Avalanche at the Mine: Buried Under a Machine

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0:56It's late afternoon on November the 17th, 1985. In the skies above southwest Colorado, a heavy mantle of cloud which has been steadily gathering mass all afternoon finally breaks. Snow streams down like ticket tape, blinding flurries that swirl and eddy in the 50-mile-an-hour gusts. On a steep hillside, among the frozen peaks of the La Plata Mountains, a scattering of timber lies strewn across the surface of the snow. A mechanical loader, toppled onto its side and half-buried by deep, fresh drifts, continues to rumble and splutter, belching coils of black smoke into the blizzard. That sound, that monotonous drone of machinery, is what 31-year-old Les Morlang clings onto.

1:48because where he is, stunned and disorientated beneath 50 feet of snow, it's the only thing telling him which direction to dig. The loner, thankfully, told me which way to go. And then after I kind of got adjusted and then got my torso free to breathe, that's when I decided I could dig out after I got demoxied into the brain, I guess. Fuelled by desperation and guided by the distant rumble of the loader, Les begins to frantically claw at the snow above his head. But compressed by the weight of the deposits above, the clumps around him have started to firm up, hardening like setting cement. Les must hack and chisel at the snow with his fingertips, then push it down past his body before squirming into the space he has created.

2:45Gradually, he establishes a kind of rhythm. What I'd do is after I got my torso loose a little bit, so I could kind of turn and start digging on my incline. And I had a little system. I'd reach up one, two, three, would push it down to my knees, and four was pack it.

3:14Millimeter by millimeter, Les inches his way towards the surface. At times, the claustrophobia becomes overwhelming, triggering the impulse to scream and thrash his limbs. But Les has to keep his composure. Panicking will only use up more precious oxygen and cause him to asphyxiate faster. Besides, even if his voice could penetrate the fathoms of snow separating him from daylight, There's no one up there to hear him. That's a pretty lonely feeling up there. You might as well be out in the Alaska tundra with no help. Just nobody can get to you.

4:04Ever 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 meet 31-year-old Les Morland. In November 1985, Les, a mechanic at a gold mine in the mountains of Colorado, is racing to complete some essential construction work before a blizzard rolls in. While keeping one eye on the approaching storm, Les and his colleague Jack are operating a mechanical loader when they are caught off guard by something that no forecast could have predicted.

4:51A devastating natural disaster that descends on the mine where the two men are working. They will become separated and Les will be left buried beneath 50 feet of compacted snow and ice. My hard hat and everything in life was back behind me. First thing, you're just trying to breathe, but the pressure on your chest doesn't allow you anything. Disorientated, running out of oxygen, and with nobody around to help, Les will have to claw his way to the surface. In more ways than one, he will have to dig deep. I think the flashbacks of seeing my son and my wife, I had to get out. Said it a thousand times, don't ever give up.

5:40There's always hope. If you can move that little finger, move it. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

6:19It's 1 p.m. on November the 17th, 1985. Fringing the eastern border of Colorado's High Plain, a wild, beautiful region of winding canyons and rolling, copper-colored hills, the La Plata Mountains are a jagged chain of alpine peaks that rise like a prehistoric spine from the earth. Winter has arrived in the High Plain, and a recent blizzard has left its mark on this uniquely dramatic landscape. The red sandstone cliffs are banded with snow, and the sprawling sand flats shiver beneath heavy blankets of white, pinpricked here and there by a solitary snow-dusted cactus. Meanwhile, up among the lofty peaks of the La Plata's, a deep freeze has set in.

7:07These are just the first throes of winter, but already the pine forests lie half buried by deep drifts, their boughs slumped and spangled with silvery frost. Above the timberline, things become starker still. The mountaintops are encased in ice, their white silhouettes faintly embossed against the pale, overcast sky.

7:35Just below a treeless ridgeline, where the wind has sculpted the snow into a precarious, overhanging cornice, two men trudge along a footpath carved into the hillside. 31-year-old Les Morland, dressed for work in rubber boots, hard hat, and overalls, walks alongside his colleague Jack Ritter. Les is a mechanic and electrician at the Bessie G, one of the many gold and silver mines that run through the hills of La Plata County. I would do all the mechanical and mill right, like setting up the air system and electrical and water. You have generators outside the mine by the portal, and that runs everything inside.

