Avalanche at the Mine: Buried Under a Machine

Les Morlang is a mechanic at a gold mine in the mountains of Colorado. In November 1985, he’s racing to complete some essential construction work before a blizzard rolls in. But he and his colleague Jack will be caught off guard. As a devastating natural disaster descends, they’ll become separated… leaving Les entombed beneath fifty feet of compacted snow and ice… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Carla Flores, Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33John Hopkins?

  It's late afternoon on November the 17th, 1985. In the skies above southwest Colorado, a heavy mantle of cloud which has been steadily gathering mass all afternoon finally breaks. Snow streams down like ticker tape, blinding flurries that swirl and eddy in the 50 mile an hour gusts. On a steep hillside, among the frozen peaks of the La Plata Mountains, a scattering of timber lies strewn across the surface of the snow. A mechanical loader, toppled onto its side and half-buried by deep, fresh drifts, continues to rumble and splutter, belching coils of black smoke into the blizzard.

• 1:17John Hopkins?

  That sound, that monotonous drone of machinery, is what 31-year-old Les Morlang clings on to. Because where he is, stunned and disorientated beneath 50 feet of snow, it's the only thing telling him which direction to dig.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  The loader, thankfully, told me which way to go. And then after I kind of got adjusted and then got my torso free to breathe, that's when I decided I could dig out after I got the moxie into the brain, I guess.

• 1:53John Hopkins?

  Fueled by desperation and guided by the distant rumble of the loader, Les begins to frantically claw at the snow above his head.

• 2:03John Hopkins?

  But compressed by the weight of the deposits above, the clumps around him have started to firm up, hardening like setting cement.

• 2:12John Hopkins?

  Les must hack and chisel at the snow with his fingertips, then push it down past his body before squirming into the space he has created. Gradually, he establishes a kind of rhythm.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  What I'd do is after I got my torso loose a little bit, so I could kinda turn and start digging on my incline. And I had a little system. I'd reach up, one, two, three, would push it down to my knees, and four was pack it.

• 2:51John Hopkins?

  Millimeter by millimeter, Les inches his way towards the surface. At times, the claustrophobia becomes overwhelming, triggering the impulse to scream and thrash his limbs. But Les has to keep his composure. Panicking will only use up more precious oxygen and cause him to asphyxiate faster. Besides, even if his voice could penetrate the fathoms of snow separating him from daylight, there's no one up there to hear him.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  That's a pretty lonely feeling up there. You might as well be out in the Alaska tundra with no help. Just nobody can get to you.

• 3:41John Hopkins?

  Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations, people suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

• 4:02John Hopkins?

  In this episode, we meet 31-year-old Les Morland. In November 1985, Les, a mechanic at a gold mine in the mountains of Colorado, is racing to complete some essential construction work before a blizzard rolls in.

• 4:17John Hopkins?

  While keeping one eye on the approaching storm, Les and his colleague Jack are operating a mechanical loader when they are caught off-guard by something that no forecast could have predicted. A devastating natural disaster descends on the mine where the two men are working. They will become separated, and Les will be left buried beneath 50 feet of compacted snow and ice.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  My hard hat and everything and light was back behind me. At first, you're just trying to breathe, but the pressure on your chest doesn't allow you anything.

• 4:56John Hopkins?

  Disorientated, running out of oxygen, and with nobody around to help, Les will have to claw his way to the surface. In more ways than one, he will have to dig deep.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Think the flashbacks of seeing my son and my wife, I had to get out. Said it a thousand times, don't ever give up. There's always hope. If you can move that little finger, move it.

• 5:24John Hopkins?

  I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

• 5:55John Hopkins?

  It's 1 PM on November 17, 1985. Freezing the eastern border of Colorado's High Plain, a wild, beautiful region of winding canyons and rolling copper-colored hills, the La Plata Mountains are a jagged chain of alpine peaks that rise like a prehistoric spine from the earth.

• 6:18John Hopkins?

  Winter has arrived in the high plain, and a recent blizzard has left its mark on this uniquely dramatic landscape. The red sandstone cliffs are banded with snow, and the sprawling sand flats shiver beneath heavy blankets of white, pinprick here and there by solitary, snow-dusted cactus.

• 6:39John Hopkins?

