the storm would speed up and change
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Speaker 1: directions and still be coming straight for them. And so
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Speaker 1: finally it got to the point where Tammy and Richard
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Speaker 1: realized they could not actually outpace the storm, that they
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Speaker 1: would have to weather it, and so on the day
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Speaker 1: it was going to hit them, they donned their rein
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Speaker 1: gear and they boarded up the windows, and then they
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Speaker 1: stood on the deck of their yacht looking out at
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Speaker 1: the horizon as this category four hurricane is just barreling
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Speaker 1: straight towards them. Tammy would go on to say that
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Speaker 1: she never fully appreciated just how terrifying being in a
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Speaker 1: hurricane is out at sea until she was in one.
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Speaker 1: She said, it was a constant barrage of fifty foot
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Speaker 1: waves that would literally launch the yacht. It would become airborne,
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Speaker 1: and then it would come crashing down, and each time
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Speaker 1: it landed, she felt like the boat was going to
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Speaker 1: break in two. And then as soon as it did
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Speaker 1: slam down, another wave would land on top of them.
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Speaker 1: And so it just felt like at any moment the
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Speaker 1: ship was just going to be consumed by the ocean.
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Speaker 1: But Tammy and Richard were excellent sailors, and Richard was
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Speaker 1: up in the cockpit and he was doing everything he
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Speaker 1: could to keep the boat from not flipping over, and
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Speaker 1: after a little while he had figured out a way
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Speaker 1: to kind of ride the waves in such a way
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Speaker 1: that they would not get totally tossed each time. And
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Speaker 1: after a couple hours of just absolute chaos, it started
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Speaker 1: to seem like they had made it through the worst
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Speaker 1: of the storm and more than likely they were going
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Speaker 1: to make it out of this thing relatively unharmed. And
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Speaker 1: so around this time, as the storm was beginning to
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Speaker 1: calm down, Richard is anchored in place in the cockpit.
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Speaker 1: He's a safety line attached to him to the ground,
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Speaker 1: so he's not going anywhere, and Tammy is just exhausted.
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Speaker 1: It was just so stressful being through the storm. And
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Speaker 1: Richard noticed and he says, Tammy, I got this up here,
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Speaker 1: go down into the cabin and just try to get
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Speaker 1: some rest. And Tammy was very grateful, and she agreed.
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Speaker 1: She opened the doors to the cabin and she had
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Speaker 1: made it all the way downstairs when she hears Richard
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Speaker 1: yell out from up in the cockpit, oh my god,
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Speaker 1: before a rogue wave comes crashing into their boat head on,
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Speaker 1: flipping the boat backwards like a backflip onto the top,
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Speaker 1: so it's upside down in the water. And Tammy would
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Speaker 1: say it felt like someone ripped the boat out from
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Speaker 1: under her feet, and then she came crashing down and
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Speaker 1: smashed her head and was knocked unconscious. When Tammy woke
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Speaker 1: up twenty seven hours later, she was laying in the
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Speaker 1: cabin against a chair and half on the ground. And
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Speaker 1: she opens her eyes and the cabin she's in is
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Speaker 1: half submerged, and everything inside of it has either been
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Speaker 1: thrown on the ground or it's broken. There's papers, there's tools.
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Speaker 1: I mean, the place is just a disaster down there,
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Speaker 1: and she can tell the cabin is also slowly filling
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Speaker 1: with water. After the boat had backflipped and Tammy had
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Speaker 1: been knocked unconscious, it continued to get thrown around by
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Speaker 1: waves before miraculously landing upright. Tammy could barely remember what happened,
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Speaker 1: and she's totally overwhelmed by what she's seeing. She's in shock,
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Speaker 1: and all she knows is she has to go up
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Speaker 1: on deck to find Richard. And so she gets up
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Speaker 1: and wades through the water. She gets to the stairs,
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Speaker 1: she's yelling for Richard. She goes up on deck and
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Speaker 1: she looked around and the boat was just ruined and
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Speaker 1: she's yelling for Richard. She's looking around. He's nowhere to
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Speaker 1: be found. And then she looks up at the cockpit
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Speaker 1: where she last saw him and she can see his
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Speaker 1: safety line that was attached to him keeping him anchored
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Speaker 1: to the boat, was now dangling off the back of
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Speaker 1: the boat. She ran to the back. She looked and the
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Speaker 1: safety harness had actually come undone. It had been broken
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Speaker 1: in the storm, and Richard was gone. He had been
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Speaker 1: swept into the ocean, and he was not wearing a
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Speaker 1: life jacket, and Tammy would say he had actually taken
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Speaker 1: it off earlier in the storm and left it down
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Speaker 1: in the cabin, and then when the storm was raging again,
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Speaker 1: he was back up top, anchored in place, and just
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Speaker 1: didn't think to go down and get it. And they
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Speaker 1: both were just not thinking about it. It was just
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Speaker 1: one of those things in a really chaotic situation that
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Speaker 1: got overlooked. And while Tammy wanted to grieve the loss
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Speaker 1: of her fiance, it was like she couldn't. Her survival
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Speaker 1: instincts were kicking in and she knew if she didn't
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Speaker 1: act quickly to fix this situation, she too would die.
