Glissading Gone Wrong: Into the Abyss

On a remote mountain, the sun glints brilliantly off the snow. Two specks are visible on the slope - two men. One stationary, the other moving at speed. The second man is Dan Wenker. He’s sliding down the mountain, over the pristine white powder. But in mere moments he’ll be 60 feet under the ice, staring up at just a slither of daylight. How did he get here, and how on earth will he get out?… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Rhys Bevan | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound design by Matt Peaty | Assembly edit by Carla Flores, Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cian Ryan-Morgan. For more on this story read Dan’s book Staying on Guard. 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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• 0:32Speaker 01

  You sound horrible.

• 0:33Speaker 02

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• 0:36Speaker 03

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• 1:02John Hopkins?

  It's late morning on the 30th of June 2022. On the lower slopes of the Grand Teton, the tallest peak in the Teton Mountain Range in Wyoming, the sun reflects brilliantly off bright white snow.

• 1:16John Hopkins?

  This rugged landscape that sits just 10 miles south of Yellowstone Park is famous for its breathtaking climbs. Today, it's living up to the hype. The air is clear and crisp, and the peaks tower imperiously into an impressive blue sky. A blustery wind whips across the glacial quarry, the only sound in an otherwise vast and silent expanse. Up here, in the summer months, the craggy rock formations cradle pockets of snow, like water cupped in a giant's hand.

• 1:50John Hopkins?

  In one gully sits an immaculate snow field, its smooth surface glistening invitingly.

• 1:57John Hopkins?

  Onto this pristine white powder crunch two pairs of boots as a duo of hikers pick their way down the mountain.

• 2:07John Hopkins?

  Suddenly, they stop.

• 2:11John Hopkins?

  Rosy-cheeked and breathing hard, the two men gaze down the slope, a look of anticipation growing across their faces. They glanced at each other and exchanged small, excited smiles.

• 2:24John Hopkins?

  The conditions are perfect.

• 2:27John Hopkins?

  For the next section of their descent, these two climbers aren't going to walk. They're going to slide.

• 2:35Speaker 06

  Glissading is something that mountaineers do, and you glissade on snow so you can descend very quickly, and it involves just sitting on your butt, your legs are out. You take an ice axe off to your side, you press it down to control your speed, and it's a whole lot more fun than hiking, and you just slide down, and you could slide down sometimes 1,000 feet or so.

• 2:58John Hopkins?

  The two men sit, positioning their walking poles across their torsos like miniature paddles, ready to dig into the ice and anchor them should they lose control.

• 3:09John Hopkins?

  They turn to each other. Someone needs to go first.

• 3:14John Hopkins?

  Slowly, with an awkward shuffle, the taller of the two men begins the descent.

• 3:20John Hopkins?

  Soon, he's in full toboggan mode, sledding down the hill on his backside, grinning from ear to ear. After a fair distance, he stops and gestures to his friend that it's safe. The second climber follows with equally childlike glee.

• 3:37John Hopkins?

  They repeat this pattern until the taller man glissades down to a rocky outcrop and stops. As before, his friend watches from above and sees his partner give the high sign to say it's safe.

• 3:51John Hopkins?

  Or at least, he thinks he does.

• 3:55John Hopkins?

  Immediately, the second hiker is picking up speed. It's steeper here. His walking poles aren't slowing him down. He is hurtling towards his friend, losing control with every meter.

• 4:07John Hopkins?

  The snow kicks up around him in white, dusty bursts. Just as it looks like he's going to slam into the rock and come to a painful stop, he flies clean through a small gap in the outcrop and disappears.

• 4:27John Hopkins?

  The taller man, a Washingtonian in his 60s by the name of Jim Zingerman, watches in horror as his friend, 62-year-old Dan Wenker, slides right past him and plunges off the edge of a cliff.

• 4:40Speaker 06

  From Jim's point of view, I disappeared. From my point of view, went over there, screamed something out, and started falling. It's like when you fall when you're in a dream, where you're falling and you really don't know where you're going to land. I'm in pretty big trouble here.

• 5:05John 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.

• 5:26John Hopkins?

  In this episode, we meet 62-year-old amateur mountaineer Dan Wenker. In June 2022, a small group of friends are taking on the Grand Teton in Wyoming, when adverse weather conditions forced Dan and his buddy Jim to abandon plans for the summit and head back down the mountain. Having hiked a fair way, the pair decide to slide down the snowy stretch of slope. As Dan skids towards his friend, he loses control and plunges into a deep, glacial ravine carved by a waterfall and known as an ice moat.

• 6:01Speaker 06

  I got the wind knocked out of me when I hit that wall on the ice, and when I was starting to dropping, started banging around a little bit and got knocked unconscious.

• 6:10John Hopkins?

  Plummeting into icy darkness, survival from here will be miraculous. And when Dan comes to and takes in his surroundings, it's clear the fall was just the start.

• 6:22Speaker 06

  It's pitch black. There's a raging waterfall on the right of me. I can feel an ice wall behind me. This sheer rock wall is in front of me, and as I looked up, I could see a small dot, which is the sunlight.

