One Misstep: The 1500ft Fall

25:14He can't find anything. The only sign of an open wound is a small amount of blood in his mouth caused by biting the inside of his cheek. Considering the height from which he's fallen, it's mind-boggling that he's not been more seriously injured. Ryan puts his hand to his helmet, which now bears a huge dent, graphic evidence of how close he came to a sudden end. Other items of his kit have taken a hit too, including his phone. When he retrieves it from his pocket, he sees the screen is smashed. Any chance he had of reaching out to civilization is definitively gone. Just like his ascent, he'll have to get out of this all by himself.

26:00With effort, he pushes himself up. Slowly, he attempts to stand and collapses under the pain in his pelvis.

26:14At that point, I was kind of forced to stop and really take inventory and see where I was, what was going on. It was cold. It was windy. I thought it was incredible that I had survived the fall. But now I have to sit there and, you know, die of exposure. I thought there was no way I was going to survive.

26:36I just remember yelling out in anger. The anger I felt in that moment was, I think, mostly directed at myself for this thing that I committed myself to. It was almost like a rehash of when I had my falling out with my faith, where all of a sudden I realized, oh, this thing I had committed myself to suddenly felt hollow all in one instant. His search for meaning in solo mountaineering has led Ryan here, battered, broken, and alone in the frozen wilderness beneath a gathering storm.

27:15Faced with a very real prospect of death, his solitary spiritual quest is put into stark relief. I'm thinking about family. I'm thinking about my friends, wondering how they're going to react to all of this. At that point, sitting on the side of the mountain, the floor kind of dropped out of all of solo mountaineering activity, and I just realized how empty and wasteful it was.

27:48But if he's to make a fist of surviving, there's no time for self-recrimination. The fortitude he drew on to endure those high school nights of shivering in the rain. He'll need every ounce of it here, and then some.

28:04Ryan surveys his surroundings. It's not promising. He's in an open snowfield, exposed to the elements. But below, there is a valley. On the floor of that, perhaps a thousand feet away, there are trees and what looks to be a small lake or a pond. If he can get to water, then he has a chance of staying alive until someone can find him. Though that may be quite some time, he ascended the west side of Pyramid Peak, just as he told his friends and family he would. But his epic fall has shot him all the way over to the east. If and when a search rescue mission begins, it will inevitably concentrate on the opposite side of the mountain.

28:50God knows when they might work their way eastwards. So getting to the water is now Ryan's sole objective. The only problem is he can barely move. I needed to get down and I didn't have any means of self-arresting, you know, I didn't have my ice axes and walking was not an option. So what I did instead was I got my shovel out and I sat on it kind of like a little sled. And so I kind of just start scooting on my butt down the slope. And it is, it's very slow. I'm sitting on bare metal. My crotch is freezing sitting on that thing and I'd have to kind of get off, warm myself up a little bit, get back on.

29:36The journey is slow, uncomfortable, and not at all straightforward. Descending into the valley, Ryan encounters a 20-foot cliff band, too steep to scoot down on his shovel. The only way he can see of making it is to hop on his one uninjured leg. Gingerly, he rises to his feet, careful to place all his weight on his left side. He starts to hop. But on this slippery downhill terrain, he soon loses his footing and slides down the cliff on a chute of snow.

30:14I slipped, I fell through that chute, terrible pain in my pelvis, but sure enough, you know, spat out on the bottom. Coming to a stop again on flatter ground, the pain in Ryan's left elbow comes rushing back. He glances down. The joint is once more dislocated. Long breaths, teeth gritted. Here we go again.

30:44Then I just put my elbow back in place. And at this point I'm at the bottom of the valley. And so I see where that little open water spot is. And I have to crawl through the snow to get there.

30:58It's afternoon by the time Ryan reaches the pond. It's a small victory, but he has no time to enjoy the achievement. Exhausted, he now attempts to build himself a refuge from the ever-worsening weather. With his one functioning arm, he digs a shelter into the side of a large snow shelf, a long cavity that he can lay in, then pack snow around himself to create a makeshift wall, A crucial barrier against the buffeting wind. I did what I had done on survival nights, which is try and figure out some means of insulation, whatever I could. So I had my little emergency bivy sack. I had my backpack down as kind of a makeshift pad to get me off the snow.