  Meanwhile, up among the lofty peaks of the La Plata, a deep freeze has set in. These are just the first throes of winter, but already the pine forests lie half-buried by deep drifts, their boughs slumped and spangled with silvery frost.

• 6:57John Hopkins?

  Above the timberline, things become starker still. The mountain tops are encased in ice, their white silhouettes faintly embossed against the pale, overcast sky.

• 7:11John Hopkins?

  Just below, a treeless ridgeline, where the wind has sculpted the snow into a precarious, overhanging cornice, two men trudge along a footpath carved into the hillside. Thirty-one-year-old Les Morlang, dressed for work in rubber boots, hard hat, and overalls, walks alongside his colleague, Jack Ritter. Les is a mechanic and electrician at the Bessie G., one of the many gold and silver mines that run through the hills of La Plata County.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  I would do all the mechanical and mill right, like setting up the air system and electrical and water. You have generators outside the mine, by the portal, and that runs everything inside. So my job was to keep all the motors going and things electrical. We had a pretty nice mine.

• 8:10John Hopkins?

  Les and Jack have come to check on the progress of a work crew who are supposed to be finishing the construction of a snowshed over the mine's entrance, known as the portal. When completed, the snowshed will protect the portal from snow, enabling the miners to work longer into the unforgiving winter months.

• 8:30John Hopkins?

  But when Jack and Les arrive at the work site, they make an unwelcome discovery. The rest of the crew has already packed up and left, presumably driven down the mountain by the adverse weather.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  And we come back from town and that was about one o'clock, two o'clock before we got back to the mine and nobody was there. Everybody had left. We were kind of at a standstill, but they were supposed to have this done. And it wasn't and Jack asked me, he said, you want to try it? Of course, I'm all in. I'm just a kid.

• 9:07John Hopkins?

  If you want something done right and more to the point, done quickly, do it yourself. And so Jack and Les get to work, anxious to make the most of the three remaining hours of daylight. Les gets behind the wheel of a loader while Jack fills the bucket with timber. Les then begins ferrying the wood up to the mine's entrance, trundling along the rutted track from the lumber pile to the mineshaft.

• 9:34John Hopkins?

  As he steers the vehicle, Les glances up at the frigid chalk-colored sky.

• 9:40John Hopkins?

  It feels like it could start snowing again any minute. They'd better get a move on. The last thing they want is to get stranded up here.

• 9:50John Hopkins?

  Les Morlang was born and raised in nearby Silverton, and just like the hills of southwest Colorado, he is tough, rugged, and weather hardened.

• 10:02John Hopkins?

  The son of a livestock farmer, Les spent much of his boyhood helping out on the ranch, rounding up cattle and harvesting sugar beets.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Well, I grew up on a farm here locally and we've been here all our lives. I had two brothers and one sister and our family wasn't that tight-knit. My mom and dad didn't talk that much. I didn't realize that dad was just hanging in there till we graduated and then they were getting a divorce, which they did.

• 10:34John Hopkins?

  Though family life wasn't always harmonious, Les describes happy memories of childhood, wrangling cattle on horseback during the week, and racing motorcycles on weekends.

• 10:45John Hopkins?

  At school, Les wasn't exactly a model student. Growing up on a farm, the emphasis was always on the practical. Traditional academic subjects could feel a little abstract, too far removed from the hard-scrabble reality of life.

• 11:02John Hopkins?

  As soon as he was old enough, Les left school and entered the world of work. He trained as a land surveyor doing topographical mapping for a local firm. The job suited Les, appealing to his logical, pragmatic mind.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  So that was my formal education, was about eight years of surveying. I really liked it because English, when you go to school, makes no sense. Mathematics work, and you can do it from different directions and make it work. So I love mathematics, but I'm really a mechanic at heart.

• 11:43John Hopkins?

  In 1974, aged 20, Les married his high school sweetheart, Anita. A few years later, the couple moved from the Silverton area to the town of Green River, Utah, where Les took a job as a mechanic.

• 11:57John Hopkins?

  Though just four hours northwest of Silverton, Green River is a world apart, a dusty, one-stop-light town in the middle of Utah's high desert.

• 12:09John Hopkins?

  But as it happened,

• 12:12John Hopkins?

  wouldn't stay here for long. One day, Les got a call out of the blue from an old family friend back in Colorado, a guy named Jack Ritter.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  I got to know Jack, who Jeff, his son, and my younger brother were buddies. Girl chasers together. We were all pretty close. All of their family and all of our family got along well. It's better than family because they weren't related to you. Jackie was always quiet, always a listener.