• 6:39Speaker 06

  There is no way I'm making it out of here.

• 6:42John Hopkins?

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

• 7:11John Hopkins?

  It's June the 28th, 2022. Beneath the white underbellies of passenger planes taking off into the expansive Utah skies, a car sidles into the short-stay drop-off at Salt Lake City Airport.

• 7:25John Hopkins?

  62-year-old Dan Wenker parks the car, climbs out, and heads to the back to fetch his wife's luggage.

• 7:33John Hopkins?

  It's just a quick goodbye this morning. They'll see each other soon. They've been in town for a wedding, their daughter Caroline's no less, and now Dan's wife is heading home. But not Dan. He's staying on just for a few days to partake in one of his favorite pastimes. Dan hands his wife her suitcase, and as he does, his expression changes.

• 7:58Speaker 06

  I don't usually have this conversation with her, but looked at her and said, you know, if anything happens to me on this climb, don't call Caroline and Anthony on their honeymoon.

• 8:09John Hopkins?

  A committed family man, Dan doesn't want to bother or concern his daughter during such a special time, even if he runs into trouble on his upcoming climb.

• 8:19John Hopkins?

  Despite this slightly nervy comment to his wife, there is no particular reason to think things will go wrong. Dan is careful, skilled, and won't be tackling the climb alone.

• 8:31John Hopkins?

  Plus, it promises to be a doozy.

• 8:35Speaker 06

  The Grand Teton, if you've ever been to Wyoming, I equate it to the Mona Lisa. When you're out there, you feel as though the mountain is looking at you from every angle. You know, it's an epic peak, and it's something that's on most climbers' to-do list.

• 8:51John Hopkins?

  Dan is an ardent amateur mountaineer, and as luck would have it, his daughter arranged her wedding within striking distance of a peak that he's always wanted to climb. The Grand Teton in Wyoming stands at nearly 14,000 feet tall, soaring above the Teton Mountain Range just near the town of Jackson. It's a formidable ascent.

• 9:14Speaker 06

  It's difficult. It involves, contrary to what our other mountaineering experiences were, where you could just hike up your own safety ropes, this involved a lot of technical climbing too for 1,000 feet up, and so it was a whole new experience.

• 9:29John Hopkins?

  Having kissed his wife goodbye, Dan drives straight from the airport up through Jackson to the base of the Grand Teton to meet the team.

• 9:38John Hopkins?

  The buccaneering adventurers heading into the mountain this morning are Dan, his two friends Jim Zingerman and Mark McGuire, and Mark's son Nicholas.

• 9:48John Hopkins?

  Today, Dan will have to rely on the experience of his fellow climbers, Mark and Nicholas in particular.

• 9:56Speaker 06

  Because it was a technical climb at the top, like the last 1,000 feet, is a peak that goes straight up. And so Mark McGuire and his son were very good technical climbers. He'd been climbing since he was in his teens. Jim and I were not, and so it was a good team of people.

• 10:16John Hopkins?

  Not only do Mark and Nicholas have the expertise, they've also got the gear, including something that will have great significance later on.

• 10:25Speaker 06

  Mark and his son had two climbing ropes. Because there were four of us, they prefer to, when you do technical climbing, to only have three people maximum on the rope. And so because there were four of us, Mark and his son brought two ropes instead of one.

• 10:43John Hopkins?

  Dan greets his fellow climbers in the shadow of the mountains. Giant, fang-like peaks surround them, angular, white and gray labyrinths that grow endlessly upwards to the clouds. The men check over their packs once more, steal a quick glance up at the snowy behemoths above, and share an excited grin. Nearly 14,000 foot up, there's their target, the top of the Grand Teton.

• 11:10Speaker 06

  There's four of us, and off the trail we went.

• 11:19John 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.

• 12:02John Hopkins?

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

• 12:14John Hopkins?

  The day begins with a hike up through the verdant lower section of the mountain. The four men are surrounded by summer greenery and vibrant wildflowers.

• 12:23John Hopkins?

  Glacial streams trickle happily past a steady tramp. And up ahead, a streak of spiky brown and green pine trees resembles a layer of earth from which the majestic, snow-capped summits seem to grow.

• 12:37John Hopkins?

  Their destination towers above them, drawing them on. And though the four walkers chat amiably, they keep their wits about them, checking the path for signs of bison, elk, and moose, as well as, more pertinently, bears and wolves.

• 12:53John Hopkins?

  They're entering the wild, a place where it pays to keep your wits about you.

• 12:58John Hopkins?

  Especially, given this is where they're going to sleep for the night.

• 13:02Speaker 06

  It's about a six-mile, 6,000 vertical foot gain to get up to this area called the Lower Saddle. We were going to camp there overnight. The weather looked great. We had bought a permit and built in an extra day, just in case something happened. It's what most people will do. They'll sleep at the Lower Saddle, wake up early in the morning, go up the mountain, come back down, then head back. And that was the plan.

• 13:28John Hopkins?

  The group makes it to the Lower Saddle in good time. It's a curved, rock-strewn mountain pass. They pitch their tents, eat dinner, and prepare to hunker down for the night. Just as they're settling in, however, Jim makes an admission.

