The Third Man Factor
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist”
If not for a seismic tremor, Andy would have cross-ed the traverse without a hitch. As it were, he was halfway across the steep rock face when an avalanche from above swept him down the mountainside and into a deep crevasse.
A few days earlier, Andy announced to his fiancée, Katy, that he was going to solo the North Face route on the Grand Teton; one he had climbed many times before with climbing partners.
Andy knew that Katy disapproved of his plans to climb such a demanding route without a partner. It didn’t sway Katy’s opinion when he told her that he had climbed the North Face route so many times he knew by rote every move to the summit—a flagrant exaggeration to be sure, as Katy knew that the North Face Route held many dangers from rockfall to its notorious wet surfaces.
Katy was an excellent climber in her own right; her numerous “first ascents” of extreme routes earned her the title of elite rock climber. But after Katy’s sister, Emily, was killed in 2014 on K2 in the Karakoram Range, she decided to abstain from climbing any alpine routes.
Katy just shrugged her shoulders in resignation; she knew that once Andy made up his mind to do something, any further protests were in vain.
Andy heard the roar of the snow above as it picked up speed and volume before it lifted him up and carried him like a rag doll a hundred yards or so down the mountain before depositing him in a crevasse. Andy landed flat on his back on an icy ledge with a thud, abruptly halting his fall. Fortunately, his pack, containing a sleeping bag and a rappelling rope, absorbed much of the impact.
Wilderness Medical Training courses are a necessity for anyone climbing in the backcountry, so Andy began a thorough check of his body to determine if he had sustained any injuries. He felt that he may have broken a rib, but the only other pain was in his right ankle, not a good omen for climbing out of the crevasse.
Andy managed to get himself in a sitting position with his back against the wall, his feet dangling over the ledge. He knew this position was insecure, so he dug some pitons out of his pack. Climbers rarely used them anymore, but he kept a few Lost Arrow pitons for just such an emergency.
Just above his head was a thin horizontal crack that would accommodate the knife blade piton, but he would have to stand up on the sloping icy ledge to pound it in, and that meant digging his crampons out of the pack and getting them on his boots with an ankle that was swelling ever larger by the minute.
Andy could hear water rushing far below him; he knew that if he fell off the ledge, he would surely die. He also knew that his original plan was to camp for a couple of nights on the Upper Saddle after summiting the Grand Teton and rappelling down the Owen’s Spalding route. That meant no one would be searching for him for a few days, so if Andy were to survive his ordeal, he would have to get out of the crevasse on his own.
It took Andy nearly an hour to attach the crampons to his boots, all the while sliding around on his perch. Once the crampons were on, he hung his ice hammer and piton around his neck on a short lanyard. He looked around and peeked over the ledge ever so carefully and set his uninjured foot on the ledge, the points sticking hard to the ice.
Andy placed his right boot on the ledge a foot or so from the other boot. He anticipated a lot of pain when he stood up, and he wasn’t wrong.
Before committing to standing, Andy drove the blade of his ice axe into a frozen rivulet of hard blue ice, and it held. It was now or never; he very gingerly distributed his weight between the crampons and his axe, pulling with his arm and pushing up with his legs at the same time.
He took in a deep breath, let it out, and, somewhat wobbly, stood up to where he could reach the thin crack. He looked down momentarily into the jet-black depths of the crevasse. He immediately turned back to his task, telling himself to concentrate only on getting that pin in as quickly as possible – he could feel his crampons beginning to slip under his weight.
Andy gingerly removed a Lost Arrow from the lanyard and placed it in the half-inch crack, about an inch or so. He then very carefully slipped the lanyard off his neck and managed a solid grip on the hammer. He now focused his concentration on slamming that pin into the crack as far as possible and clipping on a carabiner. He slipped slightly on his first attempt, sending the piton into the abyss below.
A climber in such a situation must be able to fight panic, and Andy was doing his best to keep it at bay. After a bit of rest, he repeated his previous steps, but this time the hammer struck the Lost Arrow perfectly, and the piton went deeply into the crack; it was now secure.
Andy clipped a carabiner into the piton and tied himself off with a sling. “At least,” he thought, “I’m not going to slip off the ledge.” Now, he had to figure out how to climb the 30 feet or so of sheer rock and ice to get out of the crevasse, standing on his injured right foot, which meant searing pain.
The sliver of light that illuminated Andy’s ledge from above quickly dwindled to an inky black darkness. It was night, and Andy would have to bivouac on the ledge until morning, when he could assess a potential escape route.
It wasn’t a comfortable bivvy by any standards; despite being secured to the piton above his head, he still woke up frequently with a jolt when he started to slide off the edge. The welcome light of dawn allowed Andy to assess his situation further.
He had a water bottle, several bags of freeze-dried food, and some energy bars, so he would have to make do with what he had.
Andy’s more serious problem looming ahead was how he was going to climb the sheer wall of rock and ice above his ledge. And, from his vantage point on the ledge, he could not see any holds with which he might climb. He would have to attempt it without knowing what was above him.