• 12:48John Hopkins?

  Jack is a veteran Colorado miner turned contractor. These days, he runs a company that buys up old, disused mines and gets them operational again, using modern methods to extract every last ounce of remaining low-grade ore.

• 13:07John Hopkins?

  Ever since the discovery of gold in Colorado in 1858, enterprising fortune seekers have set up mining operations in the foothills of the southern Rockies.

• 13:17John Hopkins?

  By 1985, after more than a century of intensive extraction, most of those operations have closed. The region is littered with abandoned mines.

• 13:27John Hopkins?

  However, with the advent of modern mining and refining technology, a new industry of mine reclamation has flourished in recent years. Mines deemed exhausted and no longer profitable have been given a new lease of life by the next generation of fortune seekers. People like Jack Ritter.

• 13:47John Hopkins?

  When Jack rang Les, he told him he'd recently acquired the Bessie G, an old gold and silver mine in La Plata County, inactive since the 1950s. Jack told Les that unlike most of the sites he reclaimed, the Bessie G was nowhere close to being exhausted.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Jack knew about so many mines and everything. He knew this one had the best record and amount, and there was never a mother lode found, so it's still there. Back then, we could get two and a half ounces per ton, and that was mineable. That was... we could make money.

• 14:28John Hopkins?

  Jack wanted Les to come and work for him as a millwright, a kind of industrial mechanic stroke electrician. Jack made a persuasive pitch, but Les wasn't convinced right away. The job would be unpaid until such a time as the mine started making a profit, which could take months.

• 14:48John Hopkins?

  After giving it some thought, Les presented Jack with his terms.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  We were working for ourselves for free. And I had a new house that I built, and I told Jack I'd come and work for him if my house is paid for. If you pay the payment, I can handle everything else. And that was the deal.

• 15:17John Hopkins?

  Now, it's three years later, and still the Bessie G hasn't yielded enough gold to make a profit. With only a year left on their contract, the pressure is mounting for Jack and Les to find the motherload. That elusive deposit of untapped ore, rumored to dwell somewhere inside the mountain. If they don't, then everything they've invested, all this time, money, and perspiration, will be for naught.

• 15:43John Hopkins?

  It's why they're working so hard to keep the mine open through the winter. They simply can't afford to down tools until spring.

• 15:51John Hopkins?

  But as they work on the snowshed, trying to maximize every second of daylight, nightfall isn't the only thing nipping at their heels. A further blizzard is forecast, and if they don't protect the mine's entrance before it hits, it will mean another unaffordable setback.

• 16:08John Hopkins?

  Les sweats through his work clothes as he stands in the bucket of the loader, raised high off the ground, laying lengths of wood across the unfinished frame of the snowshed.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  We have a loader, it's on tracks. And we would carry our wood on it, and then we would raise it up with it, and that's where I was. I was inside the bucket. Maybe like ten feet off the ground, ten, twelve feet off the ground.

• 16:37John Hopkins?

  Jack reaches down for another length of timber. He turns and, stretching, passes it up to Les.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  He handed it up to me and all of a sudden, there was a little blast of snow, about a pickup load. And it knocked me down in the bucket, and Jack called, "You all right?" "Yeah, I'm all right." Everything, and there was our warning, we didn't take heed.

• 17:03John Hopkins?

  Shaken, Les gets to his feet inside the bucket, blinking snow from his eyes. He squints up the mountain, beyond the portal, but there's no sign of a bigger avalanche following this little one.

• 17:16John Hopkins?

  The vibrations of the loader must have dislodged some surface powder, a loose drift, no harm done.

• 17:24John Hopkins?

  Brushing snow from the folds of his overalls, Les gets back to work. A few minutes go by.

• 17:32John Hopkins?

  Jack hands Les another length of timber, the final one, and just as he goes to place the plank, the earth rumbles and growls. But because of the engine of the loader, a constant thrumming in their ears, Les and Jack don't hear it coming. Not until it's too late. In the fraction of a second before the avalanche hits, there is time only to adopt a half-baked brace position, to instinctively turn from the roaring white cloud and raise their arms to protect their faces and windpipes. And then,

• 18:10John Hopkins?

  the mountain engulfs them.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  I don't remember. I really don't know what was going on or anything. You're just fighting for a breath.

