as posted by andy smith on facebook, "I'm back in San Francisco from Mt. Whitney. Thank God and Scott Adams I'm still alive. We were at about 13,500'-13,800' on Saturday at 5pm and about 2-3 pitches from the top of Mt. Whitney when a rock about the size of a microwave hit me on top of my helmet and my left shoulder. I immediately fell to the ground on the ledge we had been standing on. My head and both arms went totally numb. I did not know what happened but I knew I was hurt bad. I could not stand up and was disoriented. Scott immediately took control of the situation and called for rescue. He was smart and took a cell phone and was able to get a signal. The dispatcher told him that they were unable to send a helicopter due to night-time and high winds (approx. 40-50mph) and a snow storm front was moving in but would send one out in the morning IF the winds died down and the snow storm held off. At that time I was about to give up but Scott would not let me. It was about 0-15 degrees as the sun went down. He secured me in a cerasse with an emergency blanket as he started setting up our repels to get down. He tied me into the rope and made me face the excruciating pain to repel down. Scott managed the rigging, 2 backpacks, climbing gear, the rope and me. I kept insisting that he leave me and go on down to see if there was anyone else at base camp to help. He told me to shut the F@*#k up and that he was not going to leave me. So I complied. We repelled down 4 pitches (about 500') to the Mountaineer's Route Chute. It was an extremely steep gulley full of scree, rubble and boulders. He would repel first then he would belay me down. By this time I had some use of my legs and only one arm. It took us about 2-3 hours to get to the gulley. Once in the gulley neither one of us could feel our feet or hands due to the cold temps. He wanted me to continue on ahead of him so he could keep his sights on me. So I began to attempt to walk but without success. I kept falling down onto the rubble and passing out due to the pain. So I began to crawl and slide to get down while he continued to haul 2 backpacks, gear and rope. It took us another 10 hours in freezing temp and excruciating pain to get back to base camp. I continued to pass-out from time to time. But every time I would wake up and look back up the gulley there he was ensuring I kept moving. We made it back to base camp at approx. 5:30am. The Serria Moutain Rescue helicopter arrived at approx. 8-9am. They flew us to a hospital in Lone Pine. There they dosed me up with lots of IV pain meds and did a CT from head to toe. At that time they knew I was to critical for their hospital and they called for air transport to Loma Linda Hospital's Neuro ICU. Once there they did some more CT scans and MRIs. The results are that I have multiple fractures in my left shoulder blade and some compression fractures in a couple my vertebrae. I was in the step down neuro unit for 4 days. Now they have discharged so I can go back home and follow up with my medical treatment in Chattanooga. I'm very lucky. I own my life to Scott and I know someone up there is looking out for me. If you know Scott Adams please commend him for his persistence’s, bravery, level headedness and strength that brought me and him home to our families. THANK YOU SCOTT. My family and I own you an unpayable debt.(the end)", Andy Smith (facebook post October 8th)
Truth be told, we saved each other that night. There was no hero taking over trying to do great things. I think it was just self preservation, fear and the will to survive. I knew after the boulder hit Andy things were about to get challenging. I had no idea that we would both have to dig so deep just to stay alive. After the boulder hit him we sat on the ledge for a few minutes to see if he was just in shock of was really hurt to the extent that we thought. It was unfortunately worse than we thought. With a great deal of, lets call it "coaching", from Andy; we started out on our decent. Incredibly slow and deliberate, I knew we could not afford any mistakes. We had over 1,000 feet of vertical decent below us and if any thing happened to either on of us no one else could even begin to help. After our first pitch decent is when I was able to contact Air Mountain Rescue. I spoke to them for about ten minutes and was told to call them back in 30 minutes so that they could contact the Rescue Team. I knew the weather was getting colder quickly at this point so I put Andy in an emergency blanket while we waited there on the ledge waiting to hear if help was on the way. I called back and was informed that they would not be able to get to the mountain until daybreak, and that was if the weather cooperated.
For just a moment I accepted their answer for a morning rescue and lay down beside Andy and tried to keep us as warm as possible. At this point is was around 5 degrees and the wind was screaming. We were thirsty, our water was frozen. We were both shivering until the moment when I was most scared. The shivering stopped and I knew from reading that this is a sign of severe hypothermia. My hands and feet were numb. I knew we that couldn’t stay here or we would freeze to death. I told Andy we had to keep going and he agreed completly. On the next pitch we made it to the next ledge 100 feet or so below us and as the rope was coming down, it got stuck. I pulled and tugged but ...... nothing. It was stuck. I started measuring the rope that I had already come down to see if it was going to be enough to lower us down to the next ledge. It seemed like it would make it, it was going to be close but I thought we could get there. I knew that my hands and feet were in no condition to try to climb up and free it, so I cut the rope. I reached as high as I could, up the cliff so as to keep as much length as was possible for our decent. The rest of the pitches on the decent were slow and deliberate, our hands frozen and our minds foggy. I knew we had to not make any mistakes, be safe, get down, get warm! Once we got to the "Chute" of the Mountaineers Route, I wasn’t sure if there were any more ledges so I was preparing our equipment for another possible decent. Andy started crawling, sliding, scooting and fighting his way down this enormous field of granite rubble and boulders. I finished packing the equipment and began to follow him. At a few points I couldn’t see him and began to zig zag down the side of the mountain, trying to make sure I didn’t loose him. Then out of nowhere his headlight would shine again. At this point I didn’t know that he was sliding down the mountain and passing out from the pain. He would then sit up and look for me, looking for him. The wind was so strong you couldn’t hear anything or anyone that wasn’t 3 feet away. Communication was impossible. I could see his head lamp but because of the terrain I couldn’t get to him, so I stayed above him and made sure we were both still moving down the mountain. The moon was full the whole night, but we were in the shadow of the mountain. It was no help to us. 12 hours after the journey down had begun we made it back to base camp. We crawled into our sleeping bags and knew finaly that we would be OK. Broken, Frozen, Dehydrated and Hungry, but alive. We never really slept that night/morning. Andy would move and scream and the wind was so strong it was pushing the side of the tent against my face. It was so cold our breath froze to the inside of the tent and would cause it to look like is was snowing inside the tent. I crawled back out of the tent at first light. I pulled all of our packs and equipment that we were not using to stay warm and shaped them into an S.O.S. of the ground beside the tent. Remembering that the last time we talked to the mountain rescue we were on the side of the mountain 1,300 feet higher! Cell phones were dead at this point, killed by the cold! We could only hope they were on their way. I heard the helicopter and saw it look for us on the mountain. I began to use an emergency signal mirror to atract attention to our location. Eventualy it worked! They turned toward me and I began to wave the large shiny emergency blanket untill I got a few blinks from the lights of the helicopter, they saw us!
We are going home! As the choper medic started to give Andy some pain meds, the reality of how cold we were that night showed itself again. From the point the medic got her drugs out of the chopper and to our tent. The morphine froze in the vial. The amazing part is that we felt like it was warming up, a lot! It had been warmng quite a bit, to a blustery 22 degrees that morning. The rest of the story is just recovery for both of us. Andy's physical recovery, frostbite, broken scapula, multiple spinal compression fracturers and to this day neither of us have feeling in our toes and experience severe numbness in our extremities. This is not a story of a hero but of a guy and his friend, me and my uncle. This is just a story of our long night doing what we had to do.
-Scott
Peace
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
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