Читать книгу Extreme Survivors: 60 of the World’s Most Extreme Survival Stories - Collins Maps - Страница 55

Joe was lying on his side and pulling himself along with his ice axes and a push of his good leg. Occasionally he stopped to eat snow. He found Simon’s footprints and for the rest of the day he hauled himself after his friend, tortured by dreams of water, of his favourite thatched pub in Sheffield, of his mother getting ready for his return.

‘The snow formed in patches between the rocks. It was dirty and full of grit but I ate it continually.’

And suddenly it was night and an avalanche was falling on him. Somehow spared again, he almost lay down and slept where he was, but kept going until he could dig a snow hole. Outside a storm raged as Joe blacked out to spend a second night alone in the snow.

Joe awoke in the light, painfully thirsty. Frostbite had seized more of his fingers. He knew the nearest water was in the area they had called Bomb Alley, still miles away. He would be lucky to reach that today.

But at least the storm was over. And, strangely, it seemed that his leg was hurting less. Maybe it was just a muscle tear. Perhaps he could walk on it now. He stood up and passed out with the agony. He was getting delirious.

Joe reached the moraines at the end of the crevasses and made a splint from his sleeping mat and crampon straps. But he couldn’t crawl on the rock, nor walk, so had to hop, a few inches at a time.

He entered a delirium of thirst, pain and hopping. Then he somehow realized he had to discipline himself. He would pick a landmark and give himself half an hour to reach it. This galvanized him into action. When he missed his target he sobbed with frustration.

He found himself scrabbling down a muddy ice cliff that he remembered from the way in. By now he was falling with every hop. But he had stopped screaming at the frequent stabs of pain. There was no one to hear him, so what was the point?

He became obsessed with getting to Bomb Alley that night and its stream of life-giving water. In his near-madness he stopped timing his landmarks and lost track of his route. Eventually he dropped to the rock and slept.