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Speaker 1: And so she began robotically taking stock of the boat's condition,
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Speaker 1: and she saw the masts had broken clean off. These
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Speaker 1: sails were now dragging in the water. The engine, the radio,
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Speaker 1: the electronic navigation system, the emergency position indicator device, all
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Speaker 1: of it was ruined, and so all alone in the
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Speaker 1: middle of the ocean with nothing in sight, no ships,
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Speaker 1: no land, no anything, on a ruined ship that is
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Speaker 1: gradually sinking. After finding out your fiance has been swept
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Speaker 1: out to his death in the middle of a storm,
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Speaker 1: Tammy managed to stay composed, and she built a makeshift
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Speaker 1: sail and began sailing the ship, and she also began
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Speaker 1: slowly pumping the wall her out of the cabin. She
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Speaker 1: went back into the cabin and she discovered some of
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Speaker 1: the almanacs were still in there, and she discovered there
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Speaker 1: was a current that she thought she could get to,
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Speaker 1: and so, using just a sextant and a watch, she
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Speaker 1: manually navigated this broken down ship, using this makeshift sail,
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Speaker 1: into this current, and then for forty one days she
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Speaker 1: survived on canned food and peanut butter, and she sailed
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Speaker 1: fifteen hundred miles to Hawaii. And the whole time she's
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Speaker 1: thinking to herself, if my calculations are off, that this
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Speaker 1: is not the current I'm supposed to be in, I
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Speaker 1: will sail past Hawaii out into the open water, and
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Speaker 1: I will run out of food and water and I
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Speaker 1: will die. But she didn't die because her calculations were
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Speaker 1: spot on. When Tammy finally stepped foot on land in Hawaii.
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Speaker 1: She was relieved that she had made it and that
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Speaker 1: she was going to live, but at the same time,
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Speaker 1: she had this flood of emotions where she was suddenly
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Speaker 1: so sad about the loss of Richard. It was like
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Speaker 1: she really hadn't had a chance to grieve his loss
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Speaker 1: because that whole time after the accident she was focused
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Speaker 1: on survival. And although Tammy would make full recovery, it
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Speaker 1: would take her six years to learn how to read
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Speaker 1: again because of the head injury she sustained when the
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Speaker 1: boat capsized. But when she did regain that skill, she
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Speaker 1: finally stopped and she wrote her and Richard's story in
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Speaker 1: a book called Red Sky and Mourning that became an
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Speaker 1: international bestseller and was converted into a movie called A Drift.
