Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival

by Les Stroud

  As part of his obsession with leaving, Nando began to visualize the journey in exacting detail: how he would claw his way up the mountain, what he would see from the top, what he would say when he met his rescuers, how his father would look, feel, and smell. Although often used in sports, visualization techniques are rarely mentioned in survival, but they’re highly useful. I’m sure there are lots of naysayers out there, but I think there’s a lot to be said for the idea that if you can visualize your objective, it will happen.

  As the days went by without rescue, spirits began to drop. Some of the survivors began to sink into depression and became listless, apathetic. This certainly caused some tension between the remaining survivors, but if I had my choice, I’d take the tension of group survival over the loneliness of solo survival any day. Group survival can pose challenges. The danger of contagious panic is always present. There are more mouths to feed, and the many bodies that may require medical attention can be taxing on resources. But the advantages—the camaraderie, the various forms and sources of motivation, the effect of shared workloads—all outweigh such drawbacks as resentment and petty arguments.

  * * *

  Questions to Ask Before moving on

  • How far away is safety?

  • Which way does safety lie, and do you know how to get there?

  • If not, do you run the risk of getting even more lost if you head in the wrong direction?

  • Do you and your traveling partners have the strength to make it there? Are any of you too injured?

  • Do you have enough supplies?

  • Does anybody know where you are?

  • Is there a chance rescuers may coming looking for you? How long before they start looking?

  • Are you on a well-used trail that might have other people on it?

  • Is it more dangerous where you are now or where you are going?

  • Does your current location offer water, shelter, fire/fuel, and food?

  • Are you with a vehicle or other large object that may be easily seen from the air?

  * * *

  For example, it was the ingenuity of one person that solved the problem of water for the entire group. Although the plane was lying on top of a snow-covered glacier, getting enough drinking water for the survivors was always a concern. At first, Nando and his friends simply ate snow, but after a few days at high altitude, their lips became so cracked and tender that it became a near-impossible task. So they turned to melting the snow in the sunshine, whether in wine bottles or on top of the silver fuselage.

  Fito helped solve the water conundrum by fashioning a bowl and spout from a discarded piece of aluminum, filling it with snow and setting it out in the sunshine. The device melted snow so effectively that others quickly constructed similar ones, putting an end to the group’s collective concerns about dehydration. This is the type of inventiveness I would have hoped for in their situation. There was a real sense of urgency when it came to water, and for good reason. Humans can go several weeks without food, but deny us water for a few days and death is imminent. Dehydration is a real risk in any survival situation, but it becomes even more acute in cold weather and at high altitudes, when it sets in more quickly. What’s worse is that, while dehydration in a place like the desert is always on your mind, it may be overlooked in alpine environments.

  But now there were other concerns with which to contend. As the last of the rations were doled out at the end of their first week on the mountain, starvation became a very real possibility. That night, as Nando lay freezing in the remains of the plane, trying to fall asleep, a grisly realization came to him. If he and his friends were going to survive long enough for rescue to arrive or for them to hike to safety, they would need food. And there was only one source of food available.

  As you might imagine, the idea of eating the dead spurred days of lengthy moral debate among the survivors. Most of the players were Catholics; some were concerned that eating the flesh of another human would condemn them to eternal damnation. Others simply couldn’t come to grips with the idea of cutting their friends into pieces. In the end, though, the stark reality of their situation left them no other choice. They gathered in a circle, and each pledged that, if he or she died, the others had permission to use their bodies as food.

  Even the staunchest holdouts in the group quietly acquiesced. The most religious among them drew strength from the idea that they were drawing life from their friends’ bodies in much the same way they drew spiritual strength from the body of Christ when they took Communion. Nando was far more pragmatic. His friends were gone, and the bodies now represented meat and sustenance, nothing more. The subject of eating the dead—necrophagy, as it’s called—has stirred controversy for years. Yet, as far as I’m concerned, it was the right thing to do, a desperate measure in a desperate time. As the group concluded, their friends’ souls were gone, and their friends would want them to do everything they could to survive. In starkest terms, the dead bodies represented sustenance—meat and fat and bone, all good survival food. The notion of butchering and eating another human being goes well beyond the “plate fright” that I often talk about, where people balk at the idea of eating a creepy-crawly. And yet—like eating bugs and other slimy critters—it’s something I think most people would do if starvation were the only alternative. Nando and his friends had no choice: eat the dead or die themselves. In the end, they made the only decision they could if they expected to survive the ordeal.

  By the eleventh day on the mountain, little had changed for the survivors, other than the ready store of food the survivors now had on hand. That morning, eighteen-year-old Roy Harley managed to coax back to life an old transistor radio salvaged from the wreckage. The signal crackled and popped, but those crowded around the device heard a news report that, after ten days of searching, Chilean authorities had called off the search for the missing rugby team. The mountains were too dangerous, the report said, and there was no chance anyone would have survived more than a week in the frigid mountain air.