• 18:28Speaker 00

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• 18:58John Hopkins?

  This October on the Noiser Podcast Network. Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma Continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four.

• 19:41John Hopkins?

  Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

• 19:52John Hopkins?

  It's about 5:00 PM on November 17, 1985. In the La Plata Mountains of southwest Colorado, the blizzard that has been threatening all afternoon has finally made landfall. Snow streams from the sky, an opaque cascade that twists in the wind.

• 20:12John Hopkins?

  On a remote mountainside, below a curved, treeless ridge, a few lengths of timber lie scattered across the surface of the frozen ground. A mechanical loader, still emitting smoke, has toppled onto its side and is slowly being covered over by the steadily falling snow.

• 20:29John Hopkins?

  But of the two men who were working here just moments ago, there isn't a trace. The avalanche, a massive one, struck without warning, consigning the men to a grim fate: a swift burial and an unmarked grave.

• 20:47John Hopkins?

  Meanwhile, somewhere beneath the surface, Les Morlang is being crushed by the weight of 50 feet of compacted snow and ice.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  My hard hat and everything and life was back behind me. At first, you're just trying to breathe, but the pressure on your chest doesn't allow you anything.

• 21:09John Hopkins?

  A pulverizing force tightens around Les's body, blocking his airways and squeezing the life from his lungs. His mouth and nostrils are packed with snow, inducing violent coughs and spasms. A horrible pressure builds inside his head as the giant mound of frozen precipitation settles above him.

• 21:31John Hopkins?

  Fortunately, Les's hands are up around his face, not pinned down by his side, and by slowly curling and uncurling his fingers, he is able to carve out an air pocket, a few centimeters around his mouth and nose, enabling a trickle of oxygen to pass between his gritted teeth. He hungrily sucks air. A string of spittle drips down his face.

• 21:57John Hopkins?

  It is only then that Les realizes something. He is upside down, his legs awkwardly splayed above his head.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Because of the pressure on you, you're kind of like in a weightless situation. You can't tell where the gravity is unless you have some speed. So anyway, that saliva ran and then I realized, well, I'm upside down.

• 22:20John Hopkins?

  Les hangs there, suspended and immobile, as his head fills with blood and his heart thumps against his ribs in a staccato drumbeat of panic.

• 22:30John Hopkins?

  There is a tingling numbness as the pervasive cold starts leaking into his body. An almost imperceptible luminescence filters down from the surface, tinting the snow around Les's face an eerie glacial blue. High above him, he can hear the distant rumble of the loader. Does that mean Jack is up there somewhere, maybe trying to dig him out? With all the energy his compressed lungs can muster, Les bellows Jack's name.

• 23:00John Hopkins?

  But in the cramped space, his voice is a stunted, echoless yelp, immediately snuffed out by the snow.

• 23:08John Hopkins?

  He tries again, each cry for help tinged with ever greater uncertainty.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Not knowing if he's alive or dead, or somebody's gonna help you, you know? There was nobody else up there. That's a pretty lonely feeling up there. You might as well be out in the Alaska tundra with no help. Nobody can get to you.

• 23:38John Hopkins?

  Buried beneath fifty feet of freezing snow, Les's body is being put through immense stress.

• 23:45John Hopkins?

  As oxygen levels drop, the heart beats faster to compensate, increasing the body's need for air and thus creating a deadly vicious cycle.

• 23:56John Hopkins?

  Nearly two-thirds of avalanche victims die this way, asphyxiating in a fit of claustrophobic panic, and few will survive more than half an hour.

• 24:06John Hopkins?

  After several minutes of fruitless yelling, Les's initial instinct to call for help has given way to a new resolve.

• 24:14John Hopkins?

  If Jack isn't able to dig him out, he is going to have to do it himself.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  The loader thankfully told me which way to go. And then after I kinda got adjusted and then got my torso free to breathe, that's when I decided I could dig out.

• 24:34John Hopkins?

  Les begins the less than straightforward task of flipping his body the right way around.

• 24:42John Hopkins?

  He writhes and wriggles, flexing every muscle and straining every ligament, trying to make some room around his torso.

• 24:50John Hopkins?

  Compressed by the weight of the avalanche, the snow has started to set around him like a plaster cast, hardening into thick cement.

• 24:59John Hopkins?

  Finally, after a solid shift of concentrated squirming, there is enough room around Les's chest to free his elbows.

• 25:09John Hopkins?

  With the full use of his arms, he bashes away more snow, building a pocket of space large enough to rotate his body the full 180 degrees. Then angled slightly to the horizontal, he starts to dig.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  What I'd do is after I got my torso loose a little bit, so I could kinda turn and start digging on my incline. And I had a little system. I'd reach up, one, two, three would push it down to my knees, and four was tack it.

• 25:47John Hopkins?

  Soon, Les establishes a rhythm. He loosens the snow above his head, pulls it right down, then tramples it with his boots, and so on. Loosen, pull, trample. Loosen, pull, trample. Repeat.

• 26:05John Hopkins?

  The hours pile up. Les's hands, shoulders, and forearms become machine-like in their consistency.

• 26:14John Hopkins?

  Intense physical exertion is one way to stave off the immediate effects of hypothermia, but it won't protect his vulnerable extremities. And it's Les' hands that soon start to suffer the most. He is wearing a pair of galvanized rubber work gloves, but after several hours of digging, his fingers feel like raw, bloody stumps. He has to periodically stop and warm them by shoving them inside his overalls and tucking them under his armpits.

• 26:44John Hopkins?

  At one stage, he starts ripping pieces off his t-shirt.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  I was ripping up my shirt as I'd go along, and then when they'd get colder, then I'd go for a back piece, rip it out, and wrap them around my hands.

• 27:01John Hopkins?

  Somewhere above his head, day turns to night, then passes into day again. And still Les keeps digging.

• 27:11John Hopkins?

  By now, the loader has fallen silent. All Les has to keep him company is the sound of his own labored breathing.

• 27:18John Hopkins?

  There are times when it seems like he could dig forever and never get out.

• 27:24John Hopkins?

  But whenever his determination begins to waver, he pauses, steals himself, and continues, focusing on survival not for his own sake, but for the sake of others.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  Think the flashbacks of seeing my son and my wife. I had to get out. I had to get out. I just... I couldn't leave her with a new house payment and all that stuff. Just thinking about that and, you know, all the promises you make when you're on the edge of dying.

• 27:55John Hopkins?

  Les perseveres. He isn't especially religious, but sometimes he prays aloud, issuing solemn vows to the heavens, promising that if he gets out of this alive, he will live a good life no matter what.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  You're praying hard and promising the good Lord that you're gonna get out and take care of your family.

• 28:18John Hopkins?

  After 21 hours, Les has squirmed, wriggled, and clawed his way to within just a few meters of the surface. He can see the murky gray light above, leaking down through the crystalline particles.

• 28:34John Hopkins?

  Almost there. He reaches up, grasping for purchase, but the snow here is softer and collapses under his touch. He has to keep pushing it down hard, compacting it with his boots and using it as a platform to push off from.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  I was getting close to the outside, so I'm trying to jump some stuff, but there's nothing to get a hold of. So I'm down in this hole and I'm just flapping my wings like that, trying to get out.

• 29:04John Hopkins?

  At last, Les punches through the layer above his head, and for the first time in nearly a day, he is not greeted by more snow, but a sliver of gray sky. Adrenaline surging, he heaves himself through the hole and collapses in a gasping, shuddering heap. He is out.

• 29:26John Hopkins?

  Quickly, he looks around for Jack, but there's no one here. The blizzard is still raging, and horizontal snow buffets his exposed face.

• 29:37John Hopkins?

  He calls for help, but no rescue party would venture up the mountain in these conditions. No one is coming. Les shields his eyes from the blinding snow, which clumps in his eyelashes as the wind shrieks and howls in his ears.

• 29:52John Hopkins?

  A grim truth dawns on him. His grueling ordeal is still far from over.

• 29:59John Hopkins?

  He is going to have to survive another night on the mountain.

• 30:07Speaker 00

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• 30:37John Hopkins?

  This October on the Noiser Podcast Network. Real Dictators Returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world.

• 31:08John Hopkins?

  In Jane Austen's stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews, and in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in the Sign of Four. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

• 31:30John Hopkins?

  It's about 5:00 PM. Les kneels in the snow, his head bent against the blizzard. He has managed to retrieve some old receipts and a matchbook from a pocket of his overalls. Incredibly, the matches are still fit for purpose. Though the same can't be said for Les's body, which is frozen stiff.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Had matches, but my hands wouldn't work. I did get the matches straight and burn some of the receipts, but I couldn't get any fire or anything going.

• 32:04John Hopkins?

  Giving up on the fire, Les wraps his arms around himself and hunches over, convulsing, violent shivers.

• 32:13John Hopkins?

  These must be 60 mile an hour winds.

• 32:17John Hopkins?

  He peers around for somewhere to shelter from the storm, one of the mine's outbuildings or vehicles. But the avalanche has buried everything, erasing all traces of the Bessie G.

• 32:30John Hopkins?

  He looks down at the hole in the snow he has just emerged from. It seems crazy, but he was warmer in there than he is out here.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  The storm was still cooking pretty good. Only thing I could do, dig back in.

• 32:45John Hopkins?

  And so, with no other option, Les does the unthinkable. He begins digging himself back into the snow pile.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Took my helmet off, left my liner on, took it off and dug with that. So I dug back in and up just a little, and then waited for the next day.

• 33:06John Hopkins?

  Les carves out a hollow and hunkers down in his snow cave. It could be hours before the storm passes. He shivers and rocks and tries everything he can to conserve his strength and body heat.

• 33:20John Hopkins?

  At one point, he hears something strange. A sudden clamor of snuffles and squeaks.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  There was a pika giving me heck that evening. The little rabbit rats, they're called pikas. I guess I got into some of his storage, I suppose. He was chirping, just chirping at me, but man, was that ever so inviting to hear that.

• 33:51John Hopkins?

  After his long, lonely, silent struggle, the noisy protestations of the pika are an odd source of comfort. A reminder that even here, in the most inhospitable of environments, life clings on. Eventually, soothed by the squeaking rodent and completely drained by the exertions of the last 24 hours, Les manages to drift off.

• 34:15John Hopkins?

  But he hasn't been asleep for long when a different sound startles him awake.

• 34:21John Hopkins?

  A faint rumble, building to a climactic roar. It's another avalanche.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  I could hear it's kind of like crackling and slide sound. And of course, I'm in my little hole and I guess I figured it would mask me, but no, it's sliding over the top of the old snow.

• 34:47John Hopkins?

  Les braces for the inevitable, but it never arrives. Instead of crushing him, the loose snowpack slides down the mountain in one big chunk, passing over the top of his cave. In fact, this second avalanche might prove to be a blessing in disguise.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  The second avalanche covered my hole, so it did me a favor. It closed my entrance off. That stopped any wind or anything. I'm sure that helped me survive.

• 35:20John Hopkins?

  It's hard to say how much snow has been deposited on top of him by this second avalanche, but he can worry about that in the morning. For now, insulated from the wind, Les huddles in his makeshift igloo and succumbs once again to the welcome oblivion of sleep.

• 35:41John Hopkins?

  When Les wakes, it's dawn. A cold, blue light leaks down through the drifts as the sun comes up. Once again, Les starts digging his way to the surface. This time, there's only about three feet burying him, and it doesn't take long to reach daylight.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  You know, I wouldn't up for much more digging. But anyway, I did, and then I could see that light again like a cloudy day. Yeah, you're just exuberant, you know, breaking out. I broke out and the sun was shining. Man, how awesome.

• 36:18John Hopkins?

  It is now bright and calm.

• 36:22John Hopkins?

  It has finally stopped snowing, and the wind has lost its ferocity.

• 36:27John Hopkins?

  Again, he looks around for Jack, but maybe his friend has already made it down the mountain. Maybe he has already sent a search and rescue team to come and look for him here at the mine site.

• 36:37John Hopkins?

  But Les is in no mood to hang around.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  I'm like, okay, that's it. I'm out of here. I'm not gonna wait for anybody, which was the wrong thing to do. If I'd have stayed there, they'd have seen me.

• 36:51John Hopkins?

  Les gets to his feet and begins making his way downhill. To the east, the mountain flattens into a wide alpine valley. If Les has his bearings right, there is a creek somewhere down there which will be able to follow back to civilization. He staggers through the deep, fresh deposits, eager to reach the compacted snow further down the slope.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Anyway, I made it down to the hard pack. I couldn't really tell you how. I rolled some. I skidded a lot in my rubber suit. That helped. So I made it down to the hard pack.

