Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

by Piers Paul Read

  The cousins said nothing, but the expression on their faces betrayed how moved they were by what Parrado had said to them.

  4

  At five o’clock the next morning, Canessa, Parrado and Vizintín prepared to go. First they dressed themselves in the clothes they had picked from the luggage of the forty-five passengers and crew. Next to his skin Parrado wore a Lacoste T-shirt and a pair of long woollen woman’s slacks. On top of these he wore three pairs of jeans, and on top of the T-shirt six sweaters. Next he put a woollen balaclava over his head, then the hood and shoulders that he had cut from Susana’s fur coat, and finally a jacket. Under his rugby boots he wore four pairs of socks which he covered with plastic supermarket bags to keep out the wet. For his hands he had gloves; for his eyes a pair of sunglasses; and to help him climb he held an aluminium pole which he strapped to his wrist.

  Vizintín also had a balaclava. He wore as many sweaters and pairs of jeans but covered them with a mackintosh, and on his feet he wore a pair of Spanish boots. As before he also carried the heaviest load, including a third of the meat, packed either in a plastic bag or a rugby sock. With it there were pieces of fat, to provide energy, and liver, to give them vitamins. The whole supply was designed to last the three of them ten days.

  Canessa carried the sleeping bag. To cover his body and keep it warm he had looked for woollen clothes, feeling that elemental conditions called for natural materials. He also liked to think that each garment had something precious about it. One of the sweaters he wore had been given to him by a dear friend of his mother, another by his mother herself, and a third had been knitted for him by his novia, Laura Surraco. One of the pairs of trousers he wore had belonged to his closest friend, Daniel Maspons, and his belt had been given to him by Parrado with the words, ‘This was a present from Panchito, who was my best friend. Now you’re my best friend, so you take it.’ Canessa accepted this gift; he also wore Abal’s skiing gloves and the skiing boots which belonged to Javier Methol.

  The cousins gave the expeditionaries some breakfast before they sent them on their way. The others watched in silence. No words could express what they felt at this awesome moment; they all knew that this was their last chance of survival. Then Parrado separated once again the pair of tiny red shoes that he had bought in Mendoza for his nephew. He put one in his pocket and hung the other from the hat rack in the plane. ‘I’ll be back to get it,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘All right,’ they all said, their spirits raised high by his optimism. ‘And don’t forget to book us rooms in the hotel in Santiago.’ Then they embraced, and amid cries of ¡Hasta luego! the three expeditionaries set off up the mountain.

  After they had gone about five hundred yards, Pancho Delgado came hobbling out of the plane. ‘Wait,’ he shouted, waving a small statue in his hand, ‘you’ve forgotten the Virgin of Lujan!’

  Canessa stopped and turned back. ‘Don’t worry!’ he shouted back. ‘If she wants to stay, let her stay. We’ll go with God in our hearts.’

  They climbed up the valley, but they knew that this course took them slightly northwest and at some moment they would have to turn due west and climb directly up the mountain. The difficulty was that the slopes which encircled them looked uniformly steep and high. Canessa and Parrado began to argue about when, and how soon, they should start to climb. Vizintín, as usual had no opinion on the subject. Eventually the two agreed. They took a reading on the plane’s spherical compass and started to climb due west up the side of the valley. It was very heavy going. Not only were they faced with the steep slope, but the snow had already started to melt and even in their improvised snow shoes they sank up to their knees. The wet snow also made the cushions sodden and therefore exceptionally heavy to drag bowlegged up the mountain. But they persevered, pausing every few yards for a short rest, and by the time they stopped by an outcrop of rocks for lunch at midday they were already very high. Beneath them they could still see the Fairchild, with some of the boys sitting on the seats in the sun watching their progress.

  After their meal of meat and fat and a short rest they continued on their way. Their plan was to reach the top before dark, for it would be almost impossible to sleep on the steep slopes of the mountain. As they climbed, their minds were on the view they hoped to have on the other side – a view of small hills and green valleys, perhaps with a shepherd’s hut or a farmhouse already in sight.

  As they had already found out, however, distances in the snow were deceptive, and by the time the sun went behind the mountain they were still nowhere near the top. Realizing that somehow they would have to sleep on the mountainside, they started to look for a level surface. To their growing dismay, it seemed that there was none. The mountain was almost vertical, Vizintín climbed on an outcrop of rock (to avoid going around it in the snow) and got stuck. He very nearly toppled off because of the weight of his knapsack, and only saved himself by untying it and throwing it down onto the snow. The experience unnerved him and he started to moan that he could not go on. He was totally exhausted; to move his legs he had to lift them with his hands.

  It was growing dark and a feeling of panic was coming over them all. They came to another outcrop of rock. Parrado thought that there might be a level surface on the top and started to climb it, while Canessa waited beneath with his knapsack. Suddenly Canessa heard a shout of ‘Look out!’ and a large rock, dislodged by Parrado’s rugby boots, came hurtling past him, narrowly missing his head. ‘For God’s sake,’ Canessa shouted up. ‘Are you trying to kill me?’ Then he started to weep. He felt utterly depressed and in despair.

  There was nowhere for them to sleep at the top of the outcrop, but a little farther on they came to an immense boulder, beside which the wind had blown a trench in the snow. The floor of the trench was not horizontal, but the wall of snow would prevent them from slipping down the mountainside; they therefore pitched camp and climbed into the sleeping bag.

  It was a perfectly clear night and the temperature had sunk to many degrees below freezing, but the sleeping bag succeeded in keeping them warm. They also ate some more meat and drank a mouthful each of the rum they had brought with them. The view from where they lay was magnificent. There spread before them a huge landscape of snow-covered mountains lit by the pale light of the moon and stars. They felt strange lying there – Canessa in the middle – half possessed by terror and despair, yet half marvelling at the magnificence of this icy beauty before them.

  At last they slept or slipped fitfully into semiconsciousness. The night was too cold and the ground too hard for the three to sleep well, and the first light of the morning found them all awake. It was still cold and they remained in the sleeping bag, waiting for the sun to appear over the mountains and thaw out their boots, which had frozen solid on the rock where they had left them. While they waited they drank water from the bottle, ate some meat, and took another mouthful each of the rum.

  They all watched the changing landscape as it grew lighter, but Canessa’s eyes, which were the best of the three, came to concentrate on a line along the valley to the east, far beyond the Fairchild and the tail. Since the whole area was still in shadow it was hard to tell, but it seemed to him that the ground there was not covered by snow and that the line which crossed it might be a road. He said nothing about it to the others, because the idea was absurd; Chile was to the west.

  When the sun came up from behind the mountains opposite them they started to climb once again – Parrado first, followed by Canessa and then Vizintín. All three were still tired and their limbs were stiff from their exertions of the day before, but they found a kind of path in the rock which seemed to lead towards the summit.

  The mountain now was so steep that Vizintín did not dare look down. He simply followed Canessa at a cautious distance as Canessa followed Parrado. What frustrated them all was that each summit they saw above them turned out to be a false one, a ridge of snow or an outcrop of rocks. They stopped by one of these rocks to eat in the middle of the day
, took a short rest, and then climbed on. By the middle of the afternoon they still had not reached the top of the mountain – and though they felt themselves to be near, they were afraid of making the same mistake as the night before. They therefore looked for and found a similar trench carved by the wind beside the same kind of rock and decided to stop there.

  Unlike Vizintín, Canessa had not been afraid to look down as they climbed the mountain, and each time he did so he saw that line in the far distance grow more distinct and more like a road. When now they sat down in the sleeping bag and waited for the sunset, he pointed it out to the others. ‘Do you see that line over there?’ he said. ‘I think it’s a road.’

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ said Nando, who was shortsighted. ‘But whatever it is, it can’t be a road because we’re facing due east and Chile’s to the west.’

  ‘I know Chile’s to the west,’ said Canessa, ‘but I still say that it’s a road. And there’s no snow down there. Look, Tintin, you can see it, can’t you?’

  Vinzintín’s eyesight was not much better than Parrado’s. He gazed into the distance with his small eyes. ‘I can just see a line, yes,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t say if it was a road or not.’

  ‘It can’t be a road,’ said Parrado.

  ‘There might be a mine,’ said Canessa. ‘There are copper mines right in the middle of the cordillera.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Parrado.

  ‘I read about it somewhere.’

  ‘It’s more likely a geological fault.’

  There was a pause. Then Canessa said, ‘I think we should go back.’

  ‘Go back?’ Parrado repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ said Canessa. ‘Go back. This mountain’s much too high. We’ll never reach the top. With every step we take we risk our lives. It’s madness to go on.’

  ‘And what do we do if we go back?’ asked Parrado.

  ‘Go to that road.’

  ‘And what if the road isn’t a road?’

  ‘Look,’ said Canessa, ‘my eyesight is better than yours, and I say it’s a road.’

  ‘It might be a road,’ said Parrado, ‘and it might not; but there’s one thing we know for certain. To the west is Chile. If we keep going to the west, we’re sure to come to Chile.’

  ‘If we keep going to the west, we’re sure to break our necks.’

  Parrado sighed.

  ‘Well, I’m going back anyway,’ said Canessa.

  ‘And I’m going on,’ said Parrado. ‘If you walk to that road and find it isn’t a road, then it’ll be too late to try this way again. They’re already short of food down there. There won’t be enough for another expedition like this, so we’ll all be losers; we’ll stay up here in the cordillera.’

  They slept that night with their differences unresolved. At one point Vizintín was woken by lightning in the distance and he woke Canessa, fearing that a storm was about to break over them. But the night was still clear, there was no wind, and the two boys went back to sleep again.

  The night did not weaken Parrado’s resolve. As soon as it was light he prepared himself to continue the climb. Canessa seemed less sure that he was going to return to the Fairchild, so he made the suggestion that Parrado and Vizintín leave their knapsacks with him and climb a little farther up the mountain to see if they came to the top. Parrado accepted this idea and set off at once, with Vizintín behind him, but in his impatience to reach the summit Parrado climbed quickly and Vizintín was soon left behind.

  The ascent had become exceptionally difficult. The wall of snow was almost vertical and Parrado could only proceed by digging steps for his hands and feet, which Vizintín used as he followed him. If he had slipped he would have fallen for many hundreds of feet, but this did not dismay him; the surface of the snow was so steep, and the sky above it so blue, that he knew he was approaching the summit. He was driven on by all the excitement of a mountaineer whose triumph is at hand and by his intense anxiety to see what was on the other side. As he climbed he told himself, ‘I’m going to see a valley, I’m going to see a river, I’m going to see green grass and trees—’ and then suddenly the sheer face was no longer so steep. It fell sharply to a slight incline and then flattened out onto a level surface of some twelve feet wide before falling away on the other side. He was at the top of the mountain.

  Parrado’s joy at having climbed it lasted for only the few seconds it took him to scramble to his feet; the view before him was not of green valleys running down towards the Pacific Ocean but an endless expanse of snow-covered mountains. From where he stood, nothing blocked his view of the vast cordillera; for the first time Parrado felt that they were finished. He sank to his knees and wanted to curse and cry to heaven at the injustice, but no sound came from his mouth and as he looked up again, panting from his recent exertion in the thin air of the mountain, his momentary despair was replaced once again by a certain elation at what he had done. It was true that the view before him was of mountains, their peaks standing in ranks to the far horizon, but the very fact that he was above them showed that he had climbed one of the highest mountains in the Andes. I’ve climbed this mountain, he thought to himself, and I shall call it Mount Seler after my father.

  He had with him the lipstick he used for his chapped lips and an extra plastic bag; he wrote the name ‘Seler’ on the plastic bag with the lipstick and placed it under a stone on the summit. He then sat back to admire the view.

  As he studied the mountains spread out before him he came to notice that due west, to the far left of the panorama, there were two mountains whose peaks were not covered with snow. ‘The cordillera must end somewhere,’ he said to himself, ‘so perhaps those two are in Chile.’ The truth was, of course, that he knew nothing about the cordillera, but this idea renewed his optimism, and when he heard Vizintín calling him from below, he shouted down to him in a buoyant tone of voice, ‘Go back and fetch Muscles. Tell him it’s all going to be all right. Tell him to come up and see for himself!’ And seeing that Vizintín had heard him and was climbing down again, Parrado returned to admiring the view from the top of Mount Seler.

  When the two others set off for the summit, Canessa had sat back with the knapsacks and watched his road as it changed colour in the changing light. The more he stared at it the more convinced he became that it was a road, but then in two hours Vizintín returned with the news that Parrado had reached the top and wanted Canessa to join him.

  ‘Are you sure he’s at the top?’

  ‘Yes, quite sure.’

  ‘Did you get there?’

  ‘No, but Nando says it’s marvellous. He says everything’s going to be all right.’

  Reluctantly Canessa got to his feet and clambered up the side of the mountain. He had left his knapsack with Vizintín, but still it took him an hour longer than it had taken Parrado. He followed the steps they had cut into the snow, and as he approached the summit he called out for his friend. He heard Parrado shout back and followed his directions until he too stood on the top of the mountain.

  The effect of what he saw was the same on Canessa as it had been on Parrado. He looked aghast at the endless mountains stretching away to the west. ‘But we’ve had it,’ he said. ‘We’ve absolutely had it. There isn’t a chance in hell of getting through all that.’

  ‘But look,’ said Parrado. ‘Look there to the west. Don’t you see? To the left? Two mountains without any snow?’

  ‘Do you mean those tits?’

  ‘The tits. Yes.’

  ‘But they’re miles away. It’ll take us fifty days to get to them.’

  ‘Fifty days? Do you think so? But look there.’ Parrado pointed into the middle distance.’ If we go down this mountain and along that valley it leads to that sort of Y. Now, one branch of the Y must lead to the tits.’

  Canessa followed the line of Parrado’s arm, saw the valley, and saw the Y. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But it’d still take us fifty days, and we’ve only enough food for ten.’

  ‘I know,’ said Pa
rrado. ‘But I’ve thought of something. Why don’t we send Tintin back?’

  ‘I’m not sure he’d want to go.’

  ‘He’ll go if we tell him to. Then we can keep his food. If we ration it out carefully, it should last us for twenty days.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘After that we’ll find some.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Canessa. ‘I think I’d rather go back and look for that road.’

  ‘Then go back,’ said Parrado sharply. ‘Go back and find your road. But I’m going on to Chile.’

  They retraced their steps down the mountain, reaching Vizintín and the knapsacks at about five in the afternoon. While they were away Vizintín had melted some snow, so they were able to quench their thirst before eating some more meat. As they were eating, Canessa turned to Vizintín and said, in the most casual tone of voice he could muster, ‘Hey, Tintin, Nando thinks it might be best if you went back to the plane. You see it would give us more food.’

  ‘Go back?’ said Vizintín, his face lighting up. ‘Sure. If you think so.’ And before either of the other two could say anything he had picked up his knapsack and was about to strap it to his back.

  ‘Not tonight,’ said Canessa. ‘Tomorrow morning will do.’

  ‘Tomorrow morning?’ said Vizintín. ‘Okay. Fine.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘Mind? No. Anything you say.’

  ‘And when you get back,’ said Canessa, ‘tell the others that we’ve gone west. And if the plane spots you and you get rescued, please don’t forget about us.’

  Canessa lay awake that night, by no means sure in his own mind that he would be going on with Parrado rather than returning with Vizintín. He continued to discuss the matter with Parrado under the stars, and Vizintín went to sleep to the sound of their arguing voices. But next morning, when they awoke, Canessa had made up his mind. He would go on with Parrado. They therefore took the meat from Vizintín and anything else that might be useful to them (though not the revolver, which they had always considered a dead weight) and prepared to send him on his way.