Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Horrifying Mountain Stories.
Today's video is about three stories where people found themselves completely alone in the mountains.
And the thing about being alone in such a remote place is that if something bad happens,
there's truly no one to help you.
As always, viewer discretion advised.
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The Great Smoky Mountains are a mountain range that rise along the
Tennessee-North Carolina border in the United State and our sub-range of the Appalachian Mountains.
The highest mountain within the range is Clingmans Dome at 6,643 feet (2,025 m)
but there are actually 16 mountains within the range above 5,000 feet.
Most of the range is protected as part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
and is actually the most visited national park in the entire country.
The famous Appalachian trail even passes directly through the center of the park.
On June 13th, 1969, the Martin family arrived at an area of the park
known as Cades Cove to do some camping.
From the parking lot, William Martin, his father, and his two sons
hiked their campground for their first night of their stay.
Despite William's youngest son, Dennis, only being six years old,
He kept up with the others on the way to their campsite.
On the second day, they packed up camp and set off for the spot where they'd stay the second night.
after setting up camp, Dennis and his older brother were playing with some kids for another family
and William watched as the kids hid behind some trees to try to sneak up and scare the adults.
With Dennis only being six years old, William had an eye on him
and watched as his red shirt was easily visible in the greenery of the forest.
A few minutes later, William had taken his eyes off them
and all of the kids jumped out of the bushes to scare the adults except for Dennis.
A few moments after that and he called for Dennis, but Dennis didn't respond.
Then, he went over to where he had seen him and Dennis had vanished.
William and the other adults started frantically searching for him and calling for him
and William even ran as far as two miles (3.22 km) down the path
until he was sure Dennis couldn't have covered that much distance in the time he was gone.
Realizing that they needed help, they notified park rangers and soon, a massive search was launched.
Unfortunately, the area they were in was littered with steep slopes and large ravines,
making it difficult to search the area.
Then, a little while after he disappeared, there was a massive downpour,
dropping as many as three inches (7.62 cm) of rain in just a few hours.
This washed out all of the trails and caused many of the streams to flood.
The search was soon joined by the National Guard and the Special Forces
but because of the rain and the difficult terrain, they found nothing on that first day.
That night, the temperature dropped to just 10 Celsius or 50 Fahrenheit
which would obviously be a very cold night for anyone to spend outside,
let alone a small child.
On the second day, there was a thick fog in the forest which continued to make the search difficult.
By then, massive amounts of people were involved in the search,
combing the woods for any sign of Dennis.
But despite having as many as 1,400 people involved, they found no trace of him.
As many as a thousand searchers continued to search until 12 days later on June 26th.
This number was cut down in the following days and by the 29th, the search was called off.
To this day, the search for Dennis Martin is the largest in the park's history
and possibly the most puzzling.
How could a six-year-old have disappeared so thoroughly in just a few minutes?
Over that two weeks, the only thing search teams found
was a single set of footprints they believe belonged to Dennis.
One foot was barefoot and the other was wearing an Oxford tennis shoe similar to his.
The footprints led up to a stream and then disappeared
and no other trace of him has been found.
Based on the evidence, there are three main theories about his disappearance.
First, he simply wander off, got lost and then died of exposure in the first cold night.
It's possible he tried to take cover somewhere in the rain,
which made it more difficult for rescuers to later find his body.
The second theory is that he was attacked by an animal like a bear or wild hog or bobcat,
all of which live in that area.
The final theory is that he was abducted.
On the day that Dennis went missing, another tourist reportedly heard an enormous sickening scream
and then saw a large unkempt man running up the trail near where he had heard the scream.
The man then got into a white car and quickly sped away.
But officials think that this is unlikely to be related
because it was about five miles (8 km) from where Dennis went missing
and there weren't any trails connecting the two camp sites.
Unfortunately, to this day, over 50 years later, Dennis' body has never been found.
There is a club that is so prestigious that there are less than 400 members worldwide.
The reason this club was so prestigious is that it can't be bought into and you can't be invited to join.
The only way to join is through skill and hard work and dedication.
This club is known as the 7 Summits club.
To become a member, an individual has to climb the highest point on all seven continents.
And as you might imagine, some are easier
and some are much more challenging like Mount Everest.
Individuals who are part of this prestigious club have to be fit and skillful mountaineers,
willing to travel to the remote areas on Earth.
In 2014, one of the 7 Summits club hopefuls was Leila Albogachieva.
