We Were 4,000 Feet Up An Alaskan Giant, Soloing Together. Then Disaster Struck.

“Justin! Start climbing!” my partner Ryan yells from 200 feet above. Four thousand feet of steep Alaskan granite and dark gullies, shadows and light, hang beneath my crampon’s heels. Another thousand to go. At Ryan’s urging, I dismantle our anchor of cams and start climbing while he continues to lead through steep blocky cruxes and smears of aerated ice.

Our pace is fast but not frantic. We carry no sleeping bags or tent, a little tarp, and 10 pieces of protection. Thin jackets for the both of us, and a small stove with a bit of gas. Our light packs enabled us to dispatch all of the hardest climbing on Mount Bradley’s giant southeast aspect in good time, but we know the stakes. Any slip up from high on the mountain would likely end in disaster. We don’t have enough gear to rappel down to the glacier, and I’m not sure we have enough insulation to survive the night. I realize, as I coax my crampon’s front point onto a thin granite edge, that clichés in alpinism exist for a reason. The only way we’ll escape this mountain is by continuing to the summit.

I pull over a steep bulge of rock and see Ryan charging up a long couloir of snow interspersed with 40-foot-tall cliffs. Our sole rope slithers along the wind-pressed surface, unattached to the mountain. I dutifully follow, grateful for the comparatively low-angle terrain where we can move even faster.

Ten minutes later, while hooking thin rock edges with my ice tools, I hear a soft thud and glance up: a microwave-sized block of ice has released from the vertical terrain above and hurtles toward Ryan, then craters directly onto his head.

“No!” I scream, as Ryan’s limp body is plucked from the couloir and flies past me overhead, dragging us both toward the bottomless void below.

***

The day before

Mornings are strange up here.

My dreams persist beyond the veil of sleep.

Waking up inside of a tent is disorienting. The thin nylon looks the same whether you’re in an Alaskan basecamp or your parent’s backyard, and so it takes me a moment to remember where I am. I sit up and shake the icy feathers of frozen condensation from my sleeping bag.

The frozen mornings in Alaska are never easy. I need coffee; if only it were as simple as walking to a café in Chamonix. I have to remind myself—I choose this. Unzipping the tent, I peek out, surveying my surroundings like a bear waking from hibernation. I am on the hunt… for breakfast. Outside, I look up to Mount Bradley, envisioning myself standing on its distant snow-cloaked summit.

Our cook tent is steaming in the shadows. Awake and alive. We create life in this cosmic cold space. Ryan sits on a bench carved from ice, silently rolling a cigarette. I make a cup of coffee and offer it to him, awaiting the exchange. Today I made the coffee, tomorrow I’ll roll the cigarette.

“Ryan, I had the craziest dream last night.”

“Oh yeah?” He spits tobacco from his lip, and I watch tendrils of blue smoke rise from the smoldering tobacco before it dissipates in the cold, still air.

“I don’t know if it’s the cold or the quiet, but I sleep so soundly here. Do you dream big too?”

He hesitates, and I look at him to see what his eyes will say. Blue in the dull dawn light, they are mirrors reflecting the cold world around us. Something recognizable flickers, timeless and unspoken.

“I’m not sure…” he says quietly, “But I do feel free. Truly free.”

He takes another drag, and I watch the smoke dance. The silence deepens. The fleeting smoke holds our thoughts suspended—like the dreams of our conversation, a momentary connection between us and the infinite.

“This place is the origin of many of my dreams,” he adds.

“Well, maybe the dreams come from the ice,” I offer, half-joking, but the stillness of this ancient place makes my words somehow feel real.

Our laugh echoes across the glacier. A powerful gust shakes the tent. I stand up. It’s time to work.

Basecamp life is busy. There’s a storm coming in three days. We secure camp—building protective walls of snow, lashing our tent to stakes driven into the glacier—and then wait; watching, assessing, analyzing.

