Pod Insights Real Survival Stories Espionage in the Himalayas: No Ordinary Adventure About this episode Pete Takeda’s is a unique story - combining extreme locations, extraordinary natural phenomena… and espionage. In September 2005, Pete is leading a small party deep into the Himalayas. His plan is not just to summit the peak of Nanda Kot, but to find proof of plutonium-powered surveillance devices - rumoured to have been planted in the mountains by the CIA some 40 years earlier. But when the might of the mountain turns against Pete and his team, all their priorities shift. Buried alive beneath hundreds of tonnes of snow, cut off from any sort of help, they’ll face a series of lethal threats…
A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins.
Written by Heléna Lewis | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Matt Peaty | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:33 John Hopkins? It's the early hours of September 24, 2005.
0:38 John Hopkins? On the slopes of Nandakot, a peak of some 22,500 feet in the Himalayas of northern India, a savage snowstorm has taken over the world.
0:49 John Hopkins? The clear night sky and blazing stars are gone, the constellations swallowed up by the maelstrom. Even the light from the waning half-moon has vanished, engulfed in a vortex of thick white flakes and ice pellets.
1:05 John Hopkins? The wind howls with a wild, primal anger, as if it were the voice of the mountain itself.
1:12 John Hopkins? Every so often, an avalanche cascades down the rocky, ice-encrusted inclines, sending thick clouds of snow billowing into the opaque sky.
1:24 John Hopkins? With each new avalanche, Nandakot purges itself of any sign of human activity, obliterating the footsteps left by recent climbers.
1:37 John Hopkins? A few thousand feet below the summit, a narrow crevasse cuts deep into the side of the mountain, like a wound. Its entrance is completely concealed, covered over by a recent avalanche. And inside, four shocked climbers stare into the darkness towards the place where their exit used to be. The silence is broken only by their shallow, anxious breathing and the muffled roar of the storm outside.
2:07 John Hopkins? Forty-one-year-old Pete Takeda gropes to switch on his head torch, trying to quell the nausea and the dizziness caused by his ever-worsening altitude sickness. The scene he illuminates doesn't make him feel any better.
2:22 Speaker 02 All you see is this wall of avalanche debris. In some ways, I felt like, wow, this is so staged. You could not make this up. Progressively, the mountain is entomating us. That's how it felt.
2:37 John Hopkins? Until now, this crevasse has been functioning as the climbers' shelter, protecting them from the elements outside. But with their exit now cut off by a thick, icy barrier and tons of snow resting precariously above them, it could just as easily become their tomb.
2:54 Speaker 02 All the time, I'm eyeing the ceiling going, man, if nothing collapses, they're never gonna find us. And it's gonna be an ugly death.
3:07 John 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. In this episode, we tell the unique tale of Pete Takeda. A story that combines extreme locations, extraordinary natural phenomena, and espionage. In September 2005, Pete is leading a small party deep into the Himalayas. His plan is to summit Nanda Kot, a peak of striking beauty and spiritual significance.
3:50 John Hopkins? But this is no ordinary mountaineering adventure. Their mission is more like something from a spy movie, to find proof of plutonium-powered surveillance devices rumored to have been planted in the mountains by the CIA some 40 years earlier.
4:06 Speaker 02 I kind of had this fantasy of, man, we're gonna go up there and we're gonna find this poconado of the glacier, and here it is, proof positive. You can hold it in your hands. This is proof positive of one of these CIA expeditions.
4:17 John Hopkins? But when the might of the mountain turns against Pete and his team, all their priorities shift. Unable to descend due to the wild weather, the climbers become trapped, buried alive beneath hundreds of tons of snow. Cut off from any sort of help, they face a series of lethal threats. Their only hope of survival is to stay alive long enough for the storm to clear.
4:41 Speaker 02 You're thinking to yourself, is the ceiling gonna collapse on us? Is there gonna be another avalanche that, you know, compresses our crevasse? Are we gonna suffocate in this cave unless we get some air circulation?
4:55 John Hopkins? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.
5:26 John Hopkins? It's 18 years earlier. A cold October night in 1987, in a glacier-carved valley deep within Yosemite National Park, California.
5:37 John Hopkins? The wilderness is steeped in shadows, and great granite monoliths rise eerily from the ground, reaching towards the sky as if grasping for the stars.
5:48 John Hopkins? In a small forest clearing, surrounded by pine trees, a campfire burns, crackling in the dark.
5:55 John Hopkins? Cluttered around it is a group of six climbers in tattered fleeces and well-worn shoes, drinking beers and discussing the routes they've attempted that day.
6:05 John Hopkins? Home to iconic rock formations such as El Capitan and Half Dome, it's no surprise that Yosemite attracts climbers from across the globe of all skills and disciplines.
6:16 John Hopkins? And one of these is Pete Takeda.
