Hello everyone and welcome to a new broader series about mountains and mountain climbing.
As with A Collection of Horrible Fates, I want this new series to include a broader range of stories,
limiting it only to disasters excludes all of the insane stories
that will still give you that feeling in your stomach even if they don't necessarily end in disaster.
This means that not only will I have a larger number of stories to cover,
but you'll also never quite know how they end, adding to the suspense.
In any case, hopefully, you enjoy today's stories and as always, viewer discretion is advised.
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The Canadian Rocky Mountains are the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky mountains
and extend from the Montana British Columbian border all the way to just south of the Yukon territory.
This gives them a total length of approximately 1,500 kilometers (932.1 mi).
They're also around 200 kilometers (124.2 mi) across, giving them a total area of 200,000 square kilometers (124,274.2 sq mi).
For context, if the Canadian Rockies were in Florida instead, they would completely cover the entire state
and overflow into their Northern neighbor, Georgia.
And although they're not quite as tall as their Southern counterparts,
because they're farther north, they get significantly more permanent ice and snow.
All of the glaciers gouging up the surface of the Canadian Rockies has given them a much more jagged appearance over time.
This is in contrast to the much more rounded features of the American Rockies.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the iconic drive between Banff National Park
and Jasper National Park on the Alberta British Columbia border.
The highway through this area runs right through the mountains
and their prominent Rocky Peaks are displayed on either side the entire distance.
Early morning on April 1st, 1983,
28-year-old university student James and 33-year-old Richard
were climbing a mountain known as Deltaform along this stretch of roadway.
This 11,234-foot (3,424.12 mi) peak is the tallest in an area known as the Valley of Ten Peaks
and has the quintessential sheer, jagged look of the Canadian Rockies.
From their camp that morning in the valley, they tracked about two kilometers (1.24 mi) to where they would start their climb.
This area is still in the tail end of winter in early April, and so there's still significant amounts of ice and snow on the peaks.
Using ice tools, they ascended up a steep ice gully between two rocky sections known as an ice couloir.
The pair also climbed roped together and set ice screws as protection on the steep ice.
As Richard planted one of his tools, a chunk of ice broke off and plummeted down towards James.
He yelled down to let James know, and then the two of them watched it tumbled down the mountain.
But then they heard the horrifying roar of an avalanche that cut loose after the chunk of ice.
The tons of snow quickly swept the men down the couloir and 2,000 feet (609.6 m) down the mountain side.
James woke up sometime later and had no idea where he was or what had happened.
Unfortunately, it was clear that he was horribly injured.
His back was broken in two places, his arm was broken,
his other shoulder blade was shattered, he had cracked ribs,
torn ligaments in his knees, a broken nose, broken teeth,
internal bleeding, and there was blood everywhere around him.
For a moment, he actually thought he was in a different mountain range that he had spent time in months earlier,
but gradually, he realized where he was and what he'd been doing.
Then, he realized he'd been with Richard and he had no idea where he was or what state he was in.
He painfully made his way to his feet and saw Richard nearby.
Tragically, it was clear from his injuries that Richard was dead.
Realizing how bad his own injuries were, James assumed he was gonna die also, and just laid down next to Richard.
At first, he was shivering as he lay there, but after some time, he started to get very warm and tired.
He knew that this meant he was close to dying.
Then, suddenly, he felt like someone was with him.
Then, whatever it was spoke to him and told him that he couldn't give up. He had to at least try.
So James got up and started making his way back to their base camp.
And over the next few hours, this voice encouraged him and gave him practical advice.
Like for example, the voice told him to make arrows in the snow with his blood,
so that if someone saw them, they would lead back to him.
Despite barely being able to lift his legs with each step, the voice encouraged him to keep going.
Some of the time, he even crawled because of how badly injured he was.
But all the way back to camp, the voice was directly over his right shoulder, telling him exactly what to do.
Finally, he made it back to camp and although it was only two kilometers, it had taken him almost the entire day.
When he got back to camp, he couldn't even get into his sleeping bag.
He couldn't eat and he couldn't light his stove because of how badly injured he was.
By then, it was also late afternoon and it was starting to get dark.
He knew that he wouldn't survive the cold night and again, he was so tired and injured, he just figured that this would be the end.