Andy retrieved his climbing rope from his pack and tied it off to the piton he had previously placed. He rummaged some more in his pack and pulled out an ascending device that he would use to lock himself into the rope so that if he fell, it would prevent him from tumbling down into the crevasse. It was August, and the meltwater was rising in the crevasse. If he fell, he would certainly drown.
Once more, he got himself to his feet, but not without excruciating pain when he put weight on his right foot. Andy grabbed the rope, now secured to the piton above his head, and pulled himself up as far as he could. He could see several small ledges above him, the first one requiring a lunge of a foot or more to reach it – his grip would have to be well-timed and solid.
Andy took in a deep breath, and when he released it, he pushed off with his left foot, pulling on the rope with both hands. He released his right hand from the rope and slapped at the ledge, but it slipped off the down sloping hold, sending Andy back down to his bivouac ledge. Fortunately, he came down on his left foot first, and the pain in his injured right foot was minimal.
Andy was beginning to lose hope of getting out alive, made even worse by the rushing water from below that was rising rapidly toward his ledge. His thoughts turned to the plight of a man named Aron Ralston, who in 2003 had to cut off his right arm at the elbow when it became trapped by a rock during a canyoneering adventure.
He commented aloud, “Right now, I would rather cut off my arm than face this miserable icy wall looming above me.” This lamentation was followed shortly by an even darker thought: perhaps he should jump off the ledge into the water and end this ordeal.
It was at that moment that Andy saw something out of the corner of his right eye: a female figure with long dark hair. When he turned his head to look at her, she remained in his peripheral vision. He wondered if he might be hallucinating, but no matter how he turned his head, the figure remained.
Her presence, Andy thought, was somehow deeply comforting as if she was there to help him in some way. He nearly jumped when he suddenly heard her encouraging him to keep trying, saying that it wasn’t his time to die. Even more eerie was that her words were not vocal; they seemed to go directly to his brain, bypassing the ears.
He immediately had an overwhelming compulsion to get back on that wall and get the hell out of that crevasse. Once again, Andy very gingerly got back on his feet and gazed up the wall.
He grabbed the secured rope with both hands as before. This time, he focused on the good hold above him. Summoning every bit of his remaining strength, he launched himself upward, his right hand grasping the hold, followed immediately by the other hand.
When he pulled himself up, Andy saw a vertical crack a foot or so above him that he could jam his fist in and get stabilized. He knew his strength was waning, but the mysterious woman urged him on with thoughts of his fiancée. As though gravity had taken a momentary break, he felt as if he floated up to the crack.
Once Andy had his fist firmly in place, he pulled himself up and was eye-level with a dry ledge he could stand on. He lay back on the crack and pulled himself up until he could get his left boot on the ledge. Then, with all his might, he continued pulling his weight up until he was firmly standing on the ledge with both feet.
After getting his breath and noticing that the figure was no longer with him, he placed another piton and worked his way up and out of the crevasse in just a few more moves. Andy was going to live to see another day, and his descent down to the Teton Glacier was far more joyous than any summit he had ever stood on.
When he finally arrived home, and Katy saw him limping up to her door, she felt a mix of relief and concern, prompting her to get Andy in her car and drive him to the emergency room.
He had a fractured ankle requiring a cast and he had two broken ribs, but otherwise, he came out of his ordeal in reasonably good shape. He was kept one night in the hospital and released the next day.
That evening, as Katy and Andy lay in bed, he hesitantly told her about the mysterious dark-haired woman that he referred to as a “sort of an angel.” He searched Katy’s eyes, looking for any sign that she thought he was batshit crazy, that maybe he had been hallucinating – there was none; Katy was never quick to jump to conclusions.
When Andy got to the part where the “angel” was encouraging him to keep trying to climb out of the crevasse, he recounted that she said, “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
At that, Katy’s eyes widened and she jumped out of bed saying, “What did you just say?. Andy repeated what the figure had said. For several minutes, Katy just stood silently over Andy, looking into his eyes as if she couldn’t believe what he had just told her.
She then sat down beside Andy and held his hand. Through her tears, she said, “Andy, my sister Emily, who had raven-black hair, died before I met you, and I’ve rarely spoken of her; the pain of her loss is still there. However, there was a phrase she picked up somewhere in her travels, and she would bring it out every time I started feeling sorry for myself and began talking about giving up on a work project or a challenging college class. She would always say, “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
The end.
Postscript: Readers, be aware that there is a phenomenon known as the Third Man Factor. Many notable and credible individuals who have found themselves in dire situations, including soldiers, explorers, mountain climbers, and others, have reported experiencing a sense that an entity was present, encouraging them and, in a sense, guiding them out of danger.
As for what causes this unique phenomenon, there are several theories ranging from fear-induced hallucinations to something a bit more supernatural. A future article will delve deeper into this mysterious topic.
Ken Springer
ken1949bongo@gmail.com