6:19 Speaker 02 In 1987, I was just a twenty-something-year-old climber, living the dream. I got to climb 250 to 300 days a year. I had a job bussing tables that didn't take up too much of my time. I could free climb, I could put up first ascents, and I could climb El Capitan on the weekends. I mean, this is what I dreamed of. And, you know, to me, it was like, this is the pinnacle of climbing.
6:48 John Hopkins? As the evening wears on, the cold ones give way to cheap liquor. Lengthy, elaborate anecdotes are swapped, fueled by the many rumors that circulate within the climbing community.
7:00 Speaker 02 Part of climbing culture is, there's these legends that are out there. And so if you hang out with climbers for any period of time, eventually, you're going to hear about some legendary character or some yarn that exists within each genre of climbing.
7:16 John Hopkins? The time passes easily, and the campfire burns lower, until eventually, there is a lull in the conversation.
7:24 John Hopkins? Pete swills the amber liquid in his cup and eyes the glowing embers as the silence stretches on.
7:33 John Hopkins? And then, one of his companions speaks up, a stout, older man with an authoritative air. Slurring his words only slightly, he begins to recount a rich, compelling story of Cold War espionage, mountain climbers, and nuclear power. It's unlike anything they've ever heard before.
7:55 John Hopkins? According to Pete's friend, sometime in the 1960s, a group of elite climbers were paid by the CIA to place a plutonium-powered surveillance device somewhere in the Himalayas in order to gather information on China's nuclear weapons program.
8:12 John Hopkins? But somehow, the device was either lost or stolen and could, at that very moment, be threatening the entire population of India with huge doses of radiation poisoning.
8:26 John Hopkins? Everything apparently was covered up by the CIA, with the climbers sworn to secrecy on pain of death. Pete and his companions listened with interest. It's a diverting story, but seems way too far-fetched to be true.
8:40 Speaker 02 You hear that, you're around the campfire, you got a buzz on, and it's really intriguing, but you're like, eh, whatever, you know, that's a rich yarn, but that's all it is.
8:51 John Hopkins? After stumbling to bed that night, Pete dismisses the tale and forgets all about it.
8:59 John Hopkins? But many years later, he hears the story again from a different source.
9:05 John Hopkins? Curious, he begins to do some research, interviewing older climbers and digging out long-buried news articles.
9:11 Speaker 02 I realized there's some truth to it, and I started pulling strings and talking to people and asking around and found some pretty cool factual information to support this kind of climbing legend.
9:24 John Hopkins? In the course of his research, Pete unearths a story that's pure James Bond. He finds evidence that in the midst of the Cold War, the CIA collaborated with the Indian government to spy on the Chinese nuclear development program. Throughout the 60s, a number of secret expeditions were made in an attempt to plant plutonium-powered espionage devices on two Himalayan mountains: Nanda Devi and its smaller, more accessible neighbor, Nanda Kot. The first expedition to Nanda Devi ended in failure after bad weather forced the climbers to abandon their undertaking. In their scrambled descent, they left the surveillance device behind,
10:07 John Hopkins? and when they returned to look for it the following spring, it had disappeared.
10:12 John Hopkins? The Nanda Kot mission proved to be more of a success, but although the device was planted, it stopped working after just a few months. The nuclear-powered battery pack was later retrieved, but parts of its residual framework were left or lost somewhere on the mountain.
10:31 John Hopkins? As Pete delves deeper into his research, various new possibilities open up to him. With a natural aptitude for writing, he already contributes regularly to a number of climbing magazines. But perhaps this story could be the push he needs to write a book. More than that, it would give him a chance to escape the humdrum of a fairly desk-bound job and focus all his attentions on his true passion.
10:58 Speaker 02 If I've had a struggle in life, it's always been trying to be something I'm not and returning to climbing.
11:07 John Hopkins? Pete's first experience of climbing was as a child growing up in Idaho. It left a deep and lasting impression on him.
11:16 Speaker 02 When I was maybe six, five or six years old, I kind of wandered off out of the house and there was an adjacent set of these maroon sandstone boulders next to the house. And I remember climbing to the top of one of those and it's probably whatever, like 10 feet high or something. But to me, you know, it just looks colossal and the top of it is like this terra incognita. It's like this, this place that in my imagination, no one had ever been. And so naturally, I was drawn to that. So I kind of tore my clothes up and slipped and got dirty and came back home and got scolded by my parents. But the, the feeling I remembered was it's almost like you're stealing something from the universe. This Promethean thing like,
12:01 Speaker 02 wow, I got away with that and no one caught me.
12:05 John Hopkins? As the years passed, Pete's passion for climbing grew with him.
12:11 Speaker 02 I remember spending all the money I had to get a pair of these expensive rock climbing boots. And I, I think for a year, I climbed every day. And so I always say, well, I never discovered climbing, but climbing discovered me. And yeah, it's kind of the one constant in my existence. And I feel really lucky for it.
12:34 John Hopkins? By the early 2000s, Pete is approaching 40 and has built a great reputation.
12:41 John Hopkins? He is well-known in climbing circles and has gone on expeditions across the globe. But despite his talent, climbing is rarely a lucrative source of income, and he is forced to take on various other jobs along the way.
12:55 John Hopkins? It's not exactly how he saw his life going. So, having now ascertained that there is some truth behind the incredible CIA espionage story, Pete has a decision to make.
13:08 Speaker 02 At the time I was doing this, I was a content developer for an internet company, and I was just unhappy. And I was looking at my life going, "Well, I could do this for the rest of my life, make X amount of money, retire, and that's it." And part of me is like, "Whoa, hold on a second. You gotta escape this." So I viewed this story almost as this way to finally write a decent book, also escape from, you know, what I saw was this kind of dreary 9-to-5 thing.
13:39 John Hopkins? If not now, when?
13:43 John Hopkins? Pete takes the plunge. He quits his job and secures an advance for his book, which helps to fund an expedition to the Himalayas.
13:52 John Hopkins? It takes months of preparation to put together a team, secure permits, and arrange logistics. But there is a stumbling block. Nanda Devi is closed to climbing.
14:05 Speaker 02 On the face of it, it's like, "Well, it's closed because there's environmental degradation in this ecosystem that surrounds that peak." But the legend was the Indians closed this peak because they knew there was this missing plutonium.
14:19 John Hopkins? Despite trying to secure special permission, Pete is still denied access to Nanda Devi. Instead, he turns his attentions to its smaller neighbor, Nanda Kot, supposedly where the remains of another surveillance device are still buried, somewhere in the snow. The mission is on.
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15:19 John Hopkins? In late August 2005, the expedition leaves America for the Himalayas.
15:26 John Hopkins? With Pete are three other climbers: Johnny Kopp, Chuck Bird, and Sarah Thompson.
15:33 John Hopkins? In the early hours of August 29, they arrive into the vibrant, heady city of New Delhi, where the scent of incense and spices mingles with the industrial smog.
15:47 John Hopkins? It takes over a week of hard traveling before they reach base camp. Surrounded by the icy majesty of the Himalayas, they pitch their tents in a boulder field carpeted with short grass and fading wildflowers.
16:00 John Hopkins? Above them looms the rocky, snow-covered mite of Nanda Kot, adorned with its distinctive tabletop summit. At 22,500 feet high, the mountain is by no means the largest in the Himalayas, but it still poses a significant challenge.
16:17 John Hopkins? Its name literally means "Nanda's Fortress" and refers to it being the home of one of the sacred forms of Pavati, a major goddess in Hindu religion.
16:28 John Hopkins? The spectacular sight reminds the team of why they're here.
16:33 Speaker 02 I kind of have this fantasy of, man, we're gonna go up there and we're gonna find this poken out of the glacier, and here it is, proof positive. You can hold it in your hands. This is proof positive of one of these CIA expeditions.
16:48 John Hopkins? But although they've successfully made it to base camp, a combination of illness and unseasonably bad weather prevents Pete and his crew from ascending much further. And with no ready internet access, it's hard to say when the low clouds and rain might let up. They spend the downtime trying to prep, doing small practice climbs to adjust to the altitude. But even after the weather finally breaks, there is another delay. So much snow has fallen that they have to wait for it to settle and harden on the avalanche-prone slopes before mounting a summit expedition.
17:24 John Hopkins? Finally, on September 22, Pete and his team are able to leave base camp.
17:31 Speaker 02 We're climbing, and the weather is perfect. And the weather is what we call splitter. It's just, you know, clear skies, sunshine, high-pressure system.
17:41 John Hopkins? Luckily, the good weather holds, and they make steady progress, the snow squeaking and crunching as their crampons drive into its surface.
17:50 John Hopkins? Beneath clear, azure skies, the four climbers pick their way up the jagged east ridge of Nandakot, following the path of the CIA-sponsored expedition from nearly 40 years earlier.
18:02 John Hopkins? They move fast. By the end of the second day, they're only a few thousand feet from the summit.
18:08 John Hopkins? But as the air thins, they're all feeling the effects of the altitude. Pete is hit particularly hard, his head throbbing with a dull ache.
18:18 John Hopkins? And then, the sky begins to change. The brilliant blue fading to a dull, sinister gray as the clouds roll in and the snow starts falling.
18:28 John Hopkins? A storm front is approaching.
18:32 John Hopkins? Deciding to call it quits for the day, they pitch their tents in the lee of a tall icy cliff, hoping to gain some respite from the elements. But the weather has other plans.
18:44 Speaker 02 We're camped out there and the snow is getting heavier and heavier and I'm like, "Wow, we gotta take shelter." And so there was a crevasse, basically this massive fissure in the side of the ice that's coating this mountain. At the bottom of this crevasse was a lot of hard-packed avalanche debris, so we could enter into this crevasse and pitch our tents on this snowy platform. Above us was a roof that was created by the compacted snow, so in essence, we were in almost like a massive, narrow cave.
19:22 John Hopkins? The four climbers take refuge inside the crevasse and pitch their two tents, one for Pete and Chuck, the other for Johnny and Sarah. It's a relief to be out of the storm. Pete makes one final adjustment to his setup before relaxing into this temporary home.
19:42 Speaker 02 I'm really persnickety about my preparations. So I put this tubular threaded screw into the wall of the glacier to anchor the tent. There's no real reason for that, but it's just one of those crazy precautions I take.
20:02 John Hopkins? Pete doesn't know it now, but this tiny precaution will later have huge significance.
20:10 John Hopkins? After a hearty meal, the climbers head to bed, burrowing deep into their sleeping bags as the wind howls outside.
20:18 John Hopkins? Throughout the night, the storm grows and grows. This is no ordinary blizzard.
20:24 Speaker 02 It was one of the biggest storms in recent history and we were up there on the mountain and as this storm progressed, the snow got heavier and heavier and people were actually dying in the Lowland villages because of flooding. People were dying in avalanches. Trekkers and climbers throughout the range were getting killed in avalanches.
20:49 John Hopkins? The climbers are lucky to have found shelter inside this crevasse. But still, the dark, narrow cave is undeniably claustrophobic, and Pete struggles to sleep.
21:02 Speaker 02 I have my sleeping bag kind of unzipped because I get a little bit claustrophobic when I'm fully mummified in the bag. And I had the tent door open so I could breathe fresh air. Those things seem to negate any feelings that I have of being claustrophobic.
21:17 John Hopkins? As the snow continues to fall outside, the grumble of distant avalanches echoes around the cavern.
21:24 John Hopkins? The low, powerful sound is deeply unsettling.
21:29 Speaker 02 These aren't like those little avalanches that kind of slough down and create this beautiful powder cloud. These are like so big that it sounds like artillery. And then there's this rumble. So you can almost feel it shaking the mountain. But we're in this cave, right? So we're pretty safe.
21:47 John Hopkins? Then, just after midnight, the sound changes, growing in intensity and seeming to shake the very core of the mountain itself,
21:59 John Hopkins? getting nearer with every second.
22:01 Speaker 02 I hear this crack and this rumble, and it was so close that I'm like, this is the one that's coming to get us.
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22:49 John Hopkins? It's sometime after midnight on September the 24th, 2005, in the Himalayas of northern India.
22:56 John Hopkins? High upon the slopes of Nandakot, a vicious, deadly snowstorm is blowing, dislodging avalanches across the mountain.
23:05 John Hopkins? One of these is thundering straight towards a long, narrow cave a few thousand feet below the summit. Inside the crevasse, four climbers are sheltering from the wrath of the storm.
23:19 John Hopkins? In his tent, Pete Takeda sits bolt upright as the deafening roar approaches.
23:25 John Hopkins? With his sleeping bag unzipped and his tent door open, Pete is able to move more quickly than any of his companions. Acting on pure instinct, he tears himself free of his sleeping bag and reaches for an ice screw anchoring their tent to the glacier. Beside him, his climbing partner Chuck is fractionally slower to react.
23:46 John Hopkins? Within seconds, a tidal wave of snow flies into the crevasse and crashes around the two men.
23:53 Speaker 02 I reach over my head, I grab this ice screw with my bare hand, pull myself out just as the snow starts rushing into, you know, our cave. At the same time, my partner is getting buried in the snow and I reach down with my hand and grab his arm in a fireman's grip and right as the snow starts to really solidify around him, I yank him out.
24:22 John Hopkins? Chuck emerges from the deluge, coughing and spluttering, and hacks up a clump of snow lodged in his throat.
24:30 John Hopkins? Pete glances towards where the other tent should be, the one where his fellow climbers Johnny and Sarah were sleeping.
24:37 John Hopkins? There was nothing but the pristine glint of the crystallizing snow.
24:42 John Hopkins? Chances are, they'd been swept away by the force of the avalanche, crushed beneath the huge weight of the icy powder, or else thrown into the plunging depths of the crevasse at the back of the cave. Either way, it seems impossible they've survived.
24:59 John Hopkins? Around Pete and Chuck, the snow started to settle.
25:03 Speaker 02 Avalanches are weird because they kind of resemble a liquid, they kind of resemble a gas sometimes, but they come down and in this case, the debris, which was all in motion, almost like this hydraulic motion, when it comes to rest, it just kind of solidifies into a solid matrix.
25:24 John Hopkins? The avalanche debris has covered all, but a small hole at the entrance of their cave.