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Speaker 1: Growing up in Southeastern Australia, Ricky McGee worked a variety
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Speaker 1: of jobs, including being a carpet salesman, a prawn fisherman,
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Speaker 1: a nightclub doorman, an electrician and a bailiff. In two
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Speaker 1: thousand and six, when Ricky was thirty five, he was
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Speaker 1: offered yet another new job in a government department in
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Speaker 1: Western Australia. He accepted the job, hopped in his car
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Speaker 1: and began the long drive across the desert. While on
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Speaker 1: the extremely desolate Bunteen Highway, which is basically a road
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Speaker 1: in the middle of the desert with nothing around, no people,
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Speaker 1: no buildings, nothing, He's driving along and he sees a
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Speaker 1: group of three men standing outside of their car, and
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Speaker 1: so Ricky assumed they must have broken down, so he
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Speaker 1: pulls over to ask if they need help. They come
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Speaker 1: up to him, and they're so gracious that he stopped,
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Speaker 1: and they said, we ran out of gas. Can we
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Speaker 1: hop in with you and ride up to the next town,
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Speaker 1: And Ricky says, fine, climb on in. So the three
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Speaker 1: men they get in his car and they take off,
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Speaker 1: and then after that Ricky has no memory. He thinks
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Speaker 1: one of them drugged him by putting something in his drink,
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Speaker 1: which was sitting in the center console and was open,
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Speaker 1: but he doesn't know for sure. Ricky remembers waking up
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Speaker 1: and he was in a camp and he sat up
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Speaker 1: and he was unrestrained, and he looks out in front
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Speaker 1: of him and the three guys that had gotten in
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Speaker 1: the car with him were sitting on rocks looking at him,
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Speaker 1: and one of them had a gun that he was
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Speaker 1: aiming at Ricky, and so Ricky's just looking around, not
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Speaker 1: really sure what's going on, and one of them gets
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Speaker 1: up and comes over and offers him water. Ricky takes
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Speaker 1: a sip of the water because he's very thirsty, and
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Speaker 1: Ricky believes the water was poisoned as well, because shortly
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Speaker 1: after taking a sip, he passed out again. When Ricky
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Speaker 1: regained consciousness a second time, he couldn't move. It was dark,
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Speaker 1: and he felt something tugging at his skin, and as
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Speaker 1: he's laying there, he realizes there is black plastic right
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Speaker 1: over his face. He's been buried, and then he realizes
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Speaker 1: there is a dingo that is standing on his chest
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Speaker 1: that has tugged the plastic away from his face because
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Speaker 1: the dog is trying to take a bite out of Ricky.
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Speaker 1: But the dog is the one that saved his life
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Speaker 1: by creating an air pocket in the plastic. Ricky streamed
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Speaker 1: at the dog. The dog panicked and leapt out of
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Speaker 1: the hole and ran away, and Ricky was able to
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Speaker 1: work his finger up to this hole and pull it
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Speaker 1: all the way open and push himself out of the plastic,
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Speaker 1: and he realized there wasn't much dirt or rocks that
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Speaker 1: have been placed over him. They probably thought he would
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Speaker 1: just suffocate in the middle of the desert and no
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Speaker 1: one's gonna find him anyways, But here he is. And
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Speaker 1: so he stands up in his grave and he looks
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Speaker 1: around and there's no sign of the three men. His
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Speaker 1: car has gone. He realizes they also took all of
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Speaker 1: his clothing, even his shoes. He's got no food, he's
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Speaker 1: got no water. He's in the middle of the desert.
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Speaker 1: There's no rose, there's no people, there's no buildings, there's nothing.
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Speaker 1: At this point, confusion overtook Ricky because he just could
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Speaker 1: not make sense of what had just happened to him.
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Speaker 1: Who were these three people? Why'd they attack him? Do
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Speaker 1: they just want to steal his car? Were they prepared
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Speaker 1: to kill him to take his car? He just he
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Speaker 1: couldn't understand it. And so there was some shade behind
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Speaker 1: little bush, and he sat down in the shade and
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Speaker 1: he just sat there for several hours, thinking, you know,
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Speaker 1: what am I gonna do? But not being one to
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Speaker 1: let pessimism crowd his psyche, Ricky decides if he's gonna survive,
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Speaker 1: he needs to get up and get moving. After ten
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Speaker 1: days of just wandering through the desert and seeing nobody,
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Speaker 1: he came across this fairly large water hole and he decided,
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Speaker 1: you know what, I have a better chance of surviving
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Speaker 1: if I just wait here until someone comes and rescues me,
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Speaker 1: then if I just keep walking through the desert where
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Speaker 1: I'm bound to just eventually die. And so he makes
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Speaker 1: a makeshift shelter next to this water hole and he
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Speaker 1: begins to wait. After almost a week of being at
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Speaker 1: the spot, Ricky had still not had a single thing
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Speaker 1: to eat since this whole ordeal began. And so he's
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Speaker 1: sitting there, his stomach is a naz He's in so
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Speaker 1: much pain, he's starving, and just then a lizard happened
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Speaker 1: to run across in front of him, and without even thinking,
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Speaker 1: he just reached out and grabbed it and took a
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Speaker 1: bite out of it. And it was like, all of
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Speaker 1: the sudden, this primal side of him was unleashed, and
10:53
Speaker 1: suddenly he had no issues eating anything that moved in
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Speaker 1: the desert. For weeks, Ricky stayed at the spot, drinking
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Speaker 1: the water hole and eating lizards, frogs, leeches, snakes, grasshoppers, caterpillars,
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Speaker 1: basically anything that moved anywhere in the desert, he would
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Speaker 1: chase it down and he would eat it. In fact,
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Speaker 1: he developed an affinity for certain frogs over others, and
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Speaker 1: he said, in terms of eating leeches, that they were okay,
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Speaker 1: but you needed to eat them really, really quickly, otherwise
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Speaker 1: they would attach to the insides of your mouth. Ricky
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Speaker 1: also ate plants, but he would even say he had
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Speaker 1: no idea what was harmful and what was okay to eat.