The wind is picking up. Our flag—an avalanche probe stuck in the snow with a stuff sack—rises and falls subtle, only perceptible to a keen observer. Ryan is reading a weather report.

“A storm system from the southwest tonight… Tuesday and Wednesday are good for the climb.”

“No snow tomorrow?”

“No, no snow tomorrow. Clearing in the morning.”

“Perfect. Let’s launch day after tomorrow.”

We watch distant dark clouds gather to the south. Then the pressure drops. The air begins to move. Our tent walls flutter and flap. Black liquid sky pours in—tumultuous, threatening.

The towering Mount Church disappears in a muted veil. Then Johnson. Grovsenor. Wake. Finally, Bradley is gone—lost in the clouds—before our camp is enveloped by the storm.

***

A belated prelude

I write this story eight years later. I’m drinking espresso under the shade of an olive tree in Southern France. I could hardly be further from the wild experiences all those years ago.

But I can recall the moments that followed with painful acuity. This story is a shadow I can’t help but carry with me. That’s the thing about trauma—it burns a channel deep into one’s mind.

A warm breeze rustles through the fronds. I close my eyes as they start to well and am pulled back to Alaska, a chill running up my spine.

***

After the fall

I’m the bird in the storm.

I’m a tiny beating heart in a cruel winter wind. So far from home. Blown off course, unable to land.

I wait for the storm to decide my fate.

Far away, I hear the snow falling—piling up, avalanching. I’m drifting in a strange oblivion. I’m freezing to death, bivouacked high on the southwest flank of Mount Bradley.

Thousands of feet above, and miles from the safety of basecamp, our descent that day became a descent into the unknown. We had summited from the east ridge and began descending west. As night fell, the storm that had begun on the summit increased in intensity.

We were forced to make a decision: continue searching for an avalanche-prone couloir lost somewhere in the mist, or rappel down the unknown rocky terrain immediately in front of us

We committed to rappelling.

At the bottom of our first rappel, our ropes were stuck. We drew straws to decide who would climb back to the ridge.

I was chosen to ascend the deadly mystery.

When I finally reached the ridge again, our rope was half frayed, nearly cut through by sharp rock. Unwilling to rappel with this battered cord, and punch-drunk with exhaustion, I suggested we wait out the night in our thin jackets.

The process of freezing to death is a descent into a cave of being—flickering images, faceless figures, a desert of the soul.

“This isn’t a bad dream?” I wondered, drifting around consciousness.

Snow accumulates. An alarming sound breaks through the night. I snap out of my animal trance.

Ryan is gasping. Moaning. He’s only five feet away, but on this narrow ridge he is out of reach. The realization dawns—he is suffocating.

A cold panic seizes me.

“Wake up! Hey—hey! Wake up!”

Ryan gasps. I hear him stir.

“You OK?” I shout, relieved to hear him move. “You weren’t breathing! Get the snow off your fucking tarp.”

He groans and shakes the snow from the tarp that had pressed against his face like a plastic bag. Then he rolls over and falls back to sleep.

I crawled deep into the shadows of my heart to survive that night. I had to fight the very real pull of letting go—of allowing my ghost to take flight. My grasp on life became something I refused to let go.

All I could think was:

I’m dead already.

Our nightmare passed with the new day’s sun. As we took stock of the terrain around us, we realized the sheer luck of our rope being stuck the night before. The storm and darkness had veiled the terrain, and we’d been much higher than we thought.

Had we continued down, we would have unknowingly committed to rappelling over a thousand feet of vertical stone. With our light rack of barely a dozen pieces, it would have been impossible to make enough anchors to complete the abseil. We likely would have died of exhaustion, suspended halfway down that dark chasm.

Would they have ever found our bodies, hanging there in the vacant air?

With no breakfast—our hands were too frozen to light the stove—we downclimbed steep snow, barely able to hold an ice axe. We had not had food or water in 15 hours. Our descent gully revealed itself as the storm cleared and we marched toward it.