  The news caused a huge mental and emotional shift among the survivors. Many of them threw their hands up in despair; rescue was the only thing keeping them sane. Others considered suicide. Nando was one of them, but those fearful thoughts were soon quelled by his inner voice, which again steeled him for the reality he would one day face: he would have to climb to the top of the mountains, and then venture off into the distance to find help. He frantically tried to begin his climb right then and there, but his friends talked him out of what would have been a very foolish decision.

  It is said that information is power. That statement is never more true than in a survival situation, where information provides the power to make decisions. In this case the radio report finally gave them what they needed: knowledge that the search had been canceled. As difficult as it may be to believe, there is a strange sense of relief in receiving terrible news such as this. You may feel hopeless and discouraged for a while, but it is liberating to finally know what you need to do to set your own rescue plan in motion.

  None in the group seemed worse affected by the news than Marcelo, who changed from fearless leader to somber and reserved victim almost instantly. Marcelo had put all his eggs in one basket, the God basket, and thought that divine intervention would send rescue their way. With those hopes shattered, he didn’t feel he had much to live for. Luckily, his feelings were not shared by all. As the reality set in, a few of the others made plans for another assault on the mountain. Three men—Gustavo, Numa, and Daniel Maspons—gathered up what little provisions and equipment they could muster and set off shortly thereafter. Among the gear they took were the fruits of their survival ingenuity: sunglasses they made by cutting tinted plastic sun visors from the cockpit and stringing them together with copper wire.

  They didn’t return that night, a night of frigid temperatures and howling winds. When dawn finally broke, the survivors at the crash site were heartened to see three specks high up on the mountain, m
oving slowly down the slopes above them. When they finally made it back to camp later that afternoon, they looked as if they had aged twenty years in one night. Gustavo, whose glasses had broken during the climb, was suffering from an intense case of snowblindness. As the climbers slowly warmed themselves, they shared the story of their harrowing night on the mountain.

  They had climbed only halfway up as dusk approached, so they decided to find shelter and climb again the following day. They found a level place near a rocky outcrop, built a small rock wall to protect them from the incessant wind and huddled together to keep warm. This is a simple, yet effective way of staying warm in group situations, especially for the middle person. Better yet is to lie skin to skin with another person. It may be uncomfortable to do so with someone you might otherwise consider a stranger, but modesty can make for a lot of very cold nights; “cuddling” can spell the difference between life and death. It has come in handy for me on numerous occasions.

  I was traveling with a friend on a very cold night, trying to make it to his backcountry cottage. We didn’t make it, and decided to spend the night in a cabin we had recently passed. The cabin had no heat and no blankets, so we stripped to our underwear, crawled between two mattresses, and slept with our bodies back to back. This technique worked wonders for keeping us warm, much more so than if we had stayed in our clothes and avoided contact with one other. This experience, however survival oriented it might have been, doesn’t come close to a hundred other nights I have spent surviving outdoors in the cold winter air, and is a very far cry from what those men went through that night on the mountain.

  The second attempt to summit the mountain yielded a bit more information than the first. They had not found the much-sought-after tail section of the plane, but did come across pieces of wreckage, some luggage, and the bodies of several people who had fallen out of the plane when it split apart, many of whom were still strapped to their seats. The one thing the search failed to yield, however, was an idea of which way civilization lay. They were still trapped and alone.

  As the days passed, the survivors became more efficient at processing the dead into food. Grisly, yes, but this was yet another necessary step in their evolution as survivors. To make the meat more palatable, they cut it into small pieces and dried it in the sun. Sometimes they cooked it, on those rare occasions that they had a fire.

  While the meat from their fallen friends certainly kept the survivors alive, Nando could not help feeling that he was slowly and inexorably losing his strength, which would ultimately hinder his attempts to seek help. This is a common issue among survivors: they don’t try to affect their own rescue when they are strong and healthy, but end up doing it when they are physically compromised. Of course, there are times when sitting and waiting makes more sense than moving, such as when you’re injured or in an otherwise dangerous situation. But in this case, the survivors became slightly weaker with each day they clung to the hope that they would be found. So if you have to move, do it when you are strong, healthy, and prepared. Leave markings, notes, and other signs to indicate where you have gone, in case someone happens upon your trail or camp.

  By the last week of October, Nando and the twenty-six others who were still alive had been on the mountain for more than two weeks. As the days passed, the survivors became encouraged by Nando’s insistence that he would climb the mountain and find rescue. Marcelo’s spirits continued to sag, and Nando began to emerge as the group’s leader. Now they had a plan and a purpose: they would eat the meat of the dead, regain their strength, wait for the weather to improve, plan a route, and find help. But first, all hell would break loose—again.

  It was October 29, 1972, and the twenty-seven survivors had settled in for yet another frigid night in the fuselage. As they began to doze, the powerful force of bad luck struck when a massive avalanche swept down the mountain, burying the remains of the plane under several feet of hard-packed snow. Nando was encased in what seemed like cement, and he waited for death to take him. In some way, it was a relief to finally face his end. There would be no more struggles, no more frozen nights. Then a hand shot through the snow and uncovered his face, and Nando was able to breathe again.

  After a few frenzied moments of chaos, he was free to witness the macabre scene around him. Some people were lying motionless, others rising slowly from the snow like corpses from the grave. There were a few brief moments of silence, and then the details of the avalanche began to filter through. There was a distant roar on the mountain, which brought Roy Harley to his feet. Seconds later, a wave of snow plowed through the makeshift wall at the back of the fuselage, burying Roy to the hips and covering all those who had been asleep. Roy desperately started digging the others out. Those who were uncovered by Roy started digging for their friends, too. But they were too late for many. In total, eight died in the avalanche: Marcelo, Enrique Platero, Coco Nicholich, Daniel Maspons, Carlos Roque, Juan Carlos Menendez, Diego Storm, and Liliana Methol.

  In the aftermath of the avalanche, Nando began to question his purpose. Why had he survived while others had died? Daniel and Liliana had been on either side of Nando, only inches away, as he lay down to sleep. Yet they were dead and he was still breathing. His luck was good and theirs was bad. They had chosen their sleeping spots, and those choices proved deadly.

  The hours and days after the avalanche were a living hell, a nightmare of unimaginable proportions. Although there was a fresh air supply (courtesy of a hole Nando had poked through the snow with a piece of metal pipe), the plane was dank and dark, the air thick. The only source of water was the filthy snow that filled the plane, the same snow the nineteen survivors were crawling around on, sleeping on, and relieving themselves on.

  Food was also a problem. Trapped as they were with no access to the bodies outside, the survivors had nothing to eat. They recognized that the avalanche victims were buried underneath them, but the closeness of the operation was too much to face. Until that point, bodies had been butchered outside the fuselage, away from general view. If they were to resort to that same grisly option inside the snow-encased plane, however, it would be there for everyone to see. They swore they would rather starve than face the prospect of butchering the freshly dead.

  With no other choice but to dig through the tons of snow that now surrounded them, the survivors took turns scraping and digging away at it. Eventually, they made their way to the surface through the cockpit, only to be met with a blizzard of such furious proportions that they had no choice but to stay inside the fuselage until it abated. In the meantime, they had ample opportunity to revisit their plans for escape. The prevailing feeling was that, although Chile certainly lay up over the mountain and to the west, they might have better luck hiking east, down the mountain and toward the broad, white valley that swept away into the distance. Their hope was that the valley would eventually turn toward the west and rescue. When someone mentioned that summer in the Andes arrived promptly on November 15, Nando threw down the gauntlet: he would leave on that day, with or without partners.

  By the third day after the avalanche, hunger had become so acute that the survivors had no choice. Someone found a piece of glass and began slicing into one of the dead. The sound of the shard cutting flesh was revolting enough; eating the meat was almost impossible. Before the avalanche, the meat had been dried in the sun, weakening its taste and making the texture more palatable. Now the survivors were handed soft, greasy pieces of flesh, streaked with blood and gristle. Most of them choked it back with great difficulty; others could not bring themselves to do it at all.

  It wasn’t until November 1—four days later—that the blizzard finally stopped and the survivors emerged from the fuselage. It took an additional eight days of backbreaking work to clear the plane of the tons of snow that now filled it. At the same time, Nando and the other expeditionaries were preparing for their departure. Although they were encouraged by the gradual improvement in the weather, they were also disheartened that several among them conti
nued to weaken. Arturo died early into the second week of November.

  On November 15, Nando, Numa, Roberto, and Antonio “Tintin” Vizintin set out eastward down the mountain. They had walked for only an hour when a blizzard kicked up with a fury, sending them scrambling back to the fuselage. The storm kept them there for two more days, when they started out again, this time without Numa, who had weakened considerably. The trio hiked for hours in fine weather and eventually came across the tail section of the plane, and the treasures it had held secret for more than a month: suitcases with fresh clothing, rum, chocolates, a camera with film, and the extra batteries for the plane’s radio.

  After what seemed like a luxurious night of sleep—the first when they were able to stretch out and roll around—the expeditionaries continued their eastward journey the next morning. The going was difficult in the bright sunshine, and progress was slow. They spent a long, cold night huddled together under a rocky outcrop, during which Nando was sure he would freeze to death. The next morning, they continued the hike, though Roberto and Nando were both beginning to doubt that the valley ever turned to the west. Their route, they determined, was only taking them deeper into the heart of the Andes. They decided to return to the Fairchild, where they would try to coax the radio back to life with the batteries from the tail, and call for rescue. Ultimately, they left the heavy batteries in the tail section, deciding instead that it would be easier to carry the radio down. When they finally made it back to the fuselage, they learned that Rafael Echavarren—whose calf muscle had been nearly torn off during the crash—had died.