As I fell, I was relaxed at first. A flake had broken, not all that unexpected considering the incredibly bad rock quality on Mount Temple. Then the gear started pinging out of the partially decomposed limestone. One...two....three....four....the fifth piece, a large cam in a solid, but flaring, pocket of rock almost held me. But it too ripped as the rope started to slow my descent. The sudden jolting free-fall flipped me upside down and I crashed my right side into something hard, something painful and was spun around again when I finally came to a stop half-sideways eighty feet lower than where I’d started. I was on on a sloping snow ledge with Bruce just twenty-five feet to my right. What probably held me was a groove in a snow-mushroom that I’d stamped out with a boot. Old-school terrain belay saves the day.

What happened in the next few hours will always be a bit fuzzy. I hurt like I have never hurt before. I remember telling Bruce to get out the cell phone; to call 911. He didn’t know how bad it was, I knew.

Over a half-hour I crawled towards Bruce while he pulled me to him. At the belay-stance I laid face-down in the snow. Here is where my right lung collapsed. I knew I had a flail-chest, a section of what turned out to be six ribs broken multiple times, one or two were smashed into innumberable pieces. I didn’t know about the two large, bleeding fractures in my pelvis. Or the seven smaller fractures in my spine. That didn’t matter, because I could barely breathe, tiny, shallow baby-breathes.

The shock was incredible. No sensation, no blood-flow in my arms or hands or legs or feet. It didn’t seem to matter. I was conscious enough to know I needed to keep working my hands. Bruce removed my wet gloves and put my mittens on for me.

Some time later, maybe an hour and half had passed, and the Parks Canada heli broke the silence. At first in the far-distance and then it roared overhead. I couldn’t see it because I couldn’t move at all. A hostage to the pain, afraid that if I moved I would lose the shallow but sure little breathes that came fast, panting, never enough.

When the rescuer, Steve Holeczi, announced himself I was relieved. Steve is a friend, a fellow mountain guide, a past climbing partner. So it should be easier to forgive him for the moment he reached under the snow, grasped the front of my harness and wrenched my unwilling body over. The miasma of pain distorted most of the next half hour. I remember flashes: his hand clipping a carabiner to my harness, the shock of the jerk when we suddenly were picked off the face. Pulled heavenward with the quick snap of the taunt long-line. Looking back, I realize I never saw Steve’s face. He hung behind me, supported me. We landed, I was packaged on a backboard, loaded into the helicopter and delivered minutes later to waiting paramedics in Lake Louise.

There were no niceties onboard the ambulance as I was loaded up, just words:

“Full lights. Full siren.”

And scissors, two pairs of scissors slicing through my clothes until my clothes were filleted and I lay naked before them, shivering. I got an IV in each arm. The first of many cool pushes of morphine into my veins. The shivering stopped and here my memories get very hazy. I woke up sometime later, still naked and on my side, with a man pushing on my chest, actually cutting a hole in my side. It took him two tries. So now it looks like I was shot: one entrance and one exit wound.  I was told I was in the ER in Banff. “I was just in Banff last fall” I tried to say. “I won a book-award here. Good memories.”  The second try he successfully got the tube into my lung and sucked out the offending blood.

There was another helicopter ride. This time wrapped comfortably in blankets, on my side with a view out the door. Another hospital, another ER. This would be Calgary, I guessed. I was sent down the dark tube of the CAT scanner and woke up who knows when.

“Anytime you need pain relief you push this button.” The nurse said as she pressed a worn metal cylinder into my hand. Looking at it I saw that on one end was a black plastic button, on the other a cable that led to a small hanging digital box with a clear bag of IV fluid hanging above it. “You can press it once every six minutes.” I pushed. “That’s the morphine.” It felt good. I pushed again. “Beep,” the machine scolded and counted down the seconds until I could call upon another few minutes of opiate-bliss.

There were many visits. Most I probably don’t remember. I do recall friends from Calgary and Canmore. Phone calls. The days blur together. The doctors stopped by once a day, moving as a pack. They said little but that my fractures were stable and that I’d heal in time. The nursing staff was amazing, friendly, helpful, there in an instant, no indignity too great.

They counted twenty-some fractures. I had the most incredible bruising down my legs, a result of my pelvic fractures copious bleeding. I had three IV’s: two for drugs and fluids, one for units of new blood, and a 1/2-inch diameter chest tube leading to a glorified vacuum cleaner which kept my right lung inflated.

My chest tube and some of the bruising seven days after the fall.

The rib fractures are not visible since they are on my back, to the right of my spine.

As I write this it’s been over six weeks since that fall. I spent a total of eleven days in hospitals; first in Calgary and then in Bend. I am now able to do physical therapy, acupuncture, and daily walks. I’m up to five flat miles. But I still have three rib fractures where the bone ends are over one centimeter apart. It will be another six to eight weeks before I can start normal levels of activity. One thing I’ve already learned is that it’s impossible to predict the pace at which my body will heal. For now I’m still in quite a bit of pain most days. I still sleep part of each afternoon. I’m just starting to be able to reach above my head with my right hand.

No expedition for me this summer. No K2 attempt. Yet popular Sinologists tell us that the Chinese ideogram for Crisis is made up of a combination of the characters for Danger and Opportunity. I have survived, thanks to the collective Parks Canada rescue teams, ambulances, life-flight helicopters, ER doctors, Global Rescue Services, lung specialists, orthopedic surgeons and physiatrists. Time will reveal what opportunities this will bring.