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Speaker 1: He just ate what tasted good and got really lucky.
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Speaker 1: But as much as Ricky was eating, it wasn't enough.
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Speaker 1: He was slowly losing his battle with the desert, and
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Speaker 1: he was starving to death, and so Ricky believed he
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Speaker 1: didn't have enough time to just continue to wait at
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Speaker 1: this particular spot. He needed to go out and find help.
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Speaker 1: And so he left that water hole and began stumbling
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Speaker 1: through the desert all over again. But he was so
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Speaker 1: weak he only lasted for a couple of days before
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Speaker 1: he found another water hole and he stopped there and
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Speaker 1: he built yet another shelter, this time believing it would
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Speaker 1: become his tomb. Over the next couple of days, wild
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Speaker 1: dogs again coming to his camp and circling his camp
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Speaker 1: it was like they knew he was about to die soon,
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Speaker 1: or they at least knew he was weak enough they
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Speaker 1: could probably overpower him soon. At night, Ricky had to
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Speaker 1: barricade the door of his shelter because the dogs would
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Speaker 1: get aggressive and they'd come up to the door and
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Speaker 1: try to paw their way inside. On the seventieth day
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Speaker 1: of his ordeal, Ricky believed he was probably within a
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Speaker 1: day or two of passing away, and so he put
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Speaker 1: a cross on the outside of his shelter, believing that
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Speaker 1: would be his tomb and at least this way someone
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Speaker 1: might notice it and find his body and then hopefully
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Speaker 1: let his family know what happened to him. But on
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Speaker 1: the seventy first day, when Ricky happened to be standing
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Speaker 1: outside of his shelter, two ranch hands happened to be
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Speaker 1: way off the road in the outback and were looking
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Speaker 1: in his direction, and they saw him, and when they
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Speaker 1: went over to him, they said he looked like a
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Speaker 1: walking skeleton, and Ricky practically collapsed as soon as he
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Speaker 1: saw help had finally arrived. The ranchands evacuated Ricky from
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Speaker 1: the desert and brought him to a hospital, where he
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Speaker 1: weighed less than one hundred pounds. At the beginning of
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Speaker 1: his ordeal, he weighed over two hundred and thirty pounds.
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Speaker 1: Despite filing a report with the police about the three
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Speaker 1: men who attacked him, they were never caught. Ricky checked
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Speaker 1: himself out of the hospital after six days and made
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Speaker 1: a full recovery. He ended up writing a book about
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Speaker 1: his experience, and he now works construction in Dubai. By
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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, the remote and extremely dangerous west face
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Speaker 1: of the Sioula Grande in the Peruvian Andes was still unclimbed,
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Speaker 1: But in nineteen eighty five, two very ambitious climbers, twenty
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Speaker 1: five year old Joe Simpson and twenty one year old
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Speaker 1: Simon Yates, decided they were going to be the first
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Speaker 1: to conquer it, and by all accounts, they seemed up
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Speaker 1: for the job, having already conquered numerous difficult Scottish ice
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Speaker 1: cliffs as well as a number of large mountain faces
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Speaker 1: in the Alps. So in early June of that year,
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Speaker 1: the pair flew to Peru and they arrived at the
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Speaker 1: base camp that was nearest to the Sioula Grande, but
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Speaker 1: it was still five miles away, so they couldn't actually
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Speaker 1: see what they were going to be climbing. Yet, on
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Speaker 1: June fifth, when the weather was good enough, the pair
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Speaker 1: left camp and worked their way around the huge lake
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Speaker 1: across the glacier to the base of this cliff they're
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Speaker 1: about to climb, and when they saw it for the
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Speaker 1: first time, they couldn't believe how steep and dangerous it looked.