Then, he thought he heard some other voices and the voice told him to call out.
So James yelled out for help and told him he was in an avalanche.
But then, unfortunately, the voices were gone and so was the voice over his shoulder.
He figured that this meant the voice also knew that his situation was hopeless, and so it too had left him to die.
But then miraculously, moments later, some skier skied up to his camp.
They happened to be the only ones in the area and they had heard his cry for help.
James now realizes that the voice hadn't left him to die - it only left him when he was rescued.
This voice that James heard is actually a known phenomenon called the third man factor or third man syndrome.
The first reported occurrence of this in modern human history was by the legendary Explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton.
In his 1919 book, South, Shackleton described a bodiless companion that joined him on the final leg of his Antarctic journey.
This was also experienced by legendary climber, Reinhold Messner, and polar explorers Peter Hillary and Ann Bancroft.
Apparently, this phenomenon is most commonly observed in climbers,
solo sailors, and polar explorers in dire situations.
Modern psychologists believe that this third man factor is a way of coping with severe trauma in life or death situations.
James has never experienced this since, but is confident that he wouldn't have been able to survive the situation otherwise.
Since I started covering mountain climbing stories on this channel,
I've wanted to cover many of the great epics and disasters from the 8,000-meter (26,247 ft) peaks.
The reason that I've held off is that much like the mountains themselves, these stories are kind of overwhelming.
Similar to technical cave diving, there's a lot of context to establish
to fully grasp the situations that many of the climbers found themselves in.
These include things like the month-long or more expeditions,
the literal tons of equipment, the events, the technical climbing, and even the weather.
And not only do I enjoy covering these aspects, but I think most people enjoy learning about them as well.
So I really wanna do them the proper justice, but it is a large undertaking and so I've held off.
But this next topic provides an nice prelude to some of that information
and some of the challenges faced by people in the world's highest peaks.
This won't necessarily be comprehensive, but it'll provide a good introduction I think.
This is the story of the Rainbow Valley.
Since people have started climbing mountains and started taking mountain climbing seriously,
the logical progression of the activity for any climber is to climb higher and more challenging mountains.
Mount Everest is therefore the pinnacle of this pursuit because it's the highest of them all.
And this is evident in the fact that it's by far the most climbed of any of the 8,000-plus meter peaks.
Even if you don't know anything about mountaineering,
you understand why it would make sense that the highest mountain on Earth is an accomplishment.
But with this popularity, there's also more death
even if the death rate is relatively low.
Because although Mount Everest is far from the most dangerous of the 8,000-meter peaks,
it has the most deaths by far because it's the most climbed.
It's for this reason that it has three times the number of deaths of any other 8,000-meter mountain.
An underappreciated aspect of these climbs, despite how well known they've become in recent years
is just how much equipment needs to be transported to the various camps along the way.
These mountains are so large and take so much time to climb that they have to be climbed in stages.
So what mountaineers have done is establish a series of camps at different heights along the way
where climbers can stop and sleep and rest and acclimatize in their long journey to the top.
Each camp is sequentially higher up the mountain, making the air thinner and the climbing more challenging.
As you get higher as well, it's colder and there's more permanent ice and snow as a result.
The highest regularly established camp that climbers use to make the final push to the top is at 26,000 feet or 7,924 meters.
This is just below the fabled Death Zone, which is at 8,000 meters.
As the name of their grouping suggests,
these 8,000 meter peaks are the only mountains above that height
and are therefore the only mountains where climbers climb into this Death Zone.
This is the point at which the pressure of oxygen is too low to sustain human life.
This is in contrast to sea level where the human body functions best.
This is because the air at sea level pressure allows the oxygen carrying red blood cells within the body to be fully saturated with oxygen.
Without enough oxygen, your cells slowly cease to function
so in the Death Zone you are literally slowly dying.
The body can adapt to a degree.
If you spend time at low pressures, the body detects this lack of oxygen
and responds by creating more blood cells to carry more oxygen.
But there are limits to this process. That limit is 8,000 meters.
In addition to this, it takes time to adapt.
Generally, you have to spend days and up to weeks in this environment for these adaptations to occur.