8:24So my job was to keep all the motors going and things electrical. We had a pretty nice mine. Les and Jack have come to check on the progress of a work crew who are supposed to be finishing the construction of a snowshed over the mine's entrance, known as the Portal. When completed, the snowshed will protect the Portal from snow, enabling the miners to work longer into the unforgiving winter months. But when Jack and Les arrive at the worksite, they make an unwelcome discovery. The rest of the crew has already packed up and left, presumably driven down the mountain by the adverse weather. We come back from town and that was about one o 'clock, two o 'clock before we got back to the mine and nobody was there.

9:13Everybody had left. We were kind of at a standstill, but they were supposed to have this done. and it wasn't and Jack asked me, he said, you want to try it? And of course I'm all in. I'm just a kid. If you want something done right and more to the point, done quickly, do it yourself. And so Jack and Les get to work, anxious to make the most of the three remaining hours of daylight. Les gets behind the wheel of a loader while Jack fills the bucket with timber. Les then begins ferrying the wood up to the mine's entrance, trundling along the rutted track from the lumber pile to the mineshaft. As he steers the vehicle, Les glances up at the frigid, chalk-coloured sky.

10:03It feels like it could start snowing again any minute. They'd better get a move on. The last thing they want is to get stranded up here.

10:14Les Morland was born and raised in nearby Silverton, and, just like the hills of southwest Colorado, he is tough, rugged, and weather-hardened. The son of a livestock farmer, Les spent much of his boyhood helping out on the ranch, rounding up cattle, and harvesting sugar beets. Well, I grew up on a farm near locally, and we've been here all our lives. I had two brothers and one sister, and our family wasn't that tight-knit. My mom and dad didn't talk that much. I didn't realize that dad was just hanging in there until we graduated and then they were getting a divorce, which they did. Though family life wasn't always harmonious, Les describes happy memories of childhood, wrangling cattle on horseback during the week and racing motorcycles on weekends.

11:08At school, Les wasn't exactly a model student. Growing up on a farm, the emphasis was always on the practical. Traditional academic subjects could feel a little abstract, too far removed from the hardscrabble reality of life. As soon as he was old enough, Les left school and entered the world of work. He trained as a land surveyor doing topographical mapping for a local firm. The job suited Les, appealing to his logical, pragmatic mind. So that was my formal education It was about eight years of surveying I really liked it Because English, when you go to school, makes no sense Mathematics work And you can do it from different directions and make it work So I love mathematics But I'm really a mechanic at heart

12:06In 1974, aged 20 Les married his high school sweetheart Anita A few years later The couple moved from the Silverton area To the town of Green River, Utah Where Les took a job as a mechanic Though just four hours northwest of Silverton Green River is a world apart A dusty, one-stoplight town In the middle of Utah's high desert But as it happened Les and Anita wouldn't stay here for long One day, Les got a call out of the blue from an old family friend back in Colorado, a guy named Jack Ritter. I got to know Jack through Jeff's son, and my younger brother were buddies, girl chasers together. We were all pretty close.

12:56All of their family and all of our family got along well. It's better than family because they weren't related to you. Jack, he was always quiet, always a listener Jack is a veteran Colorado miner turned contractor These days he runs a company that buys up old, disused mines And gets them operational again Using modern methods to extract every last ounce of remaining low-grade ore

13:30Ever since the discovery of gold in Colorado in 1858, enterprising fortune seekers have set up mining operations in the foothills of the Southern Rockies. By 1985, after more than a century of intensive extraction, most of those operations have closed. The region is littered with abandoned mines. However, with the advent of modern mining and refining technology, a new industry of mine reclamation has flourished in recent years. Mines deemed exhausted and no longer profitable have been given a new lease of life by the next generation of fortune seekers. People like Jack Ritter. When Jack rang Les, he told him he'd recently acquired the Bessie G, an old gold and silver mine in La Plata County, inactive since the 1950s.

14:21Jack told Les that unlike most of the sites he reclaimed, the Bessie G was nowhere close to being exhausted. Jack knew about so many mines and everything. He knew this one had the best record and amount, and there was never a mother load found, so it's still there. Back then, we could get two and a half ounces per ton, and that was mineable. That was, we could make money. Jack wanted Les to come and work for him, as a millwright, a kind of industrial mechanic stroke electrician. Jack made a persuasive pitch, but Les wasn't convinced right away. The job would be unpaid until such a time as the mine started making a profit, which could take months.