Nineteen hours after summiting Mount Bradley, we were back at camp. Forty eight hours later, we were back in Boston.

Stepping out of the air terminal, I was thrust back into city life.

Living with it

Should I keep this dream alive?

A week later, I sat next to a farmer’s field on the stone shore of the Saco River near my home in New Hampshire. My eyes closed, my feet on the warm rocks, I still couldn’t feel my toes—or my fingers. Day by day, the simple relief of survival had faded, and the full weight of my experience began to take shape. My body would not soon forget that frozen overload, and my mind would struggle for years to come to terms with the near-fatal fall.

I opened my eyes, unable to relax. I looked at the river. It ran clear and fast with icy snowmelt from a long northeast winter. For some reason I wanted to get in anyway. I jumped, and it took my breath away.

I climbed out and dried off in the sun. Strangely, I felt better than before.

I walked back through the field to my truck and drove home.

***

In the forest below Cathedral Ledge, the pine trees swayed in the wind. Spring had become summer and Ryan and I had driven straight to the cliff after work. We had not missed a single day of felling trees since returning from Alaska months before; we nonprofessional alpinists are peasants and the work never ends. The smell of chainsaw oil lingered on our clothes as we walked up the trail through the sweet-scented forest. At the base of the wall, we threw down our packs.

“Have you told your family what happened?” I asked Ryan as I racked up for the first pitch.

“No, I’m not sure I will. I don’t want to scare them. Have you?”

“Not really. I told my dad a little—I said it was a crazy climb. My mom… I don’t want to scare her. She worries about me. I feel ashamed sometimes, thinking of her, knowing how close I came.”

I paused, swallowing the bitter taste of that memory. “Hey, how are your toes?”

Brushing aside the emotion, I looked at him—remembering his blackened toes, the frozen socks he’d peeled from his feet at basecamp months before. Watching him now, sliding his feet into his climbing shoes, I was amazed by the recovery.

“Nah, man, my toes are all good. Still a little numb, but all good,” Ryan said casually.

“Damn, dude, we’re so lucky.” I tied into our rope. “You got me?”

“On belay.”

We climbed the first two pitches quickly.

On the third, I ran it out above bad gear, entering an ankle-breaking runout. Suddenly my calm broke like a storm. My vision narrowed, heartbeat spiked, and I was back in Alaska, the cliff in front of me dissolving into memory.

“You got it, dude!” Ryan yelled up, hearing my silence, sensing the edge I was teetering on.

I had to move before panic overtook me. I breathed hard, found a rhythm, and committed to friction smears. Finally, I clipped the anchor.

That night, lying in bed, I thought about quitting the sport.

September was coming fast. After panicking on that runout, I realized I was in a dilemma. I had another expedition on the horizon. The phone rang. I picked it up—it was my good friend Nick.

“Yo bro, you psyched?” Nick said, his thick Boston accent cutting through the static.

“Yeah, buddy. You bought us the tickets?”

“September 10th—we’ll be in Delhi.”

When the call ended, I sat there in silence. The trip to the Himalaya had been a dream for years, but the timing felt wrong. Just thinking about getting back on an alpine wall made my chest tighten. I’d read enough about trauma to understand what was happening—that the accident had burned a new neural pathway into my brain. Recognizing that helped me reason through it, but emotionally I wasn’t there yet.

I knew this was the crossroads. Either I quit forever, or I kept chasing the dream, even if a part of me believed it might kill me next time.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I picked up the phone again—this time, to call my father.

“Dad, I told you a little about what happened on Mount Bradley. I want to share more.”

Like the good father he is, he listened.