Otherwise, you'll suffer from altitude sickness, pulmonary edema and cerebral edema -
all of which can be fatal, especially under exertion like if you were climbing a mountain
and this is just one of the challenges that people face on these peaks.
They also have to battle extreme cold and wind, rapidly changing weather,
avalanches, rock falls, and the extreme challenge of the mountain climbing.
It's for this reason that these mountains represent the pinnacle of mountaineering.
And for the same reason, it also makes carrying supplies up incredibly difficult and often not worth it to carry supplies down.
This includes carrying down the bodies of anyone who dies on the mountain.
So below the Northern Ridge of Mount Everest
is the infamous Rainbow Valley, which is named for the numerous colorful bodies that are there permanently.
Because when people have died on Everest in their brightly colored jackets, no one removes the gear or the people.
Creating a rainbow colored graveyard on full display for anyone going up the mountain.
Some of these bodies are new and some are decades old from when Everest first started getting climbed.
In fact, there are over 200 bodies above 8,000 meters on Everest.
For context, the second highest mountain, K2, has the second most number of deaths of any 8,000-meter peak
at just 81 total.
Unfortunately, due to the danger poses to anyone trying to remove the bodies,
it's either impossible or prohibitively costly.
Helicopters can't land that high up the mountain, so it has to be done manually by a team
and costs around 70,000 US dollars.
However, even this doesn't guarantee that the body will even be able to be brought down.
Sometimes, conditions are so bad that it's simply impossible with the current techniques.
Over the years, some of these bodies have become iconic
and some have even become markers for prospective climbers on their way up.
For example, perhaps the most famous of these is Green Boots.
This is thought to be a man named Tsewang Paljor
who was reported missing in 1996, along with two other climbers whose bodies have never been found.
This body with its iconic green boots is in a small cave near the summit.
This cave also happens to be a good rest spot on the way up
and so many climbers stop there on the way up and have Green Boots as company.
And there are more of these identifiable bodies,
but there are also many bodies whose names and identities are not known.
They likely died cold and alone from sickness or exhaustion, because it puts others in dangers to stop and help them.
Unfortunately, climbers are simply powerless to help and have to carry on without them.
The permanent cold at this altitude freezes the bodies and slows decomposition,
ensuring that they will be there for a long time or until some better method of retrieving them is created.
To some people, the mountains mean nothing.
To others, they're like a painting - beautiful to look at, but not much else.
Other people see the mountains and think of climbing to the top.
Some people take this a step further
and want to climb mountains high enough and hard enough that require special skills and special tools.
And then there are some people who look at the mountains and all they see is the beautiful snow-covered slopes.
Although they might enjoy the slow technical ascent,
their true passion is gliding down at incredible speeds on snowboards and skis.
And much like everything, people fall on a spectrum of interest, ability and fearlessness.
Some people are simply born with a particular set of skills and an attitude to push the limits of these pursuits.
Born on May 22nd in 1979 in Chamonix, Marco Siffredi was in the latter of these two categories.
In the town of Chamonix where he was born, the Mont Blanc massif was right in his backyard.
All of the opportunities that afforded that most people had to travel to enjoy,
Marco could enjoy by simply walking out of his front door.
In this birthplace of modern alpinism, the culture is ingrained by all of the legends who came before Marco
and he was highly aware of and inspired by these individuals.
And that's why a year after he learned how to snowboard in 1996 at 16 years old,
he rode down Mallory Couloir on the north face of Aiguille du Midi.
This is a thousand meters of 55-degree slope with tons of exposed rocks throughout.
Now, the degree of difficulty of a slope depends on several different factors like depth and type of snow,
whether the slope is sustained the entire way and whether there are trees or rocks in the way.
But I think an easy way for a non-enthusiast to understand how difficult something is to ski
is to understand that the greatest slope where snow can even rest on the mountain side is 75 degrees.
Top alpinists today are working on roots with slopes in the low to mid sixties
and Marco Siffredi, at 16 years old, was snowboarding a route that was 55 degrees.
Following that descent, he made the first descent of Aiguille du Chardonnet and several other challenging slopes.
Marco's combination of skill, fearlessness, and passion was exactly the combination needed for these insane descents.