15:11After giving it some thought, Les presented Jack with his terms. We were working for ourselves for free. And I had a new house that I built, and I told Jack I'd come and work for him if my house is paid for. If you pay the payment, I can handle everything else. And that was the deal.

15:40Now it's three years later, and still the Bessie G hasn't yielded enough gold to make a profit. With only a year left on their contract, the pressure is mounting for Jack and Les to find the mother load, that elusive deposit of untapped ore rumoured to dwell somewhere inside the mountain. If they don't, then everything they've invested, all this time, money and perspiration, will be for naught. It's why they're working so hard to keep the mine open through the winter. They simply can't afford to down tools until spring. But as they work on the snowshed, trying to maximize every second of daylight, nightfall isn't the only thing nipping at their heels.

16:22A further blizzard is forecast, and if they don't protect the mine's entrance before it hits, it will mean another unaffordable setback. Les sweats through his work clothes as he stands in the bucket of the loader, raised high off the ground, laying lengths of wood across the unfinished frame of the snowshed. We have a loader, it's on tracks, and we would carry our wood on it, and then we would raise it up with it, and that's where I was. I was inside the bucket, maybe like 10 feet off the ground, 10, 12 feet off the ground. Jack reaches down for another length of timber. He turns and, stretching, passes it up to Les.

17:09He handed it up to me and all of a sudden there was a little blast of snow about a pickup load. And he knocked me down in the bucket and Jackal, are you alright? Yeah, I'm alright. Everything, yeah. There was our warning we didn't take heat. Shaken, Les gets to his feet inside the bucket, blinking snow from his eyes. He squints up the mountain, beyond the portal, but there's no sign of a bigger avalanche following this little one. The vibrations of the loader must have dislodged some surface powder, a loose drift. No harm done. Brushing snow from the folds of his overalls, Les gets back to work.

17:52A few minutes go by. Jack hands Les another length of timber, the final one, and just as he goes to place the plank, the earth rumbles and growls. But because of the engine of the loader, a constant thrumming in their ears, Les and Jack don't hear it coming. Not until it's too late. In the fraction of a second before the avalanche hits, there is time only to adopt a half-baked brace position, to instinctively turn from the roaring white cloud and raise their arms to protect their faces and windpipes. And then, the mountain engulfs them. I don't remember. I really don't know what was going on or anything.

18:42You're just fighting for a breath.

18:55It's about 5 p.m. on November the 17th, 1985. In the La Plata Mountains of southwest Colorado, the blizzard that has been threatening all afternoon has finally made landfall. Snow streams from the sky, an opaque cascade that twists in the wind. On a remote mountainside, below a curved treeless ridge, a few lengths of timber lie scattered across the surface of the frozen ground. A mechanical loader, still emitting smoke, has toppled onto its side and is slowly being covered over by the steadily falling snow. But of the two men who were working here just moments ago, there isn't a trace. The avalanche, a massive one, struck without warning, consigning the men to a grim fate, a swift burial and an unmarked grave.

19:50Meanwhile, somewhere beneath the surface, Les Morlang is being crushed by the weight of 50 feet of compacted snow and ice. My hard hat and everything in life was back behind me. At first, you're just trying to breathe, but the pressure on your chest doesn't allow you anything. A pulverizing force tightens around Les' body, blocking his airways and squeezing the life from his lungs. His mouth and nostrils are packed with snow, inducing violent coughs and spasms. A horrible pressure builds inside his head as the giant mound of frozen precipitation settles above him. Fortunately, Les' hands are up around his face, not pinned down by his side, and by slowly curling and uncurling his fingers, he is able to carve out an air pocket, a few centimeters around his mouth and nose, enabling a trickle of oxygen to pass between his gritted teeth.

20:52He hungrily sucks air. A string of spittle drips down his face. It is only then that Les realizes something. He is upside down, his legs awkwardly splayed above his head. Because of the pressure on you, you're kind of like in a weightless situation. You can't tell where the gravity is unless you have some speed. So anyway, that saliva ran, and then I realized, well, I'm upside down. Les hangs there, suspended and immobile, as his head fills with blood, and his heart thumps against his ribs in a staccato drumbeat of panic. There is a tingling numbness as the pervasive cold starts leaking into his body.