• 13:46John Hopkins?

  He is exhausted. He has recently been unwell and has lost ground on his training.

• 13:52John Hopkins?

  The six-mile hike, coupled with the altitude, has taken it out of him. He doesn't think he'll make it any further.

• 13:59Speaker 06

  We said, okay, we'll just make the decision when we wake up. So we woke up the next day, and although the day was partly cloudy, you know, it was doable. But Nicholas looked on the weather app on his phone, and there were threatening thunderstorms in the area that day. Which you don't want to do is be on the top of a 13,700-foot peak with lightning going off, because then you're just a human lightning rod. So we decided that because we had the extra day built in, that we would just kind of hang around, camp that day, and then we would wake up the following day. By this point, that was the 29th. On the 30th, we would wake up at about 4:00 in the morning, and we would climb.

• 14:41John Hopkins?

  So the four men potter about for a day in the Lower Saddle, before settling down once more for a short sleep before the big hike. But Jim has now totally ruled himself out of tomorrow's climb. He still doesn't feel right. The others agree. It's no good continuing if something is off.

• 15:00John Hopkins?

  This is a treacherous and grueling climb. They've trained for it, yes, but they have varied levels of experience, and none of the three friends is getting any younger.

• 15:10John Hopkins?

  Not that Dan would have done anything like this as a young man. In the grand scheme of his life, mountaineering has been a relatively late discovery.

• 15:21John Hopkins?

  Dan grew up in Philadelphia, the second-largest city on the eastern seaboard. He was born into a hard-working Protestant family, his father a carpenter, his mother a nurse.

• 15:33John Hopkins?

  In the 60s and 70s, Philly was a city marred by urban decay and criminality, but shot through with blue-collar pride and strong communal and artistic spirit. With all its noise, smoke, and bustle, it was a far cry from the mountains of the American Northwest.

• 15:51Speaker 06

  I grew up in the city, and so I was a city guy pretty much my whole life. Really was a Boy Scout dropout, quite frankly. I only lasted two weeks in the Boy Scouts.

• 16:02John Hopkins?

  In his adult life, a series of job opportunities took Dan up north, and he and his family settled in the town of Yakima in Washington State.

• 16:12John Hopkins?

  Despite an active, sporty childhood, Dan's work in food sales and marketing had resulted in a sedentary adulthood. In 2010, as a big birthday loomed on the horizon, he resolved to make a change.

• 16:26Speaker 06

  When I was turning 50, decided that I needed to do something to stay in decent condition. When you live in the Northwest, you know, all the mountains are there. Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Mount Adams, and they're all 12,000 to 14,500-foot mountain peaks that are snow-covered all year round. One day, when I was driving from our town in Yakima over to the city of Seattle, which is about a two-and-a-half, three-hour drive, looked over at Mount Rainier on a clear day and thought, you know, what if I could climb that mountain?

• 17:03John Hopkins?

  It was a question that Dan was not qualified to answer. So he took it to a colleague who was.

• 17:10Speaker 06

  Went and talked to a guy in our office, said, you know, here's what I'm thinking of doing. I don't even know if this is possible or not, but what do I need to do and what's involved? And he said, you know, first of all, he said, it's doable. You know, for a guy like you, he said, it's going to be the toughest thing you've ever done.

• 17:27John Hopkins?

  A climber himself, Dan's colleague Pete didn't mince his words. But seeing that Dan was serious, he agreed to help him train.

• 17:36John Hopkins?

  The next six months consisted of grueling hikes in the hills around Yakima. By the end, Dan was 30 pounds lighter and in the best shape he'd been in years. He was ready to climb Mount Rainier. The problem was, when he eventually got to the top, he wanted to do it again.

• 17:53Speaker 06

  You know, the deal with Mount Rainier was supposed to be one and done. That was going to be the thing that would shock my system to get into good shape. From there, I'd figure out something else. But what happened instead, when I got to the top of the mountain, had the largest impact up until that point in my life. You know, other than the birth of my children and the marriage to my wife, you know, climbing Mount Rainier dramatically changed my life.

• 18:22John Hopkins?

  After a chance encounter with a neighbor, Dan joined a church climbing group. And soon he was spending his weekends traversing ridges and scrambling up his scarpments.

• 18:33John Hopkins?

  It wasn't just the exercise that appealed to him. He had found a community and was making new friends. Even when he and his family relocated to Atlanta, he stayed in touch with his fellow enthusiasts. It was on one of their regular skiing holidays that Dan was chatting to two of his climber friends, Jim Zingerman and Mark McGuire, and an idea formed.

• 18:55Speaker 06

  When we were skiing in Montana, we're talking at our ski trip and started to say, you know, we ought to climb the Grand Teton in Wyoming. And so I thought, well, this will be awesome.

• 19:07John Hopkins?

  Dan told his buddies that he was in. It worked out well, he said. His daughter was getting married in Salt Lake City in June, a short drive from the Teton mountain range. Everything was lining up nicely.

• 19:23John Hopkins?