Then, in the fall of 1998, he successfully summited and descended the 6,000-meter or 20,000-foot Tocllaraju in Peru.
In 1999, he descended Nant Blanc on Aguille Verte, which is a route that had only been completed once before.
This extremely challenging route averages 55 degrees and occasionally gets as steep as 60.
This completion solidified his place as one of the best extreme snowboarders on Earth at the time.
But as with anyone ambitious, Marco wanted to keep pushing the limit.
His next big project was the 7,000-meter or 23,000-foot Dorje Lhakpa in Nepal.
He would successfully descend this mountain as well,
but before he did, on the summit, Mount Everest was clearly visible - a full thousand meters higher.
From then on, Everest was on his horizon.
When he got home from Nepal, he almost immediately started planning.
First, he would climb the easier Cho Oyu.
This is another one of the 14 8,000-meter peaks in the Himalayas,
and it would help him understand how his body would react to the Death Zone.
Obviously, he had to see if he could even ascend something like that before thinking of ascending the highest mountain on Earth.
Then, in the fall of the year 2000,
Marco successfully summited and snowboarded down the 8,188-meter or 26,864-foot Cho Oyu.
With this incredible accomplishment of both summiting and snowboarding down,
Marco felt like he was ready for the highest point on earth.
This expedition began in the spring of 2001,
and incredibly, at the same time, there was another alpinist and snowboarder
named Stefan Gatt who planned to accomplish the same feat.
But unlike Marco, Stefan planned to ascend the mountain without Sherpas and without supplemental oxygen.
This is significantly more challenging and something few mountaineers have accomplished.
For his descent, Marco planned to snowboard an area known as the Hornbein couloir.
This was the spot that he personally considered to be the holy grail of snowboarding.
Unfortunately, though, there wasn't enough snow on that route when he arrived.
Ironically, this makes climbing the mountain much easier,
but would make it impossible to snowboard his original planned route.
So instead, he chose a different area known as the Norton couloir.
On their way up the mountain, it snowed enough that this route seemed doable.
Then, on the day before Marco's planned summit, Stefan reached the summit.
He then continued on with his planned descent and snowboarded to 8,600 meters (28,215 ft)
but he got to an area of snow that was very hard and very dangerous
so he walked down another a hundred meters or so of the steepest section.
Then, he successfully snowboarded the rest of the route from there.
The following day, Marco also successfully summited and then latched into his board and started down.
Four hours later, he snowboarded into the advanced base camp, a legend.
Although Stefan had done it first,
many people credited Marco because it was a true continuous descent of the highest mountain on Earth.
Then, the following year in 2002, Marco was back at base camp, hoping to snowboard his original planned route.
This time, he arrived in fall when there was much more snow on the mountain.
On September 6th, he ascended to high camp where he even lied to his parents and told him he was lower so they wouldn't worry.
On September 7th, he ascended to camp 3 on the edge of the Death Zone.
And then on September 8th, Marco and a team of Sherpas successfully summited Mount Everest once again at 2:10 PM.
But rather than being excited about making it to the top, Marco was exhausted.
The snow was chest-deep and the climb had taken three times longer than a normal ascent because of it.
After sitting for a few moments to catch his breath,
Marco prepared his gear for his descent.
As he was doing this, some clouds were forming down below that was concerning to the Sherpas.
And it was also getting late in the day and so they asked him to reconsider.
But this was now a life's work for Marco - not going was not an option.
So after slipping into his gear, he dropped onto the slope and made a few zigzags back and forth.
Then, he waited for the Sherpas to catch up and pass him on their descent route.
Once they had passed him, he headed for the Hornbein couloir.
A couple hours later, the Sherpas descended to camp 3
and noticed what looked like a man stand up and slide down the mountain about 1,300 meters (4,265 ft) below them.
But when they finally reached that area, there were no tracks.
And when they finally reached the meeting spot, Marco was not there.
In fact, Marco was never seen again and his body has never been found.
He could have fallen or he could have been swept away in an avalanche.
But unfortunately, it's likely that we'll just never know.
And this is the same story of many of the great alpine adventurers.
Hello everyone. My name is Sean and welcome to Scary Interesting.
If you made it this far, I just want to thank you so much for watching and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.