14:06
Speaker 1: But over the next three days they managed to make
14:08
Speaker 1: it up this cliff, despite a blizzard hitting them halfway through,
14:12
Speaker 1: and they reached the summit. To them, this was a
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Speaker 1: crowning achievement. They had done it. They had written their
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Speaker 1: names in the history books, but in reality, the thing
14:20
Speaker 1: that people would remember them for was not for reaching
14:22
Speaker 1: the top of Sieou la Grande. It was for what
14:25
Speaker 1: happened when they started going down. Because of how steep
14:28
Speaker 1: this mountain was, and because of the blizzard that was
14:31
Speaker 1: not going away, it was actually getting worse, the descent
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Speaker 1: was going to be much more challenging than the ascent.
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Speaker 1: So shortly after ten am on June eighth, Joe and
14:39
Speaker 1: Simon left the summit and began very carefully making their
14:43
Speaker 1: way down the mountain. At eleven am, disaster struck when
14:47
Speaker 1: Joe lost his footing and fell to the bottom of
14:49
Speaker 1: an ice cliff and shattered his leg. Initially, they both
14:53
Speaker 1: assumed this was a death sentence for Joe, because there's
14:55
Speaker 1: no way he can actually climb down the mountain now,
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Speaker 1: and certainly Simon can't actually carry him down the mountain.
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Speaker 1: They were so high up and it's so steep, there's
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Speaker 1: just no way. But Simon wanted to at least try
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Speaker 1: to save his friend, so he climbed down to him.
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Speaker 1: He gave him some mild painkillers that he had, and
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Speaker 1: then he attached his rope to Joe, and then Simon
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Speaker 1: anchored himself in the snow, and he began lowering Joe
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Speaker 1: down the mountain, all three hundred feet of his rope,
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Speaker 1: and when he would stop, Joe at the other end
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Speaker 1: would anchor himself in the snow with his ice picks,
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Speaker 1: and then Simon would climb down to Joe and he'd
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Speaker 1: repeat the process over and over and over again, lowering
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Speaker 1: Joe three hundred feet at a time. This went on
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Speaker 1: for hours and hours and hours, just backbreaking work for
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Speaker 1: Simon and Joe meanwhile, as an excruciating pain from his
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Speaker 1: broken leg, and to make matters worse, the storm had
15:42
Speaker 1: gotten so bad that the visibility between Simon and Joe
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Speaker 1: was zero, So as Simon is lowering Joe, he can't
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Speaker 1: see what he's lowering Joe onto, but they had no
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Speaker 1: other choice. That was the only way they could get
15:54
Speaker 1: him down. And so at five pm that night, Simon
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Speaker 1: accidentally lowers Joe over a cliff, and Joe, as soon
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Speaker 1: as he's hanging off the edge, all of his weight
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Speaker 1: is on the rope, and suddenly the rope is flying
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Speaker 1: out of Simon's hands and he manages to self arrest
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Speaker 1: and stop him from careening over the edge. But now
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Speaker 1: Simon is the only thing holding Joe from tumbling to
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Speaker 1: his death, and Simon is being slowly drugged down the mountain.
16:18
Speaker 1: He can't anchor himself in, and so they're in the
16:20
Speaker 1: middle of this inhospitable environment in the middle of the night,
16:23
Speaker 1: a storm is raging, it's freezing cold. They can't communicate
16:27
Speaker 1: with each other, they can't hear each other or see
16:29
Speaker 1: each other, and Simon is just hoping that Joe is
16:32
Speaker 1: going to be able to grab onto something and kind
16:35
Speaker 1: of take his weight off the rope, otherwise this is
16:37
Speaker 1: going to end badly for both of them. But unfortunately
16:40
Speaker 1: the cliff was at an angle, so Joe was dangling
16:42
Speaker 1: off of it and he couldn't touch the wall. He
16:44
Speaker 1: had nothing to grab onto. He was just dangling in
16:47
Speaker 1: the air. And so as Simon tries to move the
16:49
Speaker 1: rope to try to signal to Joe to take your
16:51
Speaker 1: weight off the rope, Joe is trying to climb up
16:54
Speaker 1: the rope, but his hands are starting to get frostbit.
