1/17/2024 0 Comments Colby coombs survival story![]() The rope to Kellogg, his longtime best friend, ran limply over the brink. Walter hung on the other end of the line, counter-weighting Coombs. He’d been dangling for at least six hours near the top of a rock buttress, 800 feet below where the slide had struck. That’s when I passed out.”Ĭoombs came to hanging from his rope, wracked with pain and deeply chilled, his pack and mittens gone. ![]() “I remember sliding really fast and trying to self-arrest, then hitting something and going airborne. Coombs looked up just as an avalanche hit him. “Then the rope suddenly went slack,” he says. Unprotected, the men moved quickly up the 50-degree slope, tied together and climbing simultaneously.Īs they ascended, Coombs, who now owns Alaska Mountaineering School in Talkeetna, stared up at the line running to his friend Tom. The ramp was easy climbing, but the porous ice was too hard for snow pickets (a kind of anchor) and too soft for ice screws. They had to gain the spur 1,200 feet above them, traverse left, and descend the Southeast Ridge, a tough route in its own right. But the escape route wouldn’t be any picnic. With winds rising and visibility plummeting, they abandoned their summit plans. Nearly finished with their new variation on the Pink Panther route, the trio topped out on a 1,000-foot cliffband just as a storm broke. Exploring the Highest Sierra - James G.Disaster struck for Tom Walter, Ritt Kellogg, and Colby Coombs on a steep snow climb up Alaska’s 17,240-foot Mt.The Good, the Great, and the Awesome: The Top 40 High Sierra Rock Climbs.Glacier's Secrets: Beyond The Roads and Above The Clouds.River Rock: A Climber's Guide to Mississippi Palisades State Park.Guide to the Wyoming Mountains and Wilderness Areas.Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.Kiss or Kill: Confessions of a Serial Climber.Instead, they each took things one step at a time and each individual action, plus some luck, especially in Coombs’ case, added up to living to see another day. If they had focused on the “big picture” of what had to happen in order for them to live, they might have succumbed to total despair. ![]() What stands out in Coombs’ and Potterfield’s own brush with death climbing in the Cascades is the meticulous approach they took to saving themselves. Foraker and horribly injured him was absolutely incredible. In fact, Viesturs and Fischer saved the life of a climber on Hall’s team.Ĭoombs’ survival after an avalanche killed his partner on Mt. Everest, were both on K2 at the same time. It was interesting that both Fischer and New Zealander Rob Hall, who both would die in the infamous May 1996 tragedy on Mt. Truth to tell, the accounts of the Foraker epic and the author’s climbing fall in the North Cascades were more dramatic than the account of Viesturs’ and Fisher’s first ascent of K2’s Abruzzi Ridge by Americans. ![]() Each of the three narratives was gripping. Thus, each story is rich in detail providing background, the ordeal, and post-ordeal. Unlike many other compilations of “epics” this one limits itself to three stories. ![]() This was an excellent book which I’m glad I stumbled upon. On their descent, still battling treacherous weather and exhaustion, they stopped to rescue fellow climbers, managing to save the life of a New Zealand climber who was with Rob Hall and (3) the author’s own epic on Chimney Rock in the North Cascades where he fell from a rock face breaking several bones and becoming stranded on a narrow ledge for 30 hours before a dramatic rescue was effected. Foraker where he lost his partner in an avalanche and received grievous injuries himself his 5-day descent of the mountain crippled with injuries and without food or water was a milestone in sheer will to survive and luck (2) Story number two was that of Scott Fischer's and Ed Viesturs' successful 1992 ascent of K2’s Abruzzi Ridge after a 52-day ordeal battling brutal weather and injuries. Product DescriptionJournalist and climber Potterfield offer three stories of incredible survival in the mountain environment: (1) Colby Coombs’ disastrous episode on Alaska’s Mt. ![]()
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