Climbing Trail

The Andes tragedy Part 11

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It is hard to describe our deep sadness. The death of our friends really shook our souls. We were convinced that we had been through a dangerous time before, but now we realize that we will not be able to feel calm in these mountains. In various ways, this mountain can kill us at any time. I feel tormented by this uncertain time of death. Does this make sense to me? Daniel Maspons slept very close to my right. And Liliana slept on my left. Both dead. Why them, and not me? Am I stronger than them? Smarter? More ready? Answer's clear. Daniel and Liliana have the same interests as me, they want to survive and want to live, they have really fought for their lives and they have survived. However, their fate was unlucky, they had the place to sleep, and the decision killed them. Just like my mom and Susy when choosing a seat on this plane. Also Panchito swapped seats with me before the accident. The death of these people hurt me, but it also scared me because in this place death has no feelings and randomness, no courage, plan, and strength that is able to protect me from death.

Moments later that night, mocking my fear, the mountain lowered an avalanche a second time down the slope with a rumble. We heard it and prepared for the worst, but the snow just passed us by. Fairchild has been buried by snow.

Fairchild's wreck has always been a safe haven for us, but since it was buried by an avalanche, it has become silent and horrifying. The heavy, deep snow had soaked up the fuselage that we could not stand, we could only crawl inside the room. We headed to the back of the plane where the room was filled with snow, leaving only a small room near the cockpit to sleep in. We gather together as one. Nineteen people, a space that should only be filled by four people, but there was no other choice, we hugged each other, knees, legs, feet, and our elbows jostled on that awful night in that cramped room.

The air inside the plane became thinner as the high humidity from the snow caused the cold air to become more fiercely piercing the body. Our bodies had been covered by snow, the snow quickly melted our body heat and soaked our clothes. The worse part was that all of our belongings were buried in the snow covering the floor of the plane. We have no blankets to warm the body, no shoes to protect our feet from the snow, no bedding to coat us from the freezing surface of the snow, and now the snow is the only place we stand.

There was only a narrow room above our heads that required us to sleep by lowering our shoulders forward and chin to our chest, but still the back of our head hit the ceiling of the plane. As I struggled to find a comfortable position in a cramped room with a jostling body, I felt my throat ache and I had to resist the urge to scream. How much snow buried us? I wondered. Half meter? Three meters? Six meters? Have we been buried alive? Has Fairchild become our coffin? I could feel the pressure of the snow that overcame all of us. It muffled all the whirring of the wind from outside the plane and changed everything inside the plane, making it dense, creating silence, and making our voices echo, as if we were talking at the bottom of a well. I thought, Now I understand what it's like to be trapped in a submarine at the bottom of the sea.

Other than feeling cold, I felt cold sweat dripping down my body. I felt the fuselage wall pinching me. My fear of the narrow room became a reality trapped in the snow mountain, there was no way out, and I could no longer meet Dad. I was stuck in an aluminum cage under tons of hardened snow. In the panic, I remembered the peace I felt under the avalanche, and I wished they had found Liliana, not me. The time that rolled after that was the darkest of all the ordeals we went through. Javier wept for Liliana sobbing, and we all mourned the loss of our friends, our close friends.

Roberto lost his close friend, Daniel Maspons. Carlitos lost Coco Nicholich and Diego Storm. We all lost Marcelo and Enrique Platero. The death of our friends makes us more helpless and fragile than ever. This mountain has shown its strength and there is nothing we can do but shiver the cold in a very miserable state on a bed of snow, no blankets, no blankets, there are no shoes and a large room to straighten the body.

I saw an aluminum cargo mast of the plane protruding out of the snow. Without thinking, I pulled out the pole, held it like I was holding a spear, knelt down, then started pointing to the ceiling of the plane.

By exerting all my strength, I pierced the ceiling of the plane many times, trying to hole the roof of the plane. I pushed the pole up, I felt a pile of snow so thick on the plane that it was difficult to perforate the roof of the plane. Eventually, the pole could penetrate the roof. We could breathe a sigh of relief and no longer think of being buried alive inside the plane.

When I plucked the pipe, the air came through the hole I made, and we were all able to breathe more easily while re-occupying our room to sleep. The night was endless. When it was finally early morning, sunlight began to appear from the plane's window.

We wasted no time trying to free ourselves from these aluminum graves. We tried quickly because the plane was tilted towards the glacier and the window to the right of the cockpit was facing upwards. Extremely heavy snow covered the exit at the rear of the plane, we knew that the window to the right of the cockpit was the best way to escape from inside the plane. However, the road to the cockpit was also piled with snow. Then we started digging, using metal fragments and plastic pieces that served as shovels. We worked alternately because the room was only occupied by one person. By sharing the task, one person broke the rock-hard snow and another shoveled snow on the back of the fuselage.

As dusk began to fall, I could not bear to see my friends who became very dirty and thin like the inmates who tried to escape by digging a tunnel from the Gulag prison in Siberia.

Finally, Roy Harley climbed into the pilot's seat and pushed the window glass hard open. Climbing through the window glass that had been opened but was still full of hard snow, Roy attempted to dig deep into the snow and finally got to the surface so he could see out. There was a mountain storm with high air pressure and snow falling very heavily stung his face. Squinting at the wind, Roy sees an avalanche burying the entire fuselage. Before returning inside, he took a quick look towards the sky. Very thick cloud.

"There was a blizzard" Roy said, as he got back on the plane. "And the snow covering the plane is too thick for us to pass. Looks like we should hide inside here. We're gonna be stuck here until the storm's over, and it looks like it's gonna be a long time."

Stuck in the bad weather, we have no choice but to be inside a miserable prison and accept this misery. To please, we discussed all the fun, our plan to be free as our discussion got further, a new idea emerged. Twice the failure in the climbing effort convinced the others to try the valley that stretched eastward. If we believe that we are very close to Chile, all the water in this region should flow through the foothills of the Chilean region and into the western Pacific Ocean. They theorized that if we followed the flow of water, then we found our escape route.

(Connected)