16:56
Speaker 1: He's weak, he's in pain. He can't do anything about it.
16:59
Speaker 1: So for the next two and a half hours, Simon
17:01
Speaker 1: is desperately trying to regain an anchor in the snow,
17:05
Speaker 1: but every second that goes by, he's getting pulled farther
17:08
Speaker 1: and farther and farther down the mountain. He can't see
17:10
Speaker 1: how close he is to the edge, he knows he's
17:12
Speaker 1: getting close, and so finally, at seven thirty PM, with
17:15
Speaker 1: no other option, he pulls out a knife and he
17:18
Speaker 1: cuts the rope. As soon as the rope was cut,
17:20
Speaker 1: Simon fell backwards. He was safe, nothing was pulling him
17:22
Speaker 1: off the cliff any longer, but he knew he had
17:25
Speaker 1: just sent Joe to his death. Except Joe didn't die.
17:28
Speaker 1: When that rope was cut. He fell one hundred and
17:30
Speaker 1: fifty feet and smashed into the ground, except what he
17:33
Speaker 1: hit was a thin sheet of ice that broke from
17:36
Speaker 1: his weight, and he fell another eighty feet into this
17:38
Speaker 1: massive ice cravass. Joe was knocked unconscious from the fall,
17:42
Speaker 1: but when he woke up, he was laying on his side.
17:44
Speaker 1: He opened his eyes and he looked around, and he
17:46
Speaker 1: couldn't believe he was alive. And he's looking around. He
17:49
Speaker 1: doesn't know where he is. It's totally dark. He turns
17:51
Speaker 1: on his head lamp and he realizes he's fallen into
17:53
Speaker 1: an ice crevass. And he looks down and he's on
17:56
Speaker 1: this little ledge that's overlooking a much muddy, deeper fall.
18:00
Speaker 1: He looks down and this ice cervass seems to just
18:03
Speaker 1: go on infinitely into this black chasm, and he realizes
18:06
Speaker 1: when he fell, had he fallen a foot over, that's
18:09
Speaker 1: where he would have gone. So it's a miracle he's alive.
18:12
Speaker 1: But now he's trapped in the middle of an ice
18:14
Speaker 1: crabass eighty feet down. He can't go down, and he
18:17
Speaker 1: can't go up. At the time, Joe didn't know if
18:19
Speaker 1: Simon had fallen off the cliff with him or if
18:22
Speaker 1: he had cut the rope. But the rope was still
18:24
Speaker 1: attached to his waist and it fed up and out
18:27
Speaker 1: of the ice crevass, and so he grabbed it and
18:29
Speaker 1: pulled on it until it all came tumbling back down
18:31
Speaker 1: and he saw it was frayed, and so sure enough,
18:34
Speaker 1: Simon had cut the rope. Now, even though Joe wasn't
18:36
Speaker 1: mad at Simon for the decision he made, because he
18:39
Speaker 1: understood it was the right one, Joe still became very
18:42
Speaker 1: emotional when he saw this. He felt so alone, he
18:45
Speaker 1: was so sad, and for a little while he just
18:46
Speaker 1: kind of freaked out and screamed and yelled and really
18:49
Speaker 1: just didn't know what he was going to do. And
18:51
Speaker 1: then after that he sat down, knowing he wasn't getting
18:53
Speaker 1: out of here and that he was going to die
18:55
Speaker 1: a slow, horrible, painful death. Joe remembers reaching up and
18:58
Speaker 1: turning off his headlamp, which retrospectively he thought was kind
19:01
Speaker 1: of goofy, because he's just realized he's about to die
19:04
Speaker 1: inside of this crevass and he's saving batteries. But with
19:07
Speaker 1: the light off, he's sitting on the ledge and he
19:10
Speaker 1: hears all the sounds that are coming from inside of
19:12
Speaker 1: this crevass. It was this awful grinding sound, like a
19:16
Speaker 1: moaning sound that he said, it was so terrifying sitting
19:19
Speaker 1: in the darkness listening to the sound, that he reached
19:21
Speaker 1: up and turned his light back on just for comfort.
