Show a adventurers adventurer CLUB HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF mountain doom by FLOYD GIBBONS famous headline hunter ELLO EVERYBODY HELLO samuel johnson of brooklyn N Y has two hobbies and one of them was bound to get him into trouble sooner 0 or r later sams hobbies are skiing and mountain climbing and two more dangerous sports I 1 dont know of you know what sort of a game skiing is is anyone who has ever seen a news newsreel reel of a bunch of ski jumpers have to be told its a good idea to pay up your insurance before you try it mountain climbing is a little more than twice as dangerous as skiing its a yarn of mountain climbing with which sam busts into th the e club as a distinguished adventurer for a good many years sam has lived abroad chiefly in italy and one day in july 1931 way up in the italian alps he had a little adventure that almost culminated in his living nowhere neither in italy nor anywhere else climbing the Dou foure peak on that july day four italians a doctor a lawyer and two engineers along with sam himself set out to climb the Dou foure the highest and most difficult peak in the monte rosa chain of alps they started out without professional guides for all of them thought they were sufficiently expert at climbing to get along without them that says sam was the first mistake sam takes time out here to explain that it was absolutely necessary to reach that peak before eleven a m for from that hour to one in the afternoon the sun is at its height melting the snow and letting loose great avalanches that come crashing down the mountainside mountain side carrying thousands of tons of rock dirt and ice along with them the five men climbed until daybreak and all at once sam says the strenuous work we had done climbing to this point was well rewarded by the magnificent spectacle that unfolded before our eyes the early sun was shining on monte rosa and because of some phenomenon the whole mountain chain became a deep rose color the hue that gives those peaks their name we kept on going by seven after trying to make headway in snow two or three feet deep in places we seemed still to be a great distance from the peak that worry us from the position we were in it was next to impossible to judge distance or even our direction but by nine lost and cut off by avalanche by nine that peak seem any nearer than it had at seven they knew they were lost then and they were thoroughly frightened they were at an altitude of about twelve thousand feet and a night spent in the intense cold abc that level was pretty sure to be fatal i AD r 11 wa A terrific avalanche roared past them to build a fire says sam is impossible there is nothing to burn nor is there any other protection from the sub zero temperature or from the icy blasts of wind that sweep the mountain all through t the he night 1 l they climbed for two more hours and by that time they were all but exhausted they stopped to rest on a ledge of rock and suddenly a terrific avalanche roared past them not a hundred yards away it was eleven the deadline for mountain climbers the time when they ran for cover if there was any cover to run to the slide says sam crossed the path of the trail we had made coming up if we had been delayed just a few minutes I 1 rather believe our bodies would now be reposing on some glacier under a thousand tons of rock and ice we dare travel after that from then until three we sat huddled on the ledge expecting every moment to be carried away by another avalanche at three we started out again trying to find the lost trail we find it and to make matters worse the sun was sinking rapidly and it was getting colder by the second took refuge in a cave the situation was serious sam and his companions decided something certainly should be done about it but what none of them knew they held a consultation and agreed to hole in for the night take a chance on being alive in the morning three men rose to find a suitable place to dig in in but two of them lay still on the ice too exhausted to move on with difficulty the others got them to their feet practically carrying them they moved on across a glacier looking for a cave although they know it then it was that move that saved all their lives they found a cave and huddled into it they dare go to sleep they d freeze to death their food supply had run out by that time and the gnawing pains of hunger added to their intense misery the suffering of that night sam says no one could ever describe but at six in the morning they saw five black them figures moving across the ice toward the black figures were five professional guides down in M macugnaga Macu acu gnaga someone some with a pair of powerful pa binoculars had seen them as they pushed p across the last stretch ch of glacier the guides men of remarkable endurance had climbed 11 all night long S to reach them em before it was too tle late they literally y carried cam the five men down the mountain and rushed h them to a hospital where one member of the party had a leg amputated another a hand and a third au all the toes of both feet but luckily for sam johnson the sawbones have to do any work on him copyright service |