31:44The pond was right next to me, so I really didn't have to get out at all in order to ladle water with my shovel and have something to drink. And so, yeah, that's where I ended up staying for the night. Among his kit that survived the fall is his small stove and a tiny amount of fuel. Enough to boil some water. But the fuel doesn't last long. As the dark of night swallows his surroundings, the awaited storm really sweeps in. Brian can do nothing but lie in his hole in the snow. His body spasms from the cold. The feeling of vulnerability is overwhelming. I'm on the wrong side of the mountain. I feel like I can't really move.

32:31I don't think, now that I'm dug into this little snow cave, I'm not really creating a big footprint or anything that people can see. You know, even if a rescue were to come in, if I'm like passed out or half frozen, they're not going to see me probably. So I was definitely concerned about my odds of being found at that point and still just kind of wrestling with that frustration and myself or getting myself into the situation.

32:59Outside, winds of up to 100 miles per hour race through the mountains. The sky continues to bleed flurries of pure white snow. In his makeshift shelter, Ryan endures a horrendous night of shivering, sleepless misery. those survival nights those nights out you kind of learn not really to sleep you get through it i don't know if i slept at all i'm not even thinking in the night it's like a delirium it's like a fever dream fortunate honestly because i needed a little bit of relief from those thoughts you know despair wasn't helping me or serving me at all at that point and there was nothing i could do but wait the night out

33:49Eventually, the light of morning arrives, and with it, fresh perspective. The worst of the weather has abated. The wind has lost its ferocity. The temperature is creeping up ever so slightly. If Ryan continues on his way through the valley, there is a decent chance he'll eventually come to a nearby road. But that's all immaterial if he can't move. He tries standing and is immediately floored by the pain. Immobile, he finds himself at a crossroads. I was wondering, should I stay put? At least I'd be close to the mountain where they knew I went missing. If I go wandering off, am I going to make it harder for a rescue party to find me?

34:37are my odds best if I stay put or if I somehow muster up the will to walk. So I kind of had this all day back and forth. Morning elides into afternoon, and Ryan remains incapacitated in his frosty shelter. As the sun begins to dip lower in the sky, a new resolve takes hold. It's just the strangest thing, what the body can do. because I had tried to walk several times that day and could not. But that evening, I got out of my cave. I stood up. I was like, oh, I can stand. I started walking a little bit. I could walk. And there really wasn't too much hesitation about it after that. It was, oh, no, I'm putting my stuff in my bag, and I'm going.

35:31Using his shovel as a cane, Ryan hobbles out into the snow. It's so thick in places that he struggles to make it through. Frequently he stumbles and ends up face down in the powder, or flailing on his back like an upturned turtle. Putting himself upright triggers inevitable pain. On his left side, the slightest knock risks dislocating his elbow again. On his right, any weight placed on his fractured pelvis is excruciating. Ryan drags himself forward at a deathly slow creep. Before he knows it, the light begins to fade once again. He has no option but to build another shelter and hunker down until sunrise.

36:18But surroundings here aren't as forgiving as the previous night. The snow is tougher, and building a shelter in its current state seems all but impossible. I dug this, like, horrible vertical hole that I just kind of crawled into. I mean, I was, like, curled up in a ball. My head was kind of sticking out a little bit. My little emergency bivvy sacks with this little foil bag, it was starting to shred. I had all these holes in it. I had the liter and a half of water that I thought would be good for the night, but I was too tired out thinking clearly I didn't bury it really in the snow, so it froze that night.

36:59And, oh man, I remember being so thirsty. The inside of Ryan's backpack has developed some condensation. Desperate, he licks the tiny water droplets in an attempt to take the edge of his intense thirst. The hours grind by. Salvation seems a distant prospect.

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38:14Another night of fitful, feverish, quasi-sleep passes. The next morning, Ryan's situation remains desperate. Yet, the breaking dawn brings an unexpected rush of hope. This morning, the sun floods the valley on the eastern side of Pyramid Peak. The birds chirp and sing in the trees. The wind has calmed to a stiff breeze. The wilderness is transformed. That was huge. It was warm. So I got out and I started moving. And, oh man, I was able to move faster. I had kind of sort of found my rhythm a little bit. And at that point, I was thinking, oh yeah, I could get out of here. Like, I have a chance. Roughly three to four miles stands between Ryan and the road at the other end of the valley.