“We took a fall simul-climbing,” I began. “Ryan was struck in the head by falling ice—knocked unconscious. We were four thousand feet up the route. I watched him slide past me. You know how people say time slows down? It didn’t. Time shattered. There was no protection between us. He ripped me off the wall. We fell 250 feet—uncontrolled. Just when I thought it was over—seriously, I was out of my body—Ryan came to. He still had his ice axe in his hand and, in a miracle, arrested our fall. I stopped 50 feet from going over a 3,000-foot drop.

I paused. It was hard to speak the words without reliving them. The line was silent. Then I continued.

“It wasn’t over. We had one rope, 10 pieces of gear, no way down. We had to climb to the summit—1,200 feet of near-vertical snow with almost no anchors. We made it to the top, and that’s when the storm hit. We got lost rappelling the wrong gully, and the storm forced a bivouac. We were unprepared for the cold March night. That’s when the deep survival began.…”

I stopped to breathe. Just telling it was exhausting.

“Would you go to India if you were me?” I asked. “I’m thinking of quitting.”

It felt stupid—my father wasn’t a climber. How could he understand? But he surprised me.

“Did Niki Lauda—the Rat—quit after his crash in ’76?” he asked, referring to the Formula One driver who had nearly burned to death. “No, he didn’t. He kept the dream alive. He got back behind the wheel, made peace with the fear, and won the championship.”

I thanked him for the advice and hung up. Somehow, it hit deeper than I expected. I wanted to keep my dream alive.

I made up my mind—I was going to the Himalaya.

Healing

I disembarked the plane and stepped into the terminal at Indira Gandhi International Airport. After clearing customs, we left the orderly thrum of border security and into the absolute mayhem of Delhi. As our taxi driver sped through traffic—often veering into the oncoming lane to dodge a bicycle or dog—I marveled at the glowing pulse of the city. The shouting, the blaring horns, the smells of diesel and acrid smoke, of sweet curry. The vibrant chaos of the streets. That energy electrified me in a way I had not felt since departing for Alaska; the stirrings of excitement and possibility. Anxious thoughts of giant falls and freezing bivouacs were replaced by wonder of the present. I was so thankful to be alive.

The days of travel passed quickly. We pinballed between administrative buildings, secured our permit and a liaison officer, then rattled into the mountains along steep, rough cut roads. We settled into a lush basecamp between alpine wildflowers and a glacial pond. Gone was the heat of the city.

In a valley surrounded by unclimbed serrated peaks, we acclimatized on steep snow slopes, preparing for an attempt of Baihali Jot’s (6,365m) unclimbed northwest pillar. In the evenings, we ate earthy dal bhat, spicy curries, fire-baked naan—so much better than the food in Alaska. The nights, spent by the fire with Nick and our camp team, were filled with stories, laughter, and moments of quiet reflection, looking up at the stars that seemed to hold a depth far greater than any I’ve experienced before. I slept soundly each night, grounded by this holy place. Twenty days after arriving at basecamp, we were on the climb.

Baihali Jot’s northwest pillar is mesmerizing. Sharply curved layers of volcanic stone curl upwards from its base, ushering us to thousands of feet of alpine ice and then a steep rocky headwall. Unlike our fast-and-furious tactics in Alaska, on Baihali Jot we took our time. We carried two ropes, a tent, sleeping bags, and enough protection to descend our route. I placed gear with intention and made sure that, if we were roped together, there was always at least one piece attaching us to the mountain.

Partway up the pillar, we hung in our harnesses, half suspended, half lying on a pitiful ledge, cooking dinner as the sun set over the vast Himalaya. The stove burned with its familiar whisper. The fading light spread like a thousand setting suns in a phantasmagoria of color.

I noticed an absence of the kind of fear I’d felt on Mount Bradley’s bivy ledge, or at the crag with Ryan back home. Instead I marveled at the sheer simplicity of this existence, of solving challenging, consequential problems with my good friend while fully immersed in the vertical world. I had worked so hard to reach this moment, to reach the Himalaya. I was in a fantasy—a place where dreams and reality intertwined.

I carefully turned off the stove and filled my cