Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

by Piers Paul Read

  Canessa stepped forward from the verandah of the cottage.

  ‘Well,’ he said, pointing up the valley. ‘Do you see that opening there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the carabineer.

  ‘Well, you go up there for about fifty or sixty miles, turn right, and then go on until you come to a mountain. You’ll find the plane on the other side.’

  The carabineer sat down.

  ‘Is anyone else coming?’ Parrado asked anxiously.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said one carabineer. ‘A patrol’s on its way.’

  Shortly afterwards ten mounted carabineers were to be seen riding up the valley with peaked caps and greatcoats and ropes hanging from their saddles. Behind them, also mounted, came Sergio Catalan, the man to whom Parrado had thrown the note.

  Canessa and Parrado had embraced the carabineers. They went to Catalan and embraced him too. He smiled and said very little. ‘Thanks be to God,’ he muttered, smiling all the time, his eyes flitting from side to side to conceal his timidity. And as their gratitude became more profuse he held up his hands to restrain them. ‘Don’t thank me,’ he said. ‘All I did was my duty as a Chilean and a son of God.’

  The captain of the carabineers questioned Parrado and Canessa about the whereabouts of the plane. He asked if they thought it could be reached on foot, but when he heard just an outline of their journey through the Andes he realized that it would not be possible. He therefore detailed two of his men to return to Puente Negro and summon a helicopter from Santiago.

  The two men left with others to guide them. By now the evening light had faded, and Canessa and Parrado realized that nothing more could be done that day. They allowed themselves to forget the fourteen up in the mountains, for a time, and settled down to talk to the carabineers – to tell them the incredible story of what had happened to the Fairchild, with only one or two details left out. It was, perhaps, the thought of what they omitted which led the two boys to look with a certain curiosity at the packs and pouches of the carabineers.

  Immediately the whole patrol, enlightened as to the meaning of those glances, emptied out what they had, and Canessa and Parrado began their third feast of the day, eating eggs, bread, and orange juice and cleaning out the entire supply of the platoon of carabineers as surely as they had emptied the larder of the two peasants, Enrique and Armando. After food, however, their appetite was for conversation, and the carabineers were happy to listen. Finally at three in the morning, the captain suggested that they all get to sleep so as to be ready for the helicopters, which could be expected soon after sunrise.

  When Canessa and Parrado came out of their hut the next day they saw to their dismay that they were in the middle of a fog bank. At the cottage they found Catalan, Enrique, Armando, and the captain all looking with equal disappointment at the thick mist.

  ‘Can they land in this?’ asked Parrado.

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought so,’ said the captain. ‘They won’t find us.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Catalan. ‘It’s a morning mist. It won’t last forever.’

  The two boys sat down to a breakfast prepared by Enrique and Armando. Their disappointment at the further delay in the rescue of their friends did not diminish their enjoyment of yet another taste of normal food, and they ate stale bread and drank instant coffee with great relish. As they were coming to the end of this breakfast, they heard a strange noise in the distance. It was not the sound of a machine, so it could not be the helicopters; it was more like the twittering of a menagerie. As it grew closer and louder they could make out the sounds to be the yelps and cries of a crowd of human beings.

  Imagining that the inhabitants of a local village were for some strange reason marching towards them, the boys, the peasants, and the carabineers all went out of the cottage, looked down the valley in the direction of Puente Negro, and then stood stock still in astonishment at the sight which met their eyes. Approaching them along the path over the meadow came a column of men in urban clothes, panting, stumbling, bowed under the weight of briefcases and cameras of every description. From this approaching horde came cries of ‘Los Maitenes?’ and ‘The survivors, where are the survivors?’ until the first to reach the cottage saw at once, from their long hair, thin faces, and beards, which were the men they had come to see.

  ‘El Mercurio, Santiago,’ said one, pad and pencil in his hand.

  ‘The BBC, London,’ said another, one hand thrusting a microphone under their noses, the other fumbling at the controls of a portable tape recorder. Suddenly they were surrounded by fifty jostling, jabbering journalists.

  Canessa and Parrado were completely bowled over by this horde of reporters. With the other boys on the mountain, they had modestly imagined that their experiences would only be of interest to one or two journalists back in Montevideo. From the limited experience of their lives they had been unable to foresee the appetite for sensation which had brought this pack in taxis and private cars along the narrow road from Santiago and then made them walk for two and a half hours, loaded with film and television cameras, along a narrow, dangerous mule-path.

  Faced with them, however, Canessa and Parrado were quite happy to answer their questions – again omitting one or two details, notably those about what they had eaten to stay alive. In the middle of this impromptu press conference they were called by the captain of the carabineers. The fog had lifted a little but there was still no sign of the helicopters, so the captain had decided to send Parrado and Canessa down to Puente Negro on horseback. They were mounted behind two of his men and, amid the whirring and snapping of cameras and the shouts for this pose and that, they set off down the valley, but before they had gone very far they heard the rattle of approaching helicopters from down the valley. As the deafening noise came directly over and then past them, the horses reared, wheeled, and then cantered back up the valley and reached Los Maitenes just as three helicopters of the Chilean Air Force dropped out of the cloud and landed on the far side of the river.

  2

  When Colonel Morel had informed the SAR at Los Cerrillos in Santiago that two survivors from the Fairchild had been found in Los Maitenes there was widespread scepticism. A request for confirmation was returned to San Fernando, but meanwhile the SAR alerted the two officers of the Air Force, commanders Carlos García and Jorge Massa, who had directed the original search for the Uruguayan aircraft. It was late afternoon (on Thursday, December 21) when García, the commander of Action Group Number 10, received the news, and he too was sceptical, assuming that Catalan had stumbled upon two mountain climbers who had been searching for the Fairchild.

  In any case, it was too late to do anything that day. García therefore ordered the helicopters of his group to be ready for takeoff at six in the morning and went to bed. In the middle of the night news came through to his subordinates that the two at Los Maitenes were quite probably from the Fairchild; when García was told this next morning it gave him a considerable shock.

  In view of what he had been told, García decided to command and pilot the leading helicopter himself. To the second he assigned Massa, and to the third, as an auxiliary, a Lieutenant Avila. He also decided to take two mechanics instead of co-pilots, an Air Force nurse, a medical orderly, and three members of the Andean Rescue Corps, including their commander, Claudio Lucero.

  The weather at Los Cerrillos was appalling. It was snowing and the visibility was only three hundred feet with a blanket of thick fog lying one hundred feet above the ground. By seven o’clock there was no indication that the weather would improve, so at 7.10 the three helicopters took off for San Fernando, flying under the fog almost at ground level.

  At San Fernando they landed at the barracks of the Colchagua Regiment and were met by Colonel Morel and Carlos Páez Vilaró.

  ‘What, you again?’ said García when he saw Páez Vilaró. ‘You don’t mean to say that you’re still going on about that business of the Fairchild?’

  Well might he joke. It was now confirmed that some of those he had give
n up for lost two months before were alive. The peasant, Sergio Catalan, had said they spoke strangely, which was consistent with a Uruguayan accent, and the names of the two boys at Los Maitenes had been given as Fernando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, both of whom had been passengers on the plane.

  The command committee made a plan for the rescue. The helicopters would proceed to Los Maitenes, which would be designated Camp Alpha. They would take with them Colonel Morel, a doctor, and a medical orderly.

  ‘And you, Carlitos,’ said Colonel Morel. ‘You deserve to go.’

  ‘No,’ replied Páez Vilaró. ‘I don’t want to take up an extra place. I’ll wait here.’ Then he turned to one of the Andean Rescue Corps and said, with deep emotion, ‘But if my son, Carlos Miguel, is among the survivors, perhaps you would be good enough to give him this letter. And you, Morel. Take my snow boots. You may need them, and that way you’ll be walking with my feet.’

  The helicopters took off once again. They flew to the Tinguiririca river and then followed it into the mountains. They were equipped with charts, but on their first run up the valley they missed the point where the River Azufre branched off from the Tinguiririca, so they had to return to find it. Their information was that the carabineers were about two miles from this confluence, but the visibility was so bad that García and Massa could see nothing. It came to a point where they had either to fly blind or land – and in the relatively narrow valley, they chose to do the latter. They therefore brought the helicopters down on the left-hand side of the river.

  As the noise of the motors died down, they heard shouts from the opposite bank. They went to the edge of the river, where once again an officer of the carabineers threw over a message wrapped in a handkerchief, informing them that, quite accidentally they had come to the right place; so they got back into the helicopters and flew them to the other side of the river.

  It took a short time to establish that the two emaciated, bearded figures were indeed the survivors from the Fairchild. One – Canessa – was still paralysed from exhaustion, and the doctor and his two assistants set to work to listen to his heart, and massage his aching limbs. The other, Parrado, refused such medical attention and at once began to badger García and Massa to take off again for the Fairchild. García told him that because of the fog it was impossible. He questioned him, however, about the position of the Fairchild, and Parrado described their route down the mountain.

  ‘Have you any idea how high the plane is?’ asked García.

  ‘Not really, no,’ said Parrado. ‘Pretty high, I should say. There were no trees or plants of any sort.’

  ‘What did you eat?’

  ‘Oh, we had some cheese, and things like that.’

  ‘Can you remember if there was any reading on the plane’s altimeter?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Canessa. ‘Seven thousand feet.’

  ‘Seven thousand feet? Good. That shouldn’t be too difficult. Do you think we’ll find it easily?’

  Canessa and Parrado looked at each other. ‘Not too easily,’ said Parrado. ‘It’s in the snow.’ He hesitated, trapped between his dread of flying and his long-standing desire to go up in a helicopter. This struggle continued for some seconds, until he remembered his promise to the boys to return for the other red shoe and blurted out to García, ‘I’ll come with you, if you like, and show you the way.’

  They waited for the fog to lift. Meanwhile, many of the journalists set off to return to Santiago and file their stories. Then, three hours after he had arrived, García decided that the visibility had sufficiently improved for two of the three helicopters to take off again. With them they took the mechanics, the medical orderly, and the three members of the Andean Rescue Corps – Claudio Lucero, Osvaldo Villegas, and Sergio Díaz. Behind Díaz sat Parrado, with a helmet on his head and a microphone at his mouth.

  It was by now about one o’clock, the worst possible time of day for flying in the Andes. Because of this, García and Massa did not think that they would evacuate the fourteen boys on that flight but would merely establish where they were. Parrado was an excellent guide. He looked down through the windows of the helicopter and recognized all those spots on the valley where they had walked, and when they came to the Y he directed García to turn to the right and follow the narrower, snow-covered valley into the mountains.

  Flying was difficult by now, but García could see from his altimeter that they were approaching 7,000 feet and felt confident that he could control his craft at that height. He saw ahead of him, however, not the wreck of the Fairchild but the sheer face of an enormous mountain.

  ‘Where now?’ he asked Parrado through the intercom.

  ‘Up there,’ said Parrado, pointing straight ahead.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Straight ahead.’

  ‘But you can’t have come down there.’

  ‘Yes, we did. It’s on the other side.’

  García imagined that Parrado had not heard him. ‘You can’t have come down that mountain,’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes, we did,’ said Parrado.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Sliding, stumbling …’

  García looked ahead, then up. What Parrado told him seemed incredible, but he had no alternative but to accept it. He started to climb. Behind him came Massa in the second helicopter. As they rose the air became thinner and more turbulent; the engines were straining with the effort, and the whole helicopter began to shake and vibrate. Yet still the mountain faced them. The peak was higher yet. The altimeter showed 10,000, then 12,000, then 13,000 feet, until at 13,500 feet they reached the top. There the helicopters were hit by a strong wind from the other side which threw them back and down. García made another run, but again the helicopter was thrown back. Parrado, behind him, screamed with fear, and Díaz, who sat next to him, told García through the intercom, ‘Commander, we have a panic situation back here.’

  García was too preoccupied with flying the helicopter to pay much attention. He saw that the mountaintop was a little lower to his right, so he gave up his assault on the peak and guided the helicopter around the top of the mountain until, still shaken and buffeted by the violent currents of air, they found themselves on the other side – but the different route had disoriented Parrado. He did not know where they were, and no one could see the Fairchild. The helicopters circled, and Parrado looked desperately around for some familiar landmark which would orient him. Then suddenly across the valley he saw the peak of a mountain which he recognized, and all at once he knew where he was. ‘It must be down there,’ he said to García.

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ said García.

  ‘Go down,’ said Parrado.

  The helicopter began to descend, and as it did so the shape of the mountains and the outcrop of rocks became more familiar to Parrado until at last he saw far beneath him the tiny specks that he knew were the remains of the Fairchild.

  ‘There they are!’ he shouted to García.

  ‘Where, where? I can’t see them.’

  ‘There!’ Parrado shouted. ‘There!’

  And at last García, still wrestling with the controls of the jumping, shaking helicopter, saw what he was looking for. ‘All right!’ he shouted. ‘I can see it! Now don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me. Let’s see if we can bring it down.’

  Thirteen

  1

  The night of Wednesday, December 20, had seen the spirits of the fourteen boys left on the mountain at their lowest ebb. It was nine days since the expeditionaries had left them – six since Vizintín had come back from the top of the mountain. They all knew what rations they had taken with them. They all knew therefore, that time was running out. Reluctantly they faced the prospect of a second expedition – and Christmas in the Andes.

  That night, after he had led the rosary as usual, Carlitos Páez said a special prayer to his uncle, who had been killed when his plane had crashed some years before. The next day, December 21, would be the anniversary of that accident, and he knew that his grandmother w
ould also be praying to her son for a special favour on that day.

  The next morning they listened to the news on the radio and there was no mention of any rescue. On the contrary, it was announced that the C-47 of the Uruguayan Air Force had left Chile on Wednesday, so they set about their duties in the same pessimistic mood as the day before. At midday they ate their ration of meat and then retired into the plane to shelter from the sun.

  It was as he was leaving the plane, later in the afternoon, that Carlitos had a sudden but quite definite feeling that Parrado and Canessa had been found. He took a few paces out into the snow and went around to the front of the plane, where he saw Fito crouching by the ‘lavatory’. He lowered himself to Fito’s level and said quietly, ‘Listen, Fito, don’t tell the others, but I’ve a strong feeling that Nando and Muscles have got somewhere.’

  Fito gave up his attempt to defecate, hitched up his trousers, and walked with Carlitos a little way up the mountain. Though not superstitious, he was happy to let this premonition dispel his gloom. ‘Do you really think they’ve found someone?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Carlitos in his gruff, definite voice. ‘But don’t tell the others, because I don’t want to disappoint them if it isn’t true.’

  Once again the fourteen busied themselves with their own preoccupations while the sun sank lower in the sky. Then those who still had cigarettes (their supply was almost exhausted) lit up for that last smoke of the day. The sun set. The air grew cold. Daniel Fernández and Pancho Delgado went in to prepare the cabin, and they all lined up in pairs to enter the plane for their seventieth night on the mountain.

  They prayed the rosary, and Carlitos made a special mention of his uncle but said nothing of his premonition. When the rosary was over, however, Daniel Fernández suddenly said, ‘Gentlemen, I have a strong feeling that our two expeditionaries have made it. We’ll be rescued tomorrow or the day after.’