  Right now, though, in his tent pitched in the Lower Saddle for the second night in a row, Dan is struggling to sleep. There was a little increase in wind as they were all going to bed, no more than expected. But this? This is something else.

• 19:40Speaker 06

  During the night, the wind started to increase. The first time I heard it, I heard, I was like, there must be a plane or a jet, you know, that's coming overhead. I heard this noise. And then the noise started getting louder and louder and louder. It gradually increased and increased and increased to the point where it was the strongest winds I had ever experienced.

• 20:05John Hopkins?

  At this point on the mountain, there is almost no foliage to speak of. The four men are hopelessly exposed to the howling gale.

• 20:15John Hopkins?

  Gusts reach fifty miles an hour. Dan has pegged his tent firmly into the ground and piled rocks on the canvas to anchor it. But even so, he lies tense, listening.

• 20:29John Hopkins?

  Suddenly, something tears. His tent stays have snapped in two. If he doesn't fix them, the canvas itself might rip. Dan fumbles around for his headlamp.

• 20:41Speaker 06

  I couldn't stand up because the winds were so strong. So on my hands and my knees with my headlight, retying the tent stays. And so gradually throughout the night, I had to go out and rety every one. The wind got so strong at one point, I was concerned my tent was going to explode and blow down the hill. And so I sat up on the side of the tent and would lean against the side and it would actually blow me over. And so at about three o'clock, the wind died down a little bit. At four o'clock in the morning, when Mark and Nicholas came by my tent, you know, after getting zero sleep and said, "Come on, Dan, we're going." Yeah, I said, "I'm not, I'm done."

• 21:27John Hopkins?

  It was due to be the most technical climb Dan had ever done. It was always going to be a challenge, even well-rested. Dan tells Mark and Nicholas he doesn't want to be a liability. Like Jim, he is going to sit it out. So the two remaining climbers set off in the 4:00 AM gloom, headed for the summit.

• 21:48John Hopkins?

  Almost as an afterthought, they drop something they've been carrying.

• 21:53John Hopkins?

  They won't need it now.

• 21:56Speaker 06

  Now, with the two of them, you know, we had talked about the extra climbing rope. And so they were going to take one rope, they were going to leave the other rope in the base camp.

• 22:07John Hopkins?

  When Jim wakes, he's surprised to find Dan still in camp. But he agrees last night's weather was brutal. He understands Dan's decision to back out.

• 22:18John Hopkins?

  The two men make some breakfast and wait to hear from the climbers.

• 22:23John Hopkins?

  A text comes through. Mark and Nicholas have reached the summit, but the winds are making the going tough. It'll be a while before they're back. Dan and Jim should head down on their own.

• 22:36John Hopkins?

  The two men pack up, but just as they're preparing to leave, they notice an extra item of kit lying forlorn in the middle of the camp.

• 22:45Speaker 06

  So you need to realize that our packs are probably loaded with tent and all our gear and everything are probably about forty pounds. And we're going to be hiking down the six miles, six thousand vertical feet. So at some points, it's kind of steep. So I'm looking at that rope. It's a seventy-meter rope that weighs about ten pounds. So imagine you're going to put ten more pounds in your pack. And I'm looking at the rope, Jim's kind of looking at the rope. And I'm thinking to myself, "I really don't want to carry that rope." And so Jim, you know, Jim Zingerman is probably, he's one of those guys. Everybody has a buddy that's the nicest guy in the world. And Jim is that guy. And so at that point, he goes, "I'll carry the rope."

• 23:29John Hopkins?

  Jim packs the rope, and they're ready to go.

• 23:34John Hopkins?

  But just before they set off, they spot someone nearing them on the rocky slopes. It's a park ranger passing on patrol.

• 23:43John Hopkins?

  The ranger stops and asks Dan and Jim if they're planning on glissading during their descent, on sliding down segments of the slopes.

• 23:52John Hopkins?

  They look at one another.

• 23:54Speaker 06

  We said we might be, and he said, "Well, if you're going to glissade, make sure you can see where you're going and make sure you control your speed." And we're polite to him, but Jim and I have been, you know, we've been climbers for about sixteen years now. We're like, "Hish, you know, we know what we're doing."

• 24:10John Hopkins?

  There are two ways down from the lower saddle on Grand Teton. You can either scale a steep wall known as the head wall or clamber down a narrow chute about one hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet wide with rocks on both sides.

• 24:24John Hopkins?

  Dan and Jim opt for the chute, as there's a bit of snow for their crampons to bite into underfoot. The chute is fairly steep, however, and the danger of slipping carries particular jeopardy.

• 24:38Speaker 06

  If you trip coming down there and slide with crampons on, you could very easily break your leg just because the crampons, the way they grip, could get caught.

• 24:53John Hopkins?

  As it turns out, the chute presents no problems. And as they descend further, the going gets easier.

• 25:02John Hopkins?

  The two men pack away their ice axes and crampons. The weather is so nice, they even take off their coats.

• 25:09John Hopkins?

  They're making good time. The beauty of the downhill hike in the glorious summer sunshine is more than making up for the disappointment of not reaching the summit.

• 25:19John Hopkins?

  Suddenly, Dan stops and points off to their right. A little below them is a pristine snow field.

• 25:28Speaker 06

  And I said, "You know, we really should be glissading down there instead of hiking down this rocky trail." Made our way out to the snow field, which the snow is soft and everything. It was a beautiful day, so we didn't unpack our ice axes. And we thought, well, we've seen people just glissade with hiking poles. And so we retracted the poles and we figured we'll use those.

• 25:51John Hopkins?

  Stretching out beneath them is a gorgeous, glittering slide of perfect snow, an ideal surface to speedily skid their way down the slope. Jim goes first, sitting and shimmying down the powder with ease. His hiking pole provides a rudimentary braking system should he need it.

• 26:11John Hopkins?

  Jim slides a short way down the slope before stopping and signaling back to his friend that it's safe. Dan follows, eventually stopping next to Jim and allowing him to go ahead again. And like this, the two men descend the Grand Teton on their backsides.

• 26:26Speaker 06

  It was a phenomenal day. We were laughing, we're high-fiving, we're out in the wilderness doing what we love. You're with your buddy. At that time, two sixty-two-year-old guys that were acting young, you know, and the crystal-clear blue skies. It was awesome.

• 26:42John Hopkins?

  The day continues in this enjoyable fashion, and the men make good progress. They're steadily making their way down the mountain. They reach another downward incline of pure white. About one hundred and fifty feet away, the pair spot a rocky outcrop, a collection of large boulders, and decide to head that way.

• 27:04John Hopkins?

  Dan watches as Jim glissades down the slope. He reaches the rocks, stops, and takes his pack off, perhaps taking a break. Dan peers down at his friend in the distance and waits patiently for the all-clear. Jim turns and signals.

• 27:22Speaker 06

  And I thought he gave me the high sign that it was all good. So off I went.

• 27:29John Hopkins?

  In fact, Jim is not signaling that everything is fine. There has been a serious misunderstanding. And now it's too late. Dan is already on his way. He rapidly picks up speed. He's going faster here than on his previous slides. He digs his walking pole into the ice, frozen particles flurrying around him. It doesn't slow him down.

• 27:54Speaker 06

  And about halfway to three-quarters of the way to where Jim was between these boulders, realized that I wasn't going to stop. But I'm going to hit one of these boulders. This is really going to hurt.

• 28:05John Hopkins?

  Dan grits his teeth, braces for impact, and then he spots something.

• 28:11Speaker 06

  I noticed that there's a little pathway between the rocks. And so I'm thinking, "Okay, I'm going to bounce off one of those rocks, and this gravel will at least stop my fall as well." Well, when I got to the rocks, that didn't happen. And what happened instead is, is I actually accelerated through the rocks. When I passed by Jim, I realized at that point that he was standing on the edge of a cliff.

• 28:42John 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.

• 29:13John Hopkins?

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

• 29:35John Hopkins?

  It's the 30th of June 2022.

• 29:39John Hopkins?

  At the base of a snow field on the side of the Grand Teton Mountain in Wyoming, there is a moment of suspense. A 62-year-old Dan Wenker's body begins to free form.

• 29:51John Hopkins?

  The grounding of snow and ice gives way to thin air as Dan glissades over the lip of a cliff and plunges into the dark chasm below.

• 30:01John Hopkins?

  There is a cry of shock, followed by a short, sharp thud.

• 30:06Speaker 06

  Screamed something out, banged into one side of the ice hole wall, and started to drop. I got the wind knocked on me when I hit that wall and the ice. Started banging around a little bit and got knocked unconscious.

• 30:21John Hopkins?

  Dan blacks out, and for a moment he plunges into nothingness.

• 30:30John Hopkins?

  When he comes around, he blinks in the darkness, trying to make sense of the sights and sounds of this new underworld. There is one striking, peculiar feature: the sound of raging water tumbling nearby.

• 30:44Speaker 06

  This waterfall, you know, it's so loud down there, and anybody that's been done any hiking or whatever, waterfalls are so loud. I couldn't hear anything but the waterfall.

• 30:56John Hopkins?

  Dan has fallen into a hole carved into the side of a glacier by the rushing waterfall. It's known as an ice moat.

• 31:05Speaker 06

  So the snow will cover an area, but as the thaw comes in the springtime, the waterfall will gradually eat away at the snow underneath the ice. And so I had fallen through at that hole, and later would find out that I dropped 60 feet.

• 31:21John Hopkins?

  As he tumbled, Dan hit the ice wall on one side of the hole, knocking him out before he plummeted further, slamming into rock and ice as he went.

• 31:31John Hopkins?

  Coming to, he finds himself perched perilously on a ledge three feet wide and 10 feet long. There is a wall of ice behind him, another to his left. In front of him is a sheer rock wall, and to his right, the waterfall.

• 31:47John Hopkins?

  Dan looks down at his body. Aside from the pounding in his head and sharp pain in his hip and lower leg, he seems relatively unscathed. No blood, nothing visibly broken. It's extraordinary. Dan lifts his eyes to the small point of light above. He begins to shout Jim's name, listening for a response. Hearing nothing but the roar of the waterfall, Dan scours his surroundings. He needs a plan, because already time is running out. He has survived the fall, but something else is now a much more present and deadly threat.

• 32:25Speaker 06

  I'm gradually getting wetter and wetter by this glacial-fed waterfall with the water tempers is probably about, you know, 33, 34 degrees. It's dark, it's cold, and I'm starting to shiver and start to think, you know, I'm in, I'm in pretty big trouble here.

• 32:45John Hopkins?

  The water splashing over him is punishingly cold, half a degree Celsius. It isn't long before he's wet through.

• 32:54John Hopkins?

  Dan touches the rock wall in front of him, searching for finger holds. It's slick with water, slippery to the touch.

• 33:02John Hopkins?

  Dan hugs himself, his body shaking vigorously. He breathes deeply, trying to stay calm.

• 33:09Speaker 06

  I'm shivering uncontrollably. I'm thinking that if there's any chance of getting out of here, I'm going to need my hands. So I'm putting my hands in my mouth, left and right. In the back of my mind, I start to hear, you know, "Remain calm, breathe easy." And the worst thing that can happen is for you to lose control, start freaking out. And then, in the back of my mind, I hear a voice that says, "Today is not your day to die."

• 33:35Speaker 06

  And while it was comforting at the time, I'm thinking to myself, "There is no way I'm making it out of here." And so I'm looking at this wall, I'm trying to feel for any kind of grip I can get to climb out of there. And it's all slippery, it's straight up, there's nothing I could grab, and started to think, "This is, this is kind of where it ends."

• 33:59Speaker 06

  And right about that time, in the dark, next to this raging waterfall, I feel a tap on my right shoulder.

• 34:15John Hopkins?

  The last 20 minutes have not been easy on Jim Zingerman. From his perspective, he just saw his friend die, plunging over an icy cliff right in front of him. There's no way he could have survived.

• 34:28John Hopkins?

  But then, he heard a tiny voice below, calling out his name.

• 34:36Speaker 06

  First thing that went through his mind is, "You know, my life is going to dramatically change." He said, "I just watched my buddy die before my very eyes." But after a short period of time, after Jim had given up hope, then he hears my voice. And he starts to think to himself, "Oh, great, he's alive." And then Jim, because he's a physician, starts to think to himself, "No, this is bad." He's down there, he's next to this waterfall, he's under this ice. And he started to think, "Now I'm going to have to listen to him call my name as he dies of hypothermia."

• 35:11John Hopkins?

  Jim calls back to his friend, but can't cut through the thunder of the falling water. He fumbles in his pocket for his phone and tries 911. There's no signal.

• 35:22John Hopkins?

  As he shoves his phone away with a tortured grimace, he scours his surroundings for anyone, anything that could help.

• 35:29John Hopkins?

  Nothing.

• 35:31John Hopkins?

  Jim kneads his forehead with his knuckles. Unable to contain his despair, he calls out, not to Dan down below, but rather someone up above.

• 35:41Speaker 06

  In a plea, he screams out in the wilderness and says, "God, I need you now." And when a lot of people, you know, people pray a lot of time, they say, you know, "I hope for this, I hope for that." But, you know, Jim's prayer, you know, tell me later was, it was a demanding prayer. You know, saying, "I need something, and I don't really have a whole lot of time." And so, in the back of his mind, after he screams out that prayer, what Jim would describe is to say that he heard the word rope.

• 36:11John Hopkins?

  Jim scrambles to open his backpack. With all the adrenaline coursing through his body, the shock of seeing his friend disappear, and the hurried desperation of trying to help, he had completely forgotten the extra climbing rope that Mark and Nicholas left behind.

• 36:27John Hopkins?

  Jim yanks it out of his bag, the rope that only hours before he'd kindly agreed to carry instead of Dan. Hands trembling, breath misting in the crisp, clean air, Jim throws one end of the rope over the edge and down into the hole.

• 36:43John Hopkins?

  Only for it to be blown back out by the waterfall.

• 36:48John Hopkins?

  Adapting, Jim takes a different approach, tacking round and teasing the rope over the edge, away from the water like a fishing line. And slowly, patiently, he lowers it into the void.

• 37:01Speaker 06

  I feel a tap on my right shoulder.

• 37:05Speaker 06

  And I reach around because that ledge was so precarious, I really didn't want to move very much because next to me was that waterfall and all I could see was a dark abyss next to me that went down and disappeared to where I didn't know where I had. And so I reached around slowly with my left hand to my right shoulder, and when I did, realized there was a climbing rope tapping me on the shoulder.

• 37:31John Hopkins?

  Dan grabs this precious gift and holds on tight.

• 37:36John Hopkins?

  He yanks three times on the rope, and his above-ground helper gives him a little more slack. Still shaking violently, teeth chattering, Dan wraps the rope around his middle and leans back. Once he's in position, Dan tugs on the rope two more times and waits to be pulled to safety.

• 37:56Speaker 06

  By this point, I was thinking that, "Okay, Jim's got a rescue party up there, things are going to be okay." Tied it around my waist, and then leaned back, pulled on it a couple times, expecting somebody to start pulling me up.

• 38:11Speaker 06

  Nothing happened.

• 38:13Speaker 06

  So I'm thinking, "Well, if I'm going to get out of here, I got to figure this out on my own."

• 38:21John Hopkins?

  Jim has offered his friend a literal lifeline, but Dan's troubles are far from over. He takes a breath in through his nose and out through his mouth, steadies himself and prepares to climb.

• 38:35John Hopkins?

  Dan has practiced this only recently, as the Grand Teton was supposed to have a technical climbing element at the top. But this is not practice. Dan is about to put his new skills to the test while his life hangs in the balance.

• 38:51John Hopkins?

  He places his two feet on the rock wall, loops the rope around his hands, and begins to inch upwards, pulling himself up on the rope and walking his feet up the wall. Dan grips the line tight. He cannot afford to fall again.

• 39:07Speaker 06

  I was so afraid that the rope might come off my waist, the rope might come off my hands, and then I'd fall back down. And if I was afraid that if I landed on that ledge again, it was going to break off.

• 39:21John Hopkins?

  With every hard one inch that Dan climbs, he has further to fall. A stomach-churning plunge lies below. The roar of the waterfall intermingles with the pounding of his heart. As he strains every sinew to slowly, painfully haul himself towards the light, his jaw is set in concentration. Shivering and soaked, Dan creeps higher and higher, inch by inch, towards salvation. Luckily, he is not the only one working on his survival.

• 39:53Speaker 06

  And what I noticed is, while I'm climbing, the slack is being pulled in a little bit. So I'm scaling up this wall. And when I got about halfway, the ice wall behind me kind of leaned in a little bit to the rock wall in front of me. So I could wedge my shoulders against the ice wall. I could press my legs against the rock wall and could gradually kind of work my way up to that little hole that I could see. Worked my way up to the hole, popped my head out, and there sits Jim. He's got his knees up to his chest. He's kind of crunched down. He's got that rope wrapped around his waist. And the first thing he says, which I'll never forget in my life, is, "Dan, it's so good to see your face."

• 40:39John Hopkins?

  Dan scales the fifteen or so feet between the mouth of the hole and where Jim is sat anchoring his climb.

• 40:47John Hopkins?

  The two men face each other, almost nose to nose. But Dan is still on a slope, clinging on, precarious. He asks his pal where he should go. Jim tells him, "Just jump on top of me." And so Dan leaps onto his friend, and the two men collapse in a heap of relieved laughter and hoots of adrenalized joy.

• 41:10John Hopkins?

  Both men's faces run with tears, split through by the broadest of grins.

• 41:17John Hopkins?

  But as Jim looks more closely at Dan, his smile fades. Dan's skin gleams grotesquely, unnaturally pale in the sunlight. He has survived the fall, survived the climb, but it may all be too late.

• 41:33Speaker 06

  From the time I went in to the time I got out was about forty-five minutes to an hour. You know, hypothermia sets in about an hour, hour and fifteen minutes. My skin was as white as a ghost, white as a sheet, for what he said. And my skin temperature was, he said, it was cold as ice.

• 41:55John 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".

• 42:37John Hopkins?

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

• 42:49John Hopkins?

  On the thirtieth of June, 2022, two men lie at the edge of a snowfield, seemingly basking in the bright summer sun. But Dan and Jim are not relaxing. They're exhausted. Their chests heave and tear tracks stain their cheeks. Dan is wet through with freezing glacial water. His body is gripped by cold. And there's more bad news.

• 43:16John Hopkins?

  Jim tells Dan that no one is coming.

• 43:20John Hopkins?

  He's tried 911 already, but he doesn't have a signal. Dan's shoulders slump.

• 43:26John Hopkins?

  But Jim isn't giving up. He leaps to his feet, acting fast. He ties Dan off to a nearby rock and drapes the heavier of his coats around his friend's trembling shoulders. Then Jim climbs higher to search for more signal and try to attract attention.

• 43:43Speaker 06

  While he's climbing up, he's screaming for help and blowing a rescue whistle, which, you know, we had laughed about it before, about carrying this whistle. They said, "What are you going to do, call a cab later?"

• 43:54John Hopkins?

  And yet, as the whistle echoes around the vast slopes of the Teton Range, it does help to attract attention. Incredibly, a mountain ranger passing on the trail above hears Jim and swiftly makes his way down to see what's happening.

• 44:11John Hopkins?

  When he arrives, Jim points him towards his stricken friend. The ranger hurries over and kneels down next to Dan.

• 44:18Speaker 06

  You know, he gives me kind of a bit of an evaluation, you know, a field evaluation to see what's going on. Told him I was knocked unconscious. And he said, "Well, you know, because you were knocked unconscious, and I can't tell if there's any bleeding or anything", he said, "I'm going to call for a rescue helicopter." So that sounds like a great idea.

• 44:37John Hopkins?

  Dan's whole body seems to un-stiffen. Help is on its way.

• 44:44John Hopkins?

  There is a caveat, however. The helicopter is currently busy fighting a fire in the valley. It won't arrive for forty-five minutes. Dan's jaw clenches again. The shivering intensifies, and he resumes his deep, steadying breaths.

• 45:00John Hopkins?

  The ranger quizzes him about his life, his family, keeping him talking. Then Dan does a double take.

• 45:09Speaker 06

  I told him about, you know, my daughter and was up there for the wedding. And he had two small children. So we're kind of talking that way. And I'm looking at him. And all of a sudden, I realize this is the same ranger that we ran into earlier that day when we left the lower saddle.

• 45:29John Hopkins?

  It's the same man who only hours earlier had warned them about the dangers of glissading. But there is no scolding, no "I told you so". He says he's just glad Dan is alive.

• 45:41John Hopkins?

  The ranger keeps talking to him, keeps him awake and tries to take his mind off the cold snaking its way through his bones. Until finally, Dan turns his head skyward as the rhythmic sound of a helicopter buzzes into earshot.

• 45:56Speaker 06

  I could hear it coming down the valley, which is the most phenomenal sound in the world, considering what all is happening. And they did what's described as a short haul rescue. What they have is this basket dangling underneath the helicopter. So it never lands, it's just there, comes down a little ways. By this point, there are a bunch of other rangers there. They wrap me up, put me in this basket.

• 46:18John Hopkins?

  Dan is carried, dangling from the rescue helicopter, back down to where they'd started on the trail and where an ambulance is now waiting.

• 46:26John Hopkins?

  As he rides in the emergency vehicle, Dan is told something he's already heard twice before. The mountain ranger that found them said it, and the ranger that traveled with him under the helicopter said it. And now the EMT in the ambulance is saying it too.

• 46:41Speaker 06

  He said the same thing. He goes, "I understand that you climbed your way out of there while your buddy pulled up the slack." I said, "Yeah, I did." He said, "Man, you're pretty lucky." And I said, "Yeah, I think I'm pretty lucky." You know, at this point, three people had said it. And I was kind of sent it to him, you know, in a bit of a light way. And he kind of scolded me. And he said, "No, you don't understand." He said, "There have been three other climbers that have slid into ice modes about where you went in over the past three years. You're the first rescue that we've had. The other three were body recoveries, because they died in that ice mode."

• 47:19John Hopkins?

  Dan exhales. The EMT's revelation silences him. He gazes thoughtfully out of the window of the speeding ambulance. He really has been extraordinarily fortunate.

• 47:33Speaker 06

  The fact that Jim carried the rope that day, you know, I found out later when I got to the hospital, I had actually broken my leg. And so if I would have broken my hands or my shoulder, I wouldn't have been able to climb out of there. And then finally, the fact that, you know, that park ranger was walking by right at the right time. So I feel very fortunate to be alive at this point. And that's kind of the story.

• 48:07John Hopkins?

  For a long time, Dan struggled to talk about his experience without crying. When he eventually wrote it down in a book, he shed tears while he wrote. And every night after he'd written, he'd slept like he'd relieved a great burden.

• 48:21John Hopkins?

  Now, Dan counts his ordeal as one of ultimately positive transformation.

• 48:27John Hopkins?

  He advises people to live a life of "what if", to still be open to trying new things even later in life, exactly as he did when he drove past Mount Rainier that day in 2010.

• 48:39John Hopkins?

  He also urges those adventuring in the wild to pay attention, in more ways than one.

• 48:46Speaker 06

  You know, the old quote of "nothing bad happens on a beautiful day", but you know, for people that are out in the wilderness at all, to just stay on guard. Things can happen in an instant that can kill you. That's one piece of wisdom. The other is, you know, for people that hike and are outside, you know, when I started to climb, you get to the top, that's the goal. And we would do that. And on our way down, we would start thinking about our other climbs, planning our next trip. And so now I don't do that. I take it all in, enjoy the trail, don't just blow through the hike.

• 49:21John Hopkins?

  As for Jim Zingerman, there is a special dedication at the start of Dan's book, where in lieu of the right words to thank his friend, Dan turns to the Bible, John 15:13. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends."

• 49:38John Hopkins?

  "Thanks, Jim," Dan writes, "for not giving up."

• 49:43Speaker 06

  This was a kind of a bad event that could have had a really horrible ending.

• 49:49Speaker 06

  It's the best thing that's happened to me because, you know, I wake up now, I wiggle my toes, I'm alive, and then I pray and thank God that I survived.

• 50:08John Hopkins?

  Next time on Real Survival Stories, we adventure deep into South Australia's desolate and dangerous outback. In 2014, 30-year-old Brendan Cook takes a trip with his partner and their two friends along the legendary Birdsville Track, one of Australia's most isolated and untravelled roads.

• 50:27John Hopkins?

  But an unusual series of events results in their car becoming stuck fast in silt and mud, resisting all efforts to be freed and sinking further with every attempt to extract it. Stranded in the fierce heat and surrounded by sinister wildlife, Brendan and his companions must find a way of freeing their car before their dwindling food and water supplies run out entirely. But as the hours and days pass without success, their only remaining options appear drastic and filled with danger.

• 51:01John Hopkins?

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

• 51:09John 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.

• 51:52John Hopkins?

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