25:31 John Hopkins? Shivering in the waist-deep snow and wearing nothing but their thermal underwear, Chuck and Pete blink against the enveloping darkness, shock, and adrenaline coursing through them. Somehow they're still alive, but the trouble is just getting started.
25:48 Speaker 02 Chuck, he's like, "Oh my god, you saved my life," and I go, "Man, if we don't find our clothes, we're just gonna be dead in whatever, five hours anyway, so I didn't save anything, buddy, we gotta get to work."
26:03 John Hopkins? Certain their companions have been killed, Pete and Chuck have little choice but to focus on saving themselves. Without their gear, they might not survive until morning. Everything they need is buried inside their tent, beneath several feet of solidifying snow. In the darkness, they scramble around with their bare hands, digging like animals. Numbness starts stealing along their unprotected fingers and feet as they pour blindly through the icy debris. They make painfully slow progress, but eventually, they start unearthing pieces of equipment.
26:43 Speaker 02 So miraculously, we found our down jackets and our boots, and then we actually found our gear, and as we were doing that, we hear this noise down in the crevasse, and my other two climbing partners had burrowed out of the tent, cut the tent, and popped out, out of the snow. It's like double miracle, we found our gear and our two comrades have survived also.
27:12 John Hopkins? It's barely believable.
27:16 John Hopkins? Swept away in their nylon bubble by the force of the avalanche, Johnny and Sarah came tumbling to a stop beside the sheer drop at the back of the cave.
27:26 John Hopkins? A few feet further, and they had plunged into the void. Buried alive beneath the crushing weight of the snow, Johnny snapped an aluminium tent pole, sliced open the tent, then dug himself and Sarah out of their icy tomb.
27:43 John Hopkins? Now here they are, in front of an astonished Pete and Chuck. The four climbers catch their breath and check in with each other.
27:52 John Hopkins? But they can't sit still. The search for their gear quickly recommences. After some time, the climbers locate their head torches and a shovel, which makes digging easier.
28:04 Speaker 02 We dig and dig and dig and find all our gear, and it's like, yeah, great, we survived this. What a thing to have survived. It's fortunate that, you know, we entered this crevasse cave because we would have been swept away.
28:18 John Hopkins? They've had a close call, a terrible scare. But perhaps that's all this will be.
28:26 John Hopkins? Working by the light of their head torches, by 4am Pete and his team have managed to locate all their gear apart from one of Johnny's boots.
28:35 John Hopkins? Outside, the snow falls relentlessly.
28:39 John Hopkins? Slowly, grey, pre-dawn light begins to bleed into the sky and seep into the cave through the tiny gap at its mouth.
28:49 John Hopkins? Visibility out of this small opening is low, and with the frosty tempest still raging, they can't risk descending yet.
28:58 John Hopkins? After finally locating Johnny's missing boot, the team can now rest a little. A welcome break from the exertion of digging and the oxygen-thin air.
29:08 John Hopkins? They melt some snow for water and force down a few energy bars. They just need to hold on a little longer, to wait for a better moment to descend, and they should get out of this soon enough.
29:23 John Hopkins? But then, sometime around 6:30 a.m., another telltale tremor shakes the ground.
29:32 Speaker 02 You could hear it rumbling. Everyone's kind of jumping up and trying to do something, but you really can't do anything. You kind of just got to sit there and take whatever nature's going to give you.
29:44 John Hopkins? There is nowhere to go.
29:47 John Hopkins? Above them is the raw, primeval might of another avalanche hurtling mercilessly towards them.
29:55 John Hopkins? With his sleeping bag wrapped tightly around his shoulders, Pete braces himself for the onslaught.
30:01 John Hopkins? The avalanche thunders over the crevasse, hissing and roaring like a wild beast. Within seconds, the thin ray of light seeping into the cave is gone, replaced by thick, close darkness as the opening is covered by dense snow.
30:17 Speaker 02 You hear this roar, you see this massive freight train of snow arrive at the door, and in two or three seconds, it just stops. It's perfectly quiet. So we turn our headlamps on. You're looking at this solid wall of snow where there once was a garage-sized opening, and you're like, whoa, this is kind of gnarly. All you see is this wall of avalanche debris, basically made the entrance of our cave into this solid wall of snow.
30:46 John Hopkins? The second avalanche has sealed the climbers' exit, trapping them inside the crevasse behind a thick barrier of white.
30:55 John Hopkins? It's eerily quiet, and their own breath sounds magnified inside the claustrophobic confines of the cave.
31:04 John Hopkins? It's hard to comprehend what has just happened.
31:07 Speaker 02 In some ways, I felt like, wow, this is so staged. You could not make this up. Progressively, the mountain is entomating us. That's how it felt. You have no choice but to be fatalistic because you don't control any of these events. You're there, and, you know, if you're going to die, you're going to die. There's nothing you can really do about it.
31:33 John Hopkins? Pete glances up.
31:36 John Hopkins? The beam from his headlamp reveals jagged fractures in the snowy ceiling, covered in thin, delicate layers of translucent ice. It could cave in at any moment and they'd be gone, the mountain swallowing them whole.
31:52 Speaker 02 You're thinking to yourself, is the ceiling gonna collapse on us? Is there gonna be another avalanche that compresses our crevasse? Are we gonna suffocate in this cave unless we get some air circulation?
32:06 John Hopkins? Suffocation is a real danger now. With their one-way-out sealed shut, they can't be sure how long their air supply will last.
32:16 John Hopkins? The situation forces Pete to take charge, to do something.
32:23 Speaker 02 Me being the quote-unquote leader, I kinda took it upon myself to take our shovel and start digging a tunnel to the outside. I don't know if this tunnel, as I dig it, is gonna collapse on me.
32:36 John Hopkins? Pete removes his bulky outer layers and grabs the shovel. Tentatively, he begins boring into the wall of avalanche debris. The shovel cuts through it with a flat, tinny sound, and the snow falls away in large, crumbling chunks. As he digs deeper, Pete's head and shoulders disappear into the tunnel. Soon, he's forced to crawl inside it. The claustrophobia is almost overwhelming.
33:05 Speaker 02 It takes everything I can muster to keep digging, and also, I'm still altitude-sick. You know, the adrenaline kinda overcomes the symptoms of that, but yeah, I'm altitude-sick and I'm digging a tunnel.
33:19 John Hopkins? Behind him, Johnny clears the excavated snow, making sure he's close enough to grab Pete's legs in case the tunnel suddenly collapses.
33:28 John Hopkins? Pete burrows on desperately, the weight of the mountain creaking above him.
33:34 John Hopkins? As the snowy passage grows, it becomes clear how deep the recent avalanches have buried them.
33:41 John Hopkins? Suddenly, a crumble of powder dislodges above Pete and falls on top of his head.
33:47 John Hopkins? He freezes, holding his breath, not daring to move. But the tunnel holds.
33:56 John Hopkins? Steading himself, he pushes the shovel up again, and a waft of fresh air hits him.
34:03 John Hopkins? Pete maneuvers his head and shoulders through the hole he's just made, but it's not an inspiring sight.
34:12 Speaker 02 It's just this maelstrom outside. You have zero visibility. All you see is this wind-blown, whirling snow, punctuated by a regular sound of avalanches. And so I just turned around and scrambled back into the cave. And, you know, my fellow climbers go, "Well, how is it outside?" I go, "Man, you don't want to know. It's like a war out there."
34:36 John Hopkins? Even if they can all dig their way out, the climbers are still totally trapped.
34:42 John Hopkins? Surrounded by a savage storm in one of the most hostile environments on Earth, there is no way they can get back down the mountain safely. Their radio isn't picking up any signal, and even if it could, there is little anyone could do to help them in this weather. All they can do is hope the storm will subside soon and pray that the snow sealing above them doesn't come crashing down, burying them inside the Himalayas forever.
35:09 John Hopkins? Exhausted, they try to rest, drifting in and out of consciousness as the gales shriek around them.
35:18 John Hopkins? But it isn't long before a furious crack and rumble resonates around the cabin, shaking them from their stupors.
35:26 John Hopkins? Unbelievably, yet another avalanche is on its way.
35:30 Speaker 02 That third one was dramatic because it was this huge roar. Everyone is adrenalized. I imagine it's like being shot at by artillery. You just like, you hear it, and it's like, "Well, I can't do anything except hope that this isn't gonna get me."
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36:27 John Hopkins? The cave is once again plunged into darkness as the latest avalanche cascades down the slopes, passing over the entrance of the tunnel Pete has so painstakingly excavated. It's the third one in less than 12 hours. Can their luck really hold?
36:43 Speaker 02 There is that feeling of helplessness. You hear this crack and this roar, and you can sense the snow coming. And then you're looking out the door of your cave, and the snow just kinda comes and passes by. So it's almost like watching a massive freight train come and not hit you.
37:04 John Hopkins? Within a few moments, the snow slides clear, and the dull light of dawn once again filters into the tunnel, along with the waft of fresh, cold air.
37:15 John Hopkins? A collective sigh of relief fills the cavern.
37:19 Speaker 02 You're just standing around on top of this snow, going, "Whoa, that was a close one."
37:27 John Hopkins? With nothing left to do but wait out the storm, the climbers try to get into some sort of routine. They melt snow to make drinking water and cook meals on their camping stoves, all the while painfully aware of their dwindling supplies of gas and food. They spend the time talking, resting fitfully, and trying to keep their minds occupied.
37:48 John Hopkins? Jonny and Sarah share the earphones of her MP3 player and are able to escape into fantasy by listening to Harry Potter audiobooks. But the crushing weight of the mountain above is always there. The ice and rock seeming to press in all around them.
38:04 Speaker 02 You wake up, you make water, you try to eat some food, you sit there and talk about whatever. And all the time, I'm eyeing the ceiling going, man, if that thing collapses, like, they're never gonna find us, and it's gonna be an ugly death. Suffocation, it's my big fear. I get claustrophobic, and I certainly don't wanna suffocate.
38:26 John Hopkins? And to go along with the fear, Pete is suffering physically too. He's growing sicker by the hour.
38:33 Speaker 02 I had high-altitude illness, and there's two types of that. There's high-altitude pulmonary edema, in which your lungs start to fill with fluid. It's your body's reaction to this reduced atmospheric pressure and, quote-unquote, "less oxygen." That you can usually deal with. The trouble is, is it can turn into high-altitude cerebral edema, which is where your brain starts swelling. And when that happens, you lose the ability to stand up, to be in balance. Your brain is swelling, and it's a pretty quick descent into death. And the only cure for that is to descend.
39:16 John Hopkins? But in the current conditions, descent back down the mountain still isn't an option. And even if they can survive long enough for the weather to clear, Pete's poor physical state will be a major burden.
39:30 Speaker 02 My concern was, if I get cerebral edema, which I think I was creeping up on, I'm gonna be incapacitated, and I'm just gonna be this dead weight that they're gonna have to haul down the mountains. And because I'm the, quote-unquote, "leader" of this trip, you should be responsible for everyone who was on your trip. And I felt that the best way to deal with that was to descend on my own and take my chances. So I announced to everyone, "Well, folks, I'm gonna take my chances. I'm gonna go down. You guys stand a better chance of survival without me here. And if I get back to base camp, I will call for help, and we will attempt to extricate you."
40:12 John Hopkins? But Pete's decision is quickly met with resistance from Johnny.
40:16 Speaker 02 He was a very experienced and outstanding climber and he took issue with my decision and said, "You can't go down. We need you to get off this mountain." And so in my altitude-addled brain, I kind of put two and two together and said, "Okay, yeah, we're all in this together and I can play a critical role in getting the team down." Because the two other climbers were far less experienced than we were. So we negated that. I just kept my fingers crossed. It's like, "Don't get sicker, Pete. Don't get sicker. Just hang in there."
40:48 John Hopkins? The hours creep slowly by. It becomes harder to keep a handle on time. It seems to warp and bend in their icy shelter. And still, there is no let up from the storm.
41:01 Speaker 02 All the time, you're kind of keeping your eye on, "Well, how much fuel do we have left? Can we afford to boil anything?" And you get in these conversations, it must be in some ways like being in a prison camp, where you talk about, "What are you gonna do when you get out of here?" And the big thing, as is the case with a lot of these situations, is what are you gonna eat? If you could eat anything, what would you eat? And so those things end up taking up the time.
41:29 John Hopkins? As an experienced climber, Pete is no stranger to perilous situations. And he has already survived a string of near-death experiences.
41:38 John Hopkins? But here, in the depths of the mountain, things are different.
41:43 Speaker 02 Most accidents in climbing take place in a split second. So you rappel off the end of your rope, you take a massive fall. And after that happens, all choices are taken out of the equation and you just gotta take what's coming. But those usually transpire over seconds, a very short period of time. So the interesting thing with this is, you're kind of entombed on the side of the mountain and you actually have days to ponder your survival. To be a Himalayan climber, an expedition climber, it's not how fit you are, it's not how hard you trained, though those things are important, but it's how you can deal with not saying anything and being isolated and being sensorily deprived for long periods of time.
42:29 John Hopkins? Finally, after four long days, the storm dies down.
42:37 John Hopkins? At 9:30 a.m. on September the 27th, the climbers slither through the excavated snow tunnel, pushing their packs in front of them.
42:46 John Hopkins? They emerge from their icy prison into a terrain of bleak, savage beauty. The flawless panorama, a welcome change from the tomb they'd been encased in.
42:59 John Hopkins? With virtually no supplies left, they must seize their chance to descend. But it won't be easy.
43:06 Speaker 02 The avalanches and snow had basically wiped out all the tracks from our ascent. And so it's like dealing with a completely different topography because the snow has altered everything.
43:19 John Hopkins? Cautiously, they pick their way down the mountain, their bodies slow and aching, racked by exhaustion and poor nutrition.
43:29 John Hopkins? The air becomes easier to breathe the further they descend, the much-needed oxygen circulating in the climbers' blood, the symptoms of their altitude sickness starting to ease.
43:41 John Hopkins? But then, as if to remind them of its might, the mountain flashes its power once more.
43:48 Speaker 02 We were rappelling a steep cliff, like a steep ice cliff. And the final person to go triggered this slide, which slid past us. So I don't think it was a major slide, looking back, but you're so amped up and keyed up that you're like, "Oh my God, like this is gonna grow into this huge avalanche."
44:13 John Hopkins? Luckily, the snowslide is fairly small and causes no damage.
44:18 John Hopkins? Beating hearts settle again, and the team return to their descent.
44:23 John Hopkins? At long last, they enjoy a stretch of good fortune, making smooth progress back down the slopes.
44:30 John Hopkins? Until finally, Pete and the team stumble back into base camp with a golden sun setting behind them. Much to the relief of their friends and colleagues at the camp.
44:43 Speaker 02 I think everyone deals with it differently when they are greeted as someone returning from the grave. I can't speak for the others, but I think there's probably this relief. And also, it probably underlined how serious the situation is. Because it's one thing to say, "Oh, I almost died." I mean, people throw that out quite a bit. But to actually have people in the know say, "We thought you were dead," that really underscores and emphasizes the situation you were in.
45:13 John Hopkins? As for Pete, he knows exactly how he plans to celebrate his survival.
45:19 Speaker 02 When I walked into base camp, I'm like, "Man, I just want to eat and eat and eat and eat and breathe the air that just feels thick." When you're at altitude and you get sick, it's almost like you're living on vapors and you feel like this apparition kind of clinging on to the atmosphere and just trying to keep going. And when you get down to base camp, which might be at 1,400 meters, so really high, the air is thick. You can smell things like the smell of grass coming up the valley. You can smell dirt. You can smell other people because high altitude, really thin air, tends to strip some of the senses away. So what I remember is just like going, "Ah, the sun, the air is thick, and someone
46:04 Speaker 02 is making me a bunch of food, and I'm going to sit here and eat and eat until I go to sleep."
46:16 John Hopkins? Mere days after their return to base camp, Pete and Johnny are on the move again.
46:23 John Hopkins? They climb Nandadevi East, a nearby mountain with a spectacular view of Nandadevi, where the CIA spy gadget may lie buried somewhere in the snow.
46:35 John Hopkins? They are forced back by bad weather before reaching the summit, though not before they spot a slight depression where the device was supposedly abandoned. But that's as close as they get. In the end, Pete's fantasy of uncovering long-lost espionage equipment doesn't come to fruition.
46:58 John Hopkins? Still, upon returning to America, he throws himself into working on his book, eventually publishing it in 2006.
47:07 Speaker 02 It was my first book. I didn't have an editor, which is really stupid. It wasn't the greatest book. I envisioned myself making so much money and retiring, you know, all that. And that never transpired.
47:21 John Hopkins? He may not have returned with what he'd set out to find, but Pete's experience in the Himalayas does change his life in many other ways.
47:30 Speaker 02 The lesson that this area, this adventure, the mountain, the goddess gave to me was kind of this pause to think like, wow, maybe you're not the center of the universe. Maybe other people are more important and maybe you better get to work to try to become a better human being. So I'd say that's the biggest thing I took from that experience. That and to survive that, it goes back to that first climb where you're getting away with something. Like in some way, is it to survive that is to steal your mortality back from the universe for the short time remaining that I have. So that's a recurrent theme for me.
48:13 John Hopkins? More than two decades on from his Nandakot adventure, Pete, now in his 60s, is still climbing all around the world. And his numerous survival experiences have led him down an interesting path. These days, he edits an annual publication entitled "Accidents in North American Climbing."
48:33 Speaker 02 The real, I think, benefit for me is that I have over 40 years of climbing experience. You know, I've seen people die. I've been in accidents. I've almost had to get rescued multiple times. And I've had a lot of these life and death experiences. So the positive thing is all those things can be pretty traumatic. But when I have this opportunity to talk with people who've had accidents or edit their reports, I can really bring that experience in. And the beauty of it is it makes all these potentially traumatic experiences of my life relevant to real people having real accidents in climbing. So most of the time,
49:18 Speaker 02 I just feel like the luckiest guy in the world.
49:22 Speaker 02 That struggle to survive, that's the most profound thing that I think anyone can pull out of their back pocket and say, "I want to live." For me as an individual, that's been just a huge gift. To survive is to really just be handed this gift by the universe. So I'm grateful for these experiences.
49:58 John Hopkins? Next time, a young Briton travels to General Franco's Spain and finds himself in unforeseeable danger. In 1967, 28-year-old lifeguard Guy Taplin travels to the Costa del Sol, seeking a fresh start. Settling into life on the coast, at first, the days slip by in a happy haze. But when a fellow beachgarner gets caught in a sudden and powerful riptide, Guy jumps in to help. Battling against the choppy waves and strong current, he quickly finds himself plunged into a desperate fight for his own life as well. Swept out to sea, struggling to stay afloat, their chances of reaching safety seem vanishingly slim. And their strength is running out.
50:43 John Hopkins? That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen to Guy's story today without waiting and without ads by joining Noiser Plus.
50:53 Speaker 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.
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