19:23
Speaker 1: Back up on the mountain, Simon was devastated. He felt
19:26
Speaker 1: like he had just killed his friend. And even though
19:28
Speaker 1: he understood why he did it and understood it was
19:31
Speaker 1: probably the right decision, it didn't change the fact that
19:33
Speaker 1: he felt incredibly guilty about it. And so that night
19:36
Speaker 1: he didn't even move from the position he was. He
19:38
Speaker 1: dug a little snow cave and he laid down and
19:40
Speaker 1: eventually fell asleep. The next morning, when he got up,
19:42
Speaker 1: he began moving his way down the mountain, and he
19:45
Speaker 1: finally rounded the area where Joe had been hanging off
19:47
Speaker 1: of that cliff, and he got a chance to look
19:49
Speaker 1: down and see where Joe might have wound up. And
19:52
Speaker 1: to his horror, he's looking down and he sees this
19:54
Speaker 1: massive opening to a crevass that seemed almost bottomless. And
19:58
Speaker 1: now this confirms that Joe definitely has died because he
20:02
Speaker 1: fell in there. But nonetheless, Simon goes down and goes
20:04
Speaker 1: to the edge of the crevass and yells into Joe.
20:06
Speaker 1: He's screaming for him to call out if he's still alive,
20:09
Speaker 1: but after a while he never heard anything from Joe,
20:11
Speaker 1: and with a heavy heart, Simon turned around and started
20:14
Speaker 1: heading back to base camp. A little while after Simon
20:17
Speaker 1: had left, Joe finally woke up. He had been asleep
20:20
Speaker 1: when Simon was yelling down for him, and so Joe
20:22
Speaker 1: wakes up. He's looking around. He can't believe this wasn't
20:24
Speaker 1: a bad dream. He starts yelling for Simon because he
20:27
Speaker 1: doesn't know what else to do, but after a while
20:29
Speaker 1: he realized Simon's not going to come down here to
20:32
Speaker 1: get me. He cut the rope. He thinks I'm dead already.
20:34
Speaker 1: At this point, Joe decides he needs to try to
20:36
Speaker 1: climb out of the crevass, even with a broken leg,
20:39
Speaker 1: and so he gets himself in position. He gets his
20:41
Speaker 1: ice picks, and he starts making his way up this
20:43
Speaker 1: ice wall, but he can't put any weight on his
20:46
Speaker 1: broken leg and he keeps falling down and he's realizing
20:49
Speaker 1: I can't climb this. I probably couldn't climb this with
20:51
Speaker 1: two good legs. Let alone with this broken one, and
20:54
Speaker 1: so Joe had two choices. He could wait on the
20:56
Speaker 1: ledge and hope to be rescued, but by his calculations,
21:00
Speaker 1: it was unlikely someone was going to come out here
21:02
Speaker 1: and rescue him anytime soon, because Simon is going to
21:05
Speaker 1: say he's dead. So wait in the ledge and probably
21:08
Speaker 1: die a slow, painful death. Or he can go down
21:12
Speaker 1: deeper into the crevass, which he has no idea where
21:14
Speaker 1: it goes, and hope somewhere down in that black void
21:17
Speaker 1: there's an opening that leads back out to the outside
21:20
Speaker 1: of the mountain. So he made his choice, screwed an
21:22
Speaker 1: anchor into the ice, put his rope through it. He
21:25
Speaker 1: tested it to make sure it would hold his weight.
21:27
Speaker 1: He looked down into the void one last time and
21:29
Speaker 1: knew that as soon as he stepped off of this ledge,
21:32
Speaker 1: he could not come back up again. This was a
21:34
Speaker 1: one way trip, and if he made it to the
21:36
Speaker 1: bottom of his three hundred foot rope and he didn't
21:38
Speaker 1: find a ledge or a tunnel or something to put
21:40
Speaker 1: his feet on, he would slip off and fall to
21:43
Speaker 1: his death. On purpose, he did not put a knot
21:46
Speaker 1: at the end of his rope because he figured either
21:49
Speaker 1: I'll find a way out or I won't, but at
21:51
Speaker 1: least it'll be quick down. He went about eighty feet
21:54
Speaker 1: into this pitch black crevass. He has no idea what's
21:57
Speaker 1: down there, and he gets to a point where the
21:58
Speaker 1: walls kind of come together and he was able to
22:01
Speaker 1: squeeze through it, and he realized once he got through
22:03
Speaker 1: that point, it was like the center of an hour glass,
22:06
Speaker 1: where below it they kind of opened up. And as
22:08
Speaker 1: soon as he pushed through, he could actually see to
22:11
Speaker 1: the ground. He saw a flat ground and there was
22:14
Speaker 1: light shining on it, which meant there was a hole
22:16
Speaker 1: leading out into the mountains somewhere down there. And so
22:19
Speaker 1: he went all the way down. He touched the bottom,
22:21
Speaker 1: it was solid ground. He disconnected from his rope and
22:24
Speaker 1: he climbed his way up this incline to where the
22:26
Speaker 1: sun was coming in, which was this hole that led
22:29
Speaker 1: right back out onto the mountain. And sure enough, he
22:32
Speaker 1: crawled out and tumbled out, and the sun is shining
22:34
Speaker 1: on him, and he remembers just laying on the mountain
22:37
Speaker 1: looking at the sun and laughing. He couldn't believe it.
22:39
Speaker 1: But after the initial relief of not dying wore off,
22:42
Speaker 1: he realized he was not out of the woods yet.
22:45
Speaker 1: He still needed to climb down the rest of the mountain,
22:47
Speaker 1: and there wasn't that much left to climb. He was
22:49
Speaker 1: towards the bottom and it wasn't that steep. But after
22:52
Speaker 1: that he would need to navigate five miles back to
22:55
Speaker 1: base camp. But over several delirious, painful, miserable days, he
23:00
Speaker 1: managed to crawl all the way back to base camp,
23:03
Speaker 1: and he got there right as Simon was packing up
23:06
Speaker 1: the tent and getting ready to leave. He could not
23:08
Speaker 1: believe he saw Joe alive. Joe said, Simon just swore,
23:12
Speaker 1: He just endlessly swore. He was cussing. He couldn't even speak,
23:15
Speaker 1: He didn't understand. It was like he was looking at
23:17
Speaker 1: a ghost. But after that kind of crazy initial interaction,
23:20
Speaker 1: Simon just gave Joe a big hug, and Joe and
23:23
Speaker 1: Simon just cried and held each other. Joe underwent six
23:26
Speaker 1: surgical operations to repair the damage done to his leg,
23:29
Speaker 1: and doctors would tell him that you're never going to
23:31
Speaker 1: climb again, and you're probably going to struggle with walking
23:34
Speaker 1: for the rest of your life. But after two years
23:37
Speaker 1: of intense rehabilitation, Joe was not only walking just fine,
23:40
Speaker 1: he was mountain climbing. As for Simon, he managed to
23:43
Speaker 1: leave the mountain without any serious physical injury, but he
23:46
Speaker 1: carried with him an enormous sense of guilt that he
23:48
Speaker 1: still carries today. Joe consistently says Simon made the right decision.
23:53
Speaker 1: In every interview he does, he always makes sure to
23:55
Speaker 1: say Simon is not at fault. It was an impossible situation.
23:59
Speaker 1: He made the right call. Joe wrote a book about
24:01
Speaker 1: the experience called Touching the Void, and it sold millions
24:04
Speaker 1: of copies worldwide and has since been adapted into a
24:07
Speaker 1: major motion picture. As for Joe and Simon, apparently they've
24:10
Speaker 1: drifted apart over the years, but they still consider each
24:12
Speaker 1: other friends. So that's going to do it. Guys. If
24:14
Speaker 1: you found the secret in today's episode, let us know
24:16
Speaker 1: in the comments what it is and where you found it.
24:19
Speaker 1: If the first to do that will pin you at
24:21
Speaker 1: the top of the comments section. If you enjoyed today's
24:23
Speaker 1: video and you haven't done this already, please secretly follow
24:26
Speaker 1: the like button into a grocery store and then ram
24:28
Speaker 1: the back of their heels with your grocery card. Also,
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Speaker 1: four even five video uploads. If you want to get
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Speaker 1: in touch with me, you can direct message me on
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Speaker 1: Instagram or on Twitter. My username for both platforms is
24:43
Speaker 1: the same. It's John Ballin four one six. I also
24:45
Speaker 1: have a ton of content over on TikTok, where my
24:47
Speaker 1: username is mister Bollin. If you have a story suggestion,
24:50
Speaker 1: please submit it to our subreddit just called mister Ballin.
24:53
Speaker 1: It's linked in the description below. So whether I see
24:55
Speaker 1: you on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, or some combination,
24:59
Speaker 1: just know that I really you appreciate your support and
25:01
Speaker 1: until next time that's going to do it. See it