PLEASE COMMENT
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I did not fight it, I couldn’t, I just waited… for death. Just waited, there was no heroic struggle; I just hung there on the rope as my body shut down. Toni Kurz may have fought until he died on the North Face of the Eiger in 1936 but not me, I wanted it to end. Just stop… please.
I looked up at the stars above me. Would I join them? Yes but when?
Now! I was hit in the face by a sudden lash of the rope and the stars went. The wind knifed through my clothes and my vision was blurred by wind-stripped tears. The fall was not stopping despite how much my stomach protested. For a moment, I felt weightless and free moving until an alien sound started within my chest and when a wild maddened cry should’ve ripped out of me and there was nothing, I realised that I was not weightless but accelerating so fast that the animal cry was left far above me.
There was a sudden impact as I exploded through an ice roof, NO! Not the crevasse! I didn’t want to disappear without a trace, for no-one to realise what we had achieved. Please no…
All the air was blown out of my lungs as I made a hard impact with something and I was left numb and still. The fall and the impact could’ve… should’ve snapped my skull from my neck but it didn’t nor did it render me unconscious. I was incredibly lucky.
I lay motionless mouth and eyes open, thinking that they were closed and not realising that I was not breathing. A great wave of pressure was building up inside my chest and black shadows began to cloud my eyes. Suddenly the muscles in my chest contracted, and then my chest heaved out as my brain was demanding oxygen and the dark shadows vanished from my eyes.
I was alive.
A violent agony rushed up my leg making me jolt but clear messages were being sent to my brain as my muscles gripped at the snow.
‘DO NOT MOVE.’