21:38An almost imperceptible luminescence filters down from the surface, tinting the snow around Les' face, an eerie glacial blue. High above him he can hear the distant rumble of the loader. Does that mean Jack is up there somewhere, maybe trying to dig him out? With all the energy his compressed lungs can muster, Les bellows Jack's name. But in the cramped space, his voice is a stunted, echoless yelp. Immediately snuffed out by the snow. He tries again, each cry for help tinged with ever greater uncertainty. Not knowing if he's alive or dead or somebody's going to help you, you know, there was nobody else up there.

22:24That's a pretty lonely feeling up there. You might as well be out in the Alaska tundra with no help. Nobody can get to you.

22:41Buried beneath 50 feet of freezing snow, Les' body is being put through immense stress. As oxygen levels drop, the heart beats faster to compensate, increasing the body's need for air and thus creating a deadly, vicious cycle. Nearly two-thirds of avalanche victims die this way, asphyxiating in a fit of claustrophobic panic, and few will survive more than half an hour. After several minutes of fruitless yelling, Les' initial instinct to call for help has given way to a new resolve. If Jack isn't able to dig him out, he is going to have to do it himself. The loner, thankfully, told me which way to go.

23:27And then after I kind of got adjusted and then got my torso free to breathe, that's when I decided I could dig out. Les begins the less than straightforward task of flipping his body the right way around. He writhes and wriggles, flexing every muscle and straining every ligament, trying to make some room around his torso. Compressed by the weight of the avalanche, the snow has started to set around him like a plaster cast hardening into thick cement. Finally, after a solid shift of concentrated squirming, there is enough room around Les' chest to free his elbows. With the full use of his arms, he bashes away more snow, building a pocket of space large enough to rotate his body the full 180 degrees.

24:22Then, angled slightly to the horizontal, he starts to dig. What I'd do is after I got my torso loose a little bit So I could kind of turn and start digging on my incline And I had a little system I'd reach up, one, two, three Would push it down to my knees And four would stack it Soon, Les establishes a rhythm He loosens the snow above his head pulls it right down, then tramples it with his boots, and so on. Loosen, pull, trample. Loosen, pull, trample. Repeat. The hours pile up. Les' hands, shoulders, and forearms become machine-like in their consistency. Intense physical exertion is one way to stave off the immediate effects of hypothermia, but it won't protect his vulnerable extremities.

25:25and it's Les' hands that soon start to suffer the most. He is wearing a pair of galvanized rubber work gloves, but after several hours of digging, his fingers feel like raw, bloody stumps. He has to periodically stop and warm them by shoving them inside his overalls and tucking them under his armpits. At one stage, he starts ripping pieces off his T-shirt. I was ripping up my shirt as I'd go along, and then when they'd get cold, then I'd go for a back piece, rip it out and wrap them around my hands. Somewhere above his head, day turns to night, then passes into day again, and still Les keeps digging.

26:13By now, the loader has fallen silent. All Les has to keep him company is the sound of his own labored breathing. There are times when it seems like he could dig forever and never get out But whenever his determination begins to waver He pauses, steals himself and continues Focusing on survival not for his own sake But for the sake of others I think the flashbacks of seeing my son and my wife I had to get out I had to get out I couldn't leave her with a new house payment and all that stuff. Just thinking about that and all the promises you make when you're on the edge of dying. Les perseveres. He isn't especially religious, but sometimes he prays aloud.

27:05Issuing solemn vows to the heavens, promising that if he gets out of this alive, he will live a good life no matter what. You're praying hard and promising the good Lord that you're going to get out and take care of your family After 21 hours, Les has squirmed, wriggled and clawed his way to within just a few meters of the surface He can see the murky grey light above leaking down through the crystalline particles Almost there He reaches up, grasping for purchase, but the snow here is softer and collapses under his touch. He has to keep pushing it down hard, compacting it with his boots, and using it as a platform to push off from.

27:52I was getting close to the outside, so I'm trying to jump on stuff, but there's nothing to get a hold of. So I'm down in this hole and I'm just flapping my wings like that, trying to get out. at last les punches through the layer above his head and for the first time in nearly a day he is not greeted by more snow but a sliver of gray sky adrenaline surging he heaves himself through the hole and collapses in a gasping shuddering heat he is out quickly he looks around for jack but there's no one here. The blizzard is still raging, and horizontal snow buffets his exposed face. He calls for help, but no rescue party would venture up the mountain in these conditions.

28:44No one is coming. Les shields his eyes from the blinding snow, which clumps in his eyelashes as the wind shrieks and howls in his ears. A grim truth dawns on him. His grueling ordeal is still far from over. He is going to have to survive another night on the mountain.