39:12At the pace his broken body will allow him to travel, that's a full day of grueling effort. With a deep breath, he begins. Trudging through the snow, little by little, Ryan edges deeper into the valley. Then, a jolt of excitement. High above him, a plane flies across the sky. It's the first sign of human life he has seen for three days, before his living nightmare began. Energized, he does his best to make his presence known. I was trying to find reflective things to signal with. I was stamping out letters like a big SOS in the snow. I was considering trying to set fire to some sticks or something.

39:59The more things you can do, the better you'll feel. You feel like you actually have some agency in your own survival. But then it was just a question of like, how much time do I spend doing this versus just walking out? You know, because it takes a lot of time to do any of these other things. I didn't really know how I would, you know, cut and gather a bunch of wood, considering the condition of my elbow and my pelvis. And in the end, I thought, well, I'm going to keep walking. Ryan shuffles along. As the rest of his body is gently warmed by the pale sunshine, the fingers of his right hand remain stubbornly cold within his glove.

40:42He lost his other glove, the left one in the fore. On top of that, his dislocated left elbow has rendered that arm unusable. As a consequence, it's Ryan's right hand that has been doing all the shoveling and grappling for the past two days. In all that time, he has kept his right glove on in an attempt to insulate his hand and protect it from injury. Now he removes the glove and is horrified to discover his fingers have turned grey, a sure sign of frostbite.

41:19I didn't even know that that was happening. It was kind of the least of my concerns. But then I was like, oh no, you know, I can't spend another night out here. I might lose, you know, some digits. So I needed to move and get to that road, because even if I got to the road but night fell and nobody was on that road, I'd be stuck on that road for another night, and it's a long way out. I wanted somebody to find me. Afternoon draws in. Ryan carries on into the valley, moving as fast as he can. All around him, the rugged beauty of Colorado is in full force in this tree-filled valley beneath the towering rockies.

41:57Yet he can take none of it in. His tunnel vision focus is finding the road, still elusive after all these hours of grinding effort. Then, something magical appears. up ahead ryan catches sight of a single word written on a board it simply says trail

42:23it was a sign it's like a literal sign you're on the right way you know and such such validation that i was not just wandering off or nobody was going to find me at that point i saw the sign i could see the valley i came in on i think i could see the road and so I knew I was on the right trajectory. I knew I had a good fighting chance. To make it to the road, he now has to deal with more challenging terrain. He navigates a river by scooting across some logs. It's an unwelcome extra hurdle, but at this point, Ryan is a man possessed. I didn't care. I was going to get out of there. and kind of the final obstacle was maybe 100 feet vertical up this hill to get to the road.

43:09To this point I'd been going downhill, which was much easier. Now I'm trying to flounder my way uphill. The afternoon is pushing along. With not too much light left in the day, the stakes are high. Another night out here will likely be one too many. His frostbitten hand can't take much more. Ryan tries to haul himself up the hill with one good arm and one good leg. At any moment he could slip and fall straight back down. But as it is, his efforts are eventually rewarded. The road is finally within touching distance. And then Ryan spots something even better. As I'm very laboriously making my way up this hill, I see some fat tire bikers heading up the road.

43:56And it was pretty funny because, you know, there I am down in the snow. They're on the road and I'm yelling up to them. And I'm just saying, help me, you know, somebody help me. And they look down and they go, what? Like, help me. They're like, huh? Help me. I think, oh, I get to hear the realization because they knew somebody was missing out there. News about a missing mountain climber has by now spread around the local area. But the bikers are still clearly puzzled to have encountered Ryan here. Ever since he failed to return home on Sunday as anticipated, a search and rescue mission has been underway on the west side of the mountain, the side that Ryan had ascended and where his skis had been found in the snow.

44:47The encounter with these bikers on the other side of the mountain on an otherwise deserted road is a marvelous fluke. On seeing him splayed out in the snow, the group burst into action. They were a godsend. They jumped off their bikes. They ran down. They held me up the hill. They sat me down. They were feeding me everything they had. One of them's like, I'm going to get search and rescue right now. He goes ripping down the hill to go get search and rescue. And I am so relieved. In next to no time, a snowmobile arrives. Ryan is carefully placed on the vehicle and taken to a nearby cabin. Warming himself by the fire, he calls his parents.

45:35As soon as they'd realized their son was missing, they'd flown a thousand miles from California to Colorado. Not that they could do much beyond waiting and praying for a safe return. Earlier in the day, they'd been told to brace themselves for the worst.

45:53I was just taken with emotion. I was overjoyed to speak with them. And when they said, we'll be there, you know, in five minutes, I was taken aback. Like, I don't know, it didn't even cross my mind that they would have flown all the way to Colorado. In hindsight, of course, they would be. But I think that just kind of speaks to how detached I was from my family, from my community at the time, that that didn't cross my mind. So just overjoyed, though, to have them be there.

46:24At the hospital, doctors assess Ryan's injuries. They're stunned that he's not sustained more serious damage. Eventually, his pelvis and elbow will both fully heal. The frostbite is also caught just in time. Although the very tip of one finger has to be removed, the nail remains. All in all, he has dodged a hail of bullets. Perhaps it's this sense of good fortune that galvanizes Ryan and helps him towards a speedy recovery. In fact, just a few months later, he's back out in the mountains. I never had any sort of PTSD, no residual fear or anything from the experience. and very quickly I got suckered back into solo climbing.

47:15I'm kind of ashamed to say. I had another experience and I felt very close to falling on this solo climb. And I think it was after that that I realized this needs to change. You know, I really, I can't do this again. It's not fair to everyone else. And I think that combined with going to my cousin's wedding and seeing my family that summer, and their relief and their joy of having me around gave me that final kick I needed to realize I needed to change my approach to the mountains.

47:56In time, Ryan moves away from solo mountaineering. In a curious way, his accident allows him to find new climbing partners. As a side effect of the publicity he gains from his extraordinary survival story, he's brought into the climbing community in a way he's never experienced before. Climbing becomes more about connecting with others and less about pushing his own limits. However, the attention he receives because of his close shave on Pyramid Peak isn't entirely positive. It followed me around. It still does. I'll never not be that guy who fell off a mountain in Colorado, you know? It revealed a very private part of my life, this over-spiritualization of the mountains, the fact that I was finding so much in my solo mountaineering, which I think reveals how empty the rest of my life was at the time.

48:48And to have that just thrown up for the whole world to see and then talk about and then kind of celebrate was just so bizarre and backwards from how I saw it.

49:03Ultimately, Ryan says the experience has taught him a lot about the mountains and even more about himself. Falling 1 ,500 feet from the top of a 14 ,000-foot mountain and living to tell the tale transforms his life in the most fundamental of ways. I love the mountains. I always will, and I love climbing. But I thought it could fill in parts of my life that were missing. and this accident was my first step in realizing that it couldn't. It has to be a part of my life. I'm never going to stop climbing, but it's far from everything. And, you know, I'm happy to say that I found the love of my life.

49:44I just got married five days ago and it was the best day of my life, better than being found on that road. Yeah, I couldn't be happier now.

49:59Undeniable just how much luck played into all of this. And then the final thing, which is, I wouldn't necessarily just attribute to myself, I think everybody has this, is just that kind of primal will to survive. I never would have thought I could have walked with a broken pelvis. No way. But the body finds a way, you know. It's got to survive.

50:32Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Gillian Lashbrook, who battled through a terrifying human tragedy when she was just a child. In March 1987, Gillian is 16 years old and on a trip to Belgium with her family. At the end of a day's sightseeing, they board the ferry to take them home to England. But catastrophe will intervene. When a critical error leads to the ferry taking on water, a routine crossing turns into a nightmare for the 450 people on board. Suddenly, alone in the North Sea, facing life or death decisions, Gillian will have to summon a resilience, courage, and composure far beyond her years.

51:17That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen right now without waiting a week and without adverts by signing up to Noiser Plus. Click the link in the episode description to find out more.

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