'I was buried alive': how a famous tourist was able to survive in a terrible snow storm
'03.06.2021'
Source: Lenta.ru
The tourist went to the mountains alone and almost died in a blizzard. How she managed to survive, tells Lenta.ru.
Traveler Terra Roam set a world record for becoming the first woman to walk all of Australia alone. On the way, she repeatedly had to face difficulties, but still managed to complete what she started. The adventurer told what led her to this lifestyle, and how one day she was literally buried alive due to a powerful blizzard in the mountains. "Lenta.ru" publishes the story of her survival as part of a cycle based on the podcasts "Diaries of Wild Travelers", created by Australian Aaron Shanks. Further - from the first person.
The first reason is me
It was not my goal to become the first woman to walk all of Australia without any support until I was halfway there. At first, I just wanted to walk around our country, to see as many beautiful places as possible. Walking alone was the most practical way, but at some point I was contacted by the media.
“You must be the first woman to go this alone and without auxiliary vehicles,” the reporters said. Then I thought about the purpose of my trip. Although, in truth, the passion for adventure began long before that.
Since childhood, as I recall, I have always been fond of wanderings. At age 12, I got into the hands of Robin Davidson's Footprints book about her expedition from Alice Springs to the west coast of Australia with camels and her dog. The way she wrote about her loneliness and unity with nature resonated strongly with my inner attitude, and since then I knew that I wanted to do something similar.
In 1988, when I turned 16, my family and I moved to the mountains and began to live near the Kosciuszko National Park, which literally became our backyard. Almost every day I walked there among the billowing blocks of stone and felt at home in the mountains. And the main teachers in my life were my grandfather and a school geography teacher.
The first one explained to me how to use the compass correctly, how to determine the cardinal directions without any instruments (I can now tell you for sure where the north or south is located - on a hunch). The second taught how to use maps and read nature from a leaf. During school expeditions, the geographer told you exactly what things you should pay attention to during the campaign: rivers, weather, geology and so on. And as soon as I passed the final exams, I immediately set off on my first trip.
Since then, I have been exploring the world for over 30 years. In my life there was a lot of everything - wandering with gypsies, working on ships off the coast of Australia and the Persian Gulf, traveling with a theater troupe across Oceania; I was a sailing instructor, firefighter, English teacher in Bangkok, lifeguard, guide and bartender. Throughout my life, I took every opportunity to get to know other cultures and wildlife and often found myself in dangerous situations, but once my life literally hung in the balance of death. And even though by that time I was an experienced traveler, a number of mistakes almost cost me my existence on our beautiful planet.
Golden Rules
On my trips, if I may call them that, I never use rental housing; instead, I take a tent with me. I’m scared by the thought that I’ll have to be attached to a particular place: I begin to feel bad physically and mentally, because I constantly feel a craving for new sensations and studies. If I stay in the mountains or surrounded by wildlife, I always move my tent once every one to two weeks, so that in no case will harm the environment and wild animals.
In addition to a double all-weather tent in my arsenal there is a thermal mat, a sleeping bag, a small portable library, a couple of sets of spare clothes and all the cooking accessories.
I spent the next winter season in the mountains of the national park, until the weather decided to make my own adjustments. Now, telling this story to friends or acquaintances, I consider myself lucky.
It seemed to me that being an experienced traveler, I learned all the survival techniques: I knew where and how to set up a tent, how to protect it from the wind and what to do in trouble. By the way, if we are talking about winter camping, then when fixing housing it is better to use the so-called dead-man method - in this case, the tent will definitely not roll down on the sliding snow.
Its essence is to secure the guy wires not with pegs, but with a stick of medium thickness, which you need to bury in the snow and then squeeze with your feet. Thus, even the most severe storm will not blow your roof over your head. That day I followed all the rules and even erected a snow wall nearby so that the tent would not be blown away by the wind.
And a storm struck
When it was broadcast on the radio that a powerful storm was approaching the park, I did not attach any importance to this. “Just think, we have already experienced so many troubles and storms! You will not be scared of anything. Surely the media is again exaggerating the scale of the disaster, ”I thought. And even despite the concerns of friends and calls of family members, she decided not to move. In addition, relatives and a couple of acquaintances, as well as a park employee, knew my exact geolocation.
At that time, my shelter was ideally located: on one side it was covered with giant stones, on the other - a snow wall. I was confident in my safety. In addition, that morning the weather was just wonderful - the bright sun literally burned my face, not a single cloud was visible in the sky. Well, can something bad happen on such a clear day?
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However, by one in the afternoon everything began to change. At first, the wind accelerated to a speed of 25 kilometers per hour, then doubled, and in the end its speed reached 80 kilometers per hour. A terrible storm began, and nature quickly showed me all my mistakes. In a matter of seconds, a blizzard leveled my protective wall with the rest of the snow. After all, the wind did not snow on one side or even two - he picked up dry white grains and randomly scattered them everywhere. I underestimated the power of the storm and settled in the wrong place. My tent very soon began to sink in a snowdrift.
Periodically, I tried to go outside to clear the snow, but the elements were stronger than me: after a few hours, the walls of the tent ceased to withstand and began to push inward. Then I ran out onto the street again, began to dig out my home with renewed vigor, and suddenly everything swam before my eyes.
Have you ever heard of hypothermia? This is a condition of the body in which the body temperature drops lower than is required to maintain normal metabolism. Simply put, hypothermia. In this state, while the body continues to lose temperature, the body begins to gradually turn off the internal organs in order to maintain it. So gradually a person loses consciousness, and then dies.
That is exactly what happened to me. The first stage of hypothermia. The brain began to reproduce everything that happened in slow motion, as if someone had added the effect of slow motion to my vision. At some point, I even forgot where I was and ceased to understand how I ended up in the midst of a blizzard.
Having brought myself to my senses, I climbed back into the tent and found that everything inside was covered with snow. In some miraculous way, I managed to recover, stop trembling and keep warm. I was very lucky as the sleeping bag remained warm, despite the fact that there was ice everywhere. So I fell asleep harder than ever. My body is very weak.
Snow grave
“Lord, I’m buried alive!” - opening my eyes at six in the morning of the next day, I startled with horror. There was deathly silence around. No wind, no birds, no rustle - nothing was heard. I stuck my head out of my sleeping bag and realized that the tent was compressed under the pressure of snow so much that it literally turned into a cocoon the size of me. To move, I had to fidget from side to side. I started to panic.
“How much time did I oversleep? What is going on outside? How deep am I? How little oxygen do I have left? ” - Questions rained into my head by themselves, the fear grew. You could not lose a second, because every moment I was getting deeper under the snow, and at any moment I could run out of air. I raked some space inside, dug out my backpack among other things, and ... opened the door.
Snow immediately fell on me and fell asleep all around. Fortunately, with me I had a small shovel just for such cases, and I frantically began to dig up to save my life. At such moments (and those who found themselves in situations close to death will understand me), the brain abruptly switches to survival mode and ceases to think rationally.
The snow was friable and very soft, it flew into my face and fell asleep in clothes, but the relief was that I saw the light through the snowdrifts. So, I fell asleep about one and a half meters. It was necessary to continue to dig the tunnel at all costs. And I was digging like crazy.
Once upstairs, I again experienced horror - a lonely woman without support was in the middle of a snow-white desert, delirious. Without delay, I began to move forward. My main goal was to find at least some kind of structure and take refuge there from the cold and the piercing wind. My head didn’t even think that I couldn’t do it. But walking on loose snow was very difficult. Literally swimming among the snowdrifts and periodically failing, I walked about a kilometer and realized that I could no longer.
I fell into another hole. Deep enough. And, being at its bottom, she suddenly thought: “It is warm, comfortable, there is no wind. I need some rest. I deserve it. Nothing bad will happen if I sit here a little bit. ”
This is how the brain deceives you with hypothermia. And the most important thing is to learn to recognize it in time. I jumped up abruptly and began to scold myself: "Are you crazy !? No rest! Forward! Go ahead and don’t stop! ”
My corpse traumatizes him forever
But another insidious snowdrift was waiting for me after a few meters. I failed again and ... gave up. Leaning on the snow, I began to fall into sleep. The wind gradually covered me with white flakes. “I will die, but there is nothing to worry about. Death is an integral part of life, everyone has to face it sooner or later, ”the brain reassured me. Suddenly terrible pictures began to appear to me.
But what if I find a little boy who will ski? Suddenly he will move my hand or see a red jacket sticking out from under a snowdrift? My corpse injures him forever. By my death I will ruin the life of a harmless boy! This cannot be allowed. I have to get up. Get up and find the damn house.
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The smallest movement was given to me with incredible effort. I persuaded myself to take every step and every millimeter of the path traveled, and, apparently, I earned my salvation with my zeal. A dark spot appeared on the horizon. It was a building. Three hundred meters from me stood a building!
I ran up and saw the name and number on the door. My brain was thinking so badly that I forgot about the phone in my backpack. But as soon as a number popped up in front of my eyes, I immediately remembered it and with trembling hands began to press buttons. "An emergency ... I have hypothermia ... hypothermia ... hypothermia ..." - all that I managed to say before the battery sat down. That was the last straw. I didn’t even know if anyone had picked up the phone because my ears were frostbitten and I heard nothing but the wind.
Before my eyes stood a white veil. I did not have the strength to stay on my feet, and I began to crawl along the wall. There was no more hope. The wind stopped blowing me, and I did the worst that could be done with hypothermia, - fell asleep.
Lesson for life
A hand touched my shoulder. Then they grabbed me by the arms and dragged me to the scooter. Still not understanding what was happening, I tried to kick, wave my fists and scream. But there was no need to resist: the rescuers came for me. They quickly plunged my lifeless body onto the scooter and drove to the doctor, who fed me brownies and gave me sweet tea to raise my blood sugar.
So I miraculously survived and to this day I thank the doctor and the park employee who pulled me out of my dying state. The hospital was warm, dry and safe. I stayed there for a couple of days, and when the storm subsided, I returned to the mountains to dig out my tent.
Of course, it turned out to be unusable, but be that as it may, I'm glad that all this happened to me. After such situations, you begin to feel like a superhero, and most importantly - you learn from your mistakes. Since then, I promised myself that I would never neglect weather forecasts and begin to listen to the advice of friends who are worried about my life.
I am not telling this story in order to scare people and make them afraid to travel alone. On the contrary, by my example, I want to show that you can find a way out of any situation and you should approach your every trip responsibly, preparing in advance for all possible force majeure situations.