• 37:26John Hopkins?

  Les picks his way down the mountain.

• 37:30John Hopkins?

  Frostbite gnaws at his fingers and toes, and hypothermia has turned his skin a cadaverous gray. He looks like a dead man walking.

• 37:40John Hopkins?

  Soon he reaches the timberline. Storm-battered pines shiver in the gentle gusts, shedding clumps of snow from their branches. Les weaves through the trees, his sights set on the valley below.

• 37:56John Hopkins?

  He's made it a few kilometers when he hears something: the pulsing thump, thump, thump of propellers. A moment later, he sees a helicopter flying towards him, close enough to feel its downdrafts. He screams through the roar of the engine, frantically waving his arms above his head.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  It was probably seventy feet from me flying up, and I'm above them watching them go up the hill.

• 38:25John Hopkins?

  But the aircraft doesn't stop. It continues up the mountain, missing Les completely. Furious, he has no choice but to continue his long stagger downhill.

• 38:39John Hopkins?

  About half an hour later, another noise stops him in his tracks. At first it sounds like a thunderclap, echoing off the surrounding peaks and jostling the branches of the pines. But after a closer listen, it becomes clear what's going on. They're setting off explosive charges, trying to trigger more avalanches in order to clear the way for rescuers.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  I'm walking down there and I hear these explosions going off, and I knew what they were doing because it was like screaming and scratching and a horrible noise.

• 39:19John Hopkins?

  As the explosions reverberate around him, shaking the mountain beneath his feet, Les shelters behind a sturdy-looking tree and braces himself. He has already survived two avalanches. Now, in the process of trying to save him, his would-be rescuers are about to set off a third, and surely this one really will finish him off.

• 39:47John Hopkins?

  Les cowers behind the tree's trunk. Every fiber of his body tense as he awaits the third avalanche. Small stones and fine-grained snow skitter down the mountain as the explosive charges detonate. There is a whooshing sound, and Les turns to see a monstrous white cloud hurtling through the trees. But thankfully, it's some distance away.

• 40:12John Hopkins?

  He watches as the avalanche thunders by. Once the vibrations have stopped, he steps out from behind the tree and continues downhill.

• 40:22John Hopkins?

  Perhaps his luck is finally shifting.

• 40:26John Hopkins?

  Suddenly, he hears the chopper approaching again, swooping into view from beyond the curve of the mountain. Determined not to let the rescuers miss him again, Les clambers to the top of a boulder and screams into the deafening roar of propellers.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  When I got up on top of that rock, and here they come around the corner, that beautiful music. The chopper's coming right up to me, I raised my hands up and butched Nolan on a little platycan. Sheriff, he raised his hand, so I knew they seen me.

• 41:00John Hopkins?

  The helicopter swings around before coming into land on a rocky ledge, the granular snow billowing in the rotor wash.

• 41:08John Hopkins?

  Les stumbles over, limping across the ground, until he's close enough to hurl himself forward, reach out with both hands, and grab hold of one of the helicopter's skids.

• 41:19John Hopkins?

  Not until he can feel the solid steel in his hands does he allow himself to breathe again.

• 41:26John Hopkins?

  He's made it.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  When you shop Kroger Delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. From delicious produce to everyday essentials, enjoy the convenience of delivery and the trusted selection you've come to know from Kroger. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of $50 or more with your digital coupon. Restrictions apply, see site for details. Kroger, fresh for everyone.

• 42:00John Hopkins?

  This October on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four.

• 42:42John Hopkins?

  Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  I hated for the hospital. They were laughing and crying and happy and I was chewing their ass or something horrible. Because I'm out of my mind. I'm asking about Jack and they're not telling me anything.

• 43:09John Hopkins?

  He fires questions at the rescuers. Where's Jack? Was he rescued first? What condition is he in? But all he gets are sympathetic looks.

• 43:22John Hopkins?

  A few hours later, Les is lying in a hospital bed, his frost-bitten limbs wrapped in gauze, when somebody comes in to update him about Jack.

• 43:32John Hopkins?

  Les sits up.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  When they found Jack, he was beside the loader, reaching up towards the control seat to let me down. And it looked like the weight of the snow pushed him down against the track and it hit his head and so he went pretty quick.

• 44:02John Hopkins?

  It turns out Les was the fortunate one. He will have to process the tragic death of his friend later. Because as he recuperates in hospital, the full extent of his own injuries becomes clear.

• 44:15John Hopkins?

  The doctor who first examines Les informs him that his fingers may need to be amputated. The frostbite is too far along. Necrosis has set in.

• 44:27John Hopkins?

  This is a shattering diagnosis.

• 44:31John Hopkins?

  Les is a mechanic. Without his fingers, he doesn't have a livelihood. But before he is wheeled into surgery, his wife Anita manages to contact Les's own doctor, who intervenes at the last minute.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  The doctor over there wanted to cut him off. So Anita called my doctor and he got a hold of that doctor. And told him, "Don't you touch him one little bit till I see it." So with that information, I thought, "I can get out of here."

• 45:05John Hopkins?

  Before he is officially discharged, Les has a group of friends smuggle him out of his ward and transfer him to a different hospital closer to home. There, the doctors manage to avoid complete amputation.

• 45:20John Hopkins?

  It's a major relief. But even so, he has a long, difficult road to recovery ahead of him.

• 45:28John Hopkins?

  Looking back now, Les says that he wouldn't have coped without the love and support of his wife.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  The best thing was being married to Anita. That probably made us closer than ever. And you never know you could get closer. But you can when you're in that kind of situation. And she took care of me. That was... I was like a little infant, basically.

• 45:59John Hopkins?

  In the end, Les does lose a few toes and some sections of his fingers.

• 46:05John Hopkins?

  Ultimately, it's a small price to pay for survival.

• 46:09John Hopkins?

  But even after most of his frost-bitten limbs recover, Les is left to deal with a wider fallout of the avalanche. The wounds that will never totally heal.

• 46:20John Hopkins?

  Jack Ritter's death is devastating to all who knew and loved him. For Les, the survivor's guilt is overwhelming at times. Were it not for Anita, he admits, he might well have descended into a very dark place.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  Even after everything was all done, I didn't know if I should be alive or not, or wanna be. But when you have somebody like her, it's easy. We're high school sweethearts. We've been married fifty-two years. I don't know why, somehow we were definitely made for each other.

• 46:54John Hopkins?

  As the years pass, Les tries to honor Jack's memory by amulating him, by following the example set by his old friend.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  I have to learn to listen more and not talk. That was one of the best things that come out of it, was being like Jack. Cause he's gone.

• 47:20John Hopkins?

  Forty-one years later, Les and Anita still live in the hills of southwest Colorado. On clear days, they can see all the way across to the shallow curved ridge in the La Plata Mountains, where the sound of machinery once rumbled from the depths of the Bessie G.

• 47:36John Hopkins?

  The motherlode was never found. The mine was shuttered for good not long after the avalanche of eighty-five. But Les says he no longer needs to extract gold from the ground because he is already rich in so many other ways.

• 47:52John Hopkins?

  When he was under the snow, it was thoughts of his family that got Les through. Looking back now, he reiterates the importance of persevering through adversity, even when the odds seem hopeless.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Said it a thousand times, don't ever give up. There's always hope. If you can move that little finger, move it. That's what helped me. It may seem like the end of the world, but don't give up. Just try.

• 48:29John Hopkins?

  Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Rebecca Hay. In May 2016, the 22-year-old gets a unique opportunity: the chance to enjoy a private hot-air balloon flight over the English countryside.

• 48:44John Hopkins?

  But the trip proves to be memorable for all the wrong reasons, when somehow the balloon becomes dangerously entangled in a set of power lines.

• 48:53John Hopkins?

  And this is just the start of Rebecca's ordeal. What follows is a harrowing battle to defy death in the most challenging of circumstances. It will feature lethal high voltage, a ferocious outbreak of fire, and a stomach-churning descent back to earth.

• 49:10John Hopkins?

  That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen right now, without waiting and without ads, by joining Noiser Plus.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  When you shop Kroger Delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. From delicious produce to everyday essentials, enjoy the convenience of delivery and the trusted selection you've come to know from Kroger. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of $50 or more with your digital coupon. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger: Fresh for Everyone.

• 49:48John Hopkins?

  This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History Of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews, and in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four.

• 50:31John Hopkins?

  Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.