This renowned Russian climber from the Republic of Ingushetia had already completed
Kilimanjaro in Africa, Aconcagua in South America, Mount Elbrus in Europe and Mount Everest in Asia.
In fact, she was the first Russian woman to complete Everest from two separate routes
and thus far had climbed Mount Elbrus 12 times.
And although she had first climbed Mount Elbrus all the way back in 1998 at the age of 30,
she wanted to make another attempt in 2014 to urge world leaders to end all wars
and opt for peace instead.
Although I couldn't find any explicit mention of it by Leila, this was suspiciously close to annexation of
which may have spurred her desire to make this dedication.
So on September 17th of 2014, she set out from the base of Mount Elbrus and started her climb.
Not only is Mount Elbrus the highest mountain in Europe at 18,510 feet (5,642 m),
but it's also the most prominent, making it visible for hundreds of miles
north of the border of Georgia and Russia.
Part of the reason for this prominence is because it's actually a dormant stratovolcano
that was formed two and a half million years ago.
It also technically has two peaks - a western summit and a slightly shorter eastern summit
that are separated by just dozens of feet in height.
She climbed with a small group of climbers towards the western peak
and with her, she had a bunch of climbing gear, a camera, and in her pocket was a note
that she had written to give her speech at the summit.
Just as she had done 12 times before, she expertly made her way to the summit
and recorded small clips at each checkpoint.
The weather worsened on the way up, but the summit push proceeded without issue.
Then, after making it to the summit, Leila pulled out her camera again,
breathing hard from the thin air and recorded her plea to world leaders
and dedicated her 13th climb of Elbrus to world peace.
As the group started down, Leila split off from the group
because in addition to climbing the western peak,
she wanted to set a world record by making something called the Double Cross.
This is an ascent of each of the separate summits of Mount Elbrus in a single attempt.
A few days later on the 21st, on the date she was supposed to return,
Leila never checked in with anyone.
By the following day, the message had been communicated to search and rescue teams
and a search was launched immediately.
Unfortunately by then, the weather was extremely bad, making it very difficult to coordinate the rescue.
Even on the day she split from the other group,
winds were reported to be as high as 100 miles (161 km) per hour.
Since then, feet of snow had accumulated, making finding her tracks very difficult.
Thankfully, her planned route was known
so after carefully retracing her steps, they would manage to find some of her equipment.
Unfortunately, this only added to the confusion.
Two days after the day she was supposed to check in, all they found was her overalls,
her climbing poles, and her backpack that contained her phone, camera
and the piece of paper the speech was written on.
Even weirder, this was all founded over 17,000 feet (5,182 m).
And then that day, conditions on the mountain got even worse, forcing the rescuers to delay the search.
This was a difficult decision to make because without all of her gear,
the chances for Leila to survive were not good.
They just had to hope that she found refuge somewhere
or had more gear than what they'd found.
But unfortunately, when they resumed the search,
despite a team of 24 individuals scouring the route she took, Leila was never found.
And to this day, her body has never been located.
All that remains is her gear and the messages she left on the camera.
So rescuers have only been able to speculate about what happened to her.
The location where her gear was found was dangerously close to a 600-foot (183 m) vertical wall.
One of the theories is that she may have needed to use the washroom
so she removed her gear, stepped away from the spot she was resting
but accidentally fell down the vertical face in the strong wind.
There are also large cracks and faults along the glacier on the route that she took
so it's possible she may have accidentally fallen in in the poor visibility.
These cracks are so deep and so numerous that if you didn't die falling in,
It would be very difficult for anyone to find you or even hear you from the surface.
Unfortunately, Leila also hadn't registered with the rescue team before her attempt.
This means that there was a bit of a delay
between the time that it was noticed that she was missing and the time the search started.
She also chose not to take a locator beacon with her.
If she had taken one with her, this might have helped locate her
if she was simply lost or stuck somewhere.
Another theory about what might have happened that led to her disappearance was hypothermia.
There is a phenomenon called Paradoxical Undressing where people who are hyperthermic
start to remove clothing because they start to feel very warm.
Unfortunately, this only worsens their condition
and is usually followed shortly by unconsciousness and death.
It's possible that Leila was in bad shape because of the storm and she had gotten very hypothermic.
Then, she got delirious and removed her clothing and wandered off into the storm.
But until her body's found, there are more questions than answers.
Born in April 12th, 1954, Jon Krakauer is an American writer and mountaineer
most famous for his book Into the Wild and his participation in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.
He later wrote about the events in probably his second-most famous work, Into Thin Air.
Long before becoming a writer though,
Jon was already an accomplished mountaineer, although not a famous one.
Growing up in Oregon, his father introduced him and his four siblings to climbing
and took John to climb his first mountain when he was just eight years old.
And although all five of them enjoyed it,
John became obsessed with it to a far greater degree than his siblings.
By the age of 20, that was all John cared about.
This was also the year when he made his first trip to Alaska
which only further cemented his love for climbing.
In Alaska, he made the first ascent of a mountain called Xanadu
and although it wasn't a difficult mountain, John wasn't a very good climber yet
and it was still an amazing experience.
This prompted him to dedicate much more time to rock climbing and ice climbing.
And shortly after that, he moved to Boulder, Colorado
because of the access to the Rocky Mountains.
While he was there, he took up work as a carpenter and although it was hard and boring work,
it was perfect because it could take a few months to build a house
and then have enough money to do four or five months of climbing.
But after a couple years of doing that, he started to feel like he was in a bit of a rut.
He was living in a construction trailer, working that hard job and it just felt directionless,
like he wasn't living up to his full potential.
Then, he got an idea. He decided to climb a mountain called Devils Thumb in Alaska.
This is a famously remote and challenging mountain
and John decided he would ascend a new route and he'd do it solo.
Now, if you followed my Mountain Climbing series,
you know about the infamous north faces of many great mountains.
The legendary Nordwands, as they're called-
The north faces have this reputation because they often have the most permanent ice and snow
and throughout the day, the heat from the sun warms up the snow
and makes the routes on these north faces unstable and dangerous.
In addition to this by chance, many of the visually giant routes in Europe happen to be north-facing.
Devils Thumb's northwest faces another one of these happenstance north faces
and although it's incredible from any direction,
The northwest face is a 6,700-foot (2,042 m) wall of sheer, icy granite.
This is actually around a thousand feet higher than the infamous Eiger North face.
John's plan was perfect. He would travel to the remote Alaskan wilderness
and then ski the massive Stikine Icecap to the foot of Devils Thumb.
Then, he'd make the first ascent of the ridge between the northwest and northeast face.
This would be the answer to all of his problems.
So shortly after that, he was on his way to Washington
to hitch a ride to the town of Petersburg on the remote Mitkof Island.
Another thing about Devils Thumb that makes it so challenging is that it's in the middle of nowhere.
It's located right on the boundary of the Alaska-British Columbia border on the southeastern tip of Alaska.
And there are also no roads that get anywhere close to the base.
On the Canadian side, the closest road is over a hundred miles away
and then you still have to cross several glaciers and mountains to reach anywhere near it.
On the Alaskan side, the closest town is a small fishing town of Petersburg
which is actually on an island off the mainland.
So first, you have to get to Petersburg and then find a way to the mainland shore
before you can even start the long trek to the base of Devils Thumb.
From Washington, John hitched a ride with a fishing boat to Petersburg.
Then, he found a float plane to take him to the mainland shore and to the foot of the Baird Glacier.
Devils Thumb sits in what is known as the Stikine Icecap, which is an extremely large ice field
covering much of the mountains in that area of Alaska.
Even landing where John had landed was a bit of a gamble.
As far as he was aware, no one had taken the route he intended to take
which was a section of the icecap known as the Baird Glacier.
This is a stretch of 30 miles (48.3 km) of ice and snow that leads into the main section of the Stikine Glacier
and directly to the foot of Devils Thumb.
The reason no one had taken that route is because it was notoriously dangerous..
The thing about glaciers is that although they look like solid ice,
they're actually a bit more like a slow-flowing river.
This flow grinds and crushes and squeezes
the ice into deep crevasses and massive unstable seracs.
These seracs can be house-sized or even larger chunks of ice
that are pushed up into the air and can collapse and topple over without warning.
John had arranged for another plane to drop off some supplies
and he had asked the pilot to give him three days to get there.
On the third day, John reached the most dangerous section of the Baird
and had to hurry through it to make the rendezvous.
Even worse, he had to cross that section in a storm. Otherwise, he'd risk missing the plane.
In the poor visibility of the storm, he moved from dead-end to dead-end
in maze of seracs and crevasses.
Not only could he not see the route, but it was a bit out of his skill level.
At any moment, one of the unstable seracs could collapse and crush him
or fall through a snow bridge into the dark blue pit of a crevasse where no one would ever find him.
In fact, twice he went through snow bridges only to catch himself with the last second.
As he pulled himself out, he would've been looking down into the bottomless pits of darkness.
Moving through the ice fall alone was one of the worst parts of his journey
and one of the worst times he'd ever had in the mountains.
He eventually made it to the northeast side of Devils Thumb on the Stikine Icecap and set up base camp.
After a few days of stormy weather,
he had the six box of supplies that were his lifelines dropped by plane.
Shortly after that, the weather improved and John skied the base of Devils Thumb
and through a final ice fall to the face.
Under most circumstances, climbs are done in the summer
because the weather is better and the routes are safer.
John reasoned that an early spring climb of Devils Thumb would be better choice for two reasons.
The glaciers would be more stable
and the sheer granite of the north face would have a layer of ice on it.
He figured that the ice would be easier and safer to climb than solid rock.
From the base of the route, he started up 300 feet (91.44 m) of steep water ice
that was just three to six feet wide and just two inches thicker more plastered to the granite.
And although it was a minimum of 75 degrees and occasionally up to 90 degrees vertical,
the ice was quite sturdy.
Another decision that he made in his plan was to climb unbelayed and unprotected at all times.
Instead of going through the slow process of self-belaying, he opted for speed and a lighter pack.
He also ran one long light rope to repel down afterwards if he needed.
This meant that the only thing keeping him on the thousands of feet of sheer wall
were the spikes on his boots and the ice tools in his hands,
just four points of contact and faith in the ice to hold.
If he encountered any issues, he planned to simply turn back.
About 650 feet (198 m) up, the ice changed from solid water ice to six inches (15.24 cm) of rime ice.
Rime ice is the feathery crystalline ice that you find on the inside of an old freezer and is much less stable.
So all of a sudden, John realized he was on very thin, very unstable ice
with 600 feet directly below him and thousands of feet of air on either side of him.
Just those four points of contact that could cut loose at any second
and send him careening to his death.
As he hung there precariously, he started to panic.
Then, with his heart beating out of his chest, he carefully made his way down,
trying to calm himself down.
This would be the end of this attempt.
Three days later, he tried another route over from his original route
but had to turn back even earlier.
The ice was no better and the section was pelted almost constantly by rocks, snow and ice.
After the second attempt of the north ridge,
he decided instead to try route along the southeast side that he intended on being his descent route.
He'd seen some patches of ice between two of the already-completed historical routes
that seemed relatively straightforward.
Then, on May 15th, now almost two weeks after he left Petersburg, he started up the southeast face.
He made it several hundred feet below the summit that day
before the warmth of the afternoon made the snow unstable.
After camping on a small ledge that night, he left at first light the following morning.
The final section was composed of solid, melted and refrozen ice called névé
with interspersed rock sections with solid holds.
And it never got too difficult or steep, so he climbed quickly and securely.
After encountering just one scary section of fragile ice, he got to the narrow ridge of the summit.
It was covered in rime and barely wide enough to stand
and below him was the 6,700-foot drop of the northwest face that he had failed just days earlier.
He stayed just long enough to take some pictures and eat some food
but otherwise, he was kind of precarious, so he quickly left.
A few days later, after having been gone for 20 days, he made it back to the shore.
He eventually flagged down a fishing boat and within a few weeks,
he was back in Boulder, working as a carpenter once again.
This didn't have the immediate effect on his life that he'd hoped for
but this experience was actually the first piece of writing he was ever paid for,
kickstarting his writing career.
As for Devils Thumb and to put into context how difficult what John did was,
the northwest face has still yet to be climbed,
despite having been attempted by some of the world's best climbers.
It's been attempted less than 15 times, but in those attempts, it's claimed at least three lives.
The entire face is covered in hanging glaciers that give way to constant avalanches.
It has to be climbed when it's fully covered in ice and it can only be climbed when it's cold .
Otherwise, the ice is unstable and debris falls from above.
From afar, it looks like the Devils Thumb,
but up close, because of the conditions on it, as climber Guy Edward put it.
"It's a bit more like the devil's own face."
Hello everyone. My name is Sean and welcome to Scary Interesting.
If you made it this far, I just want to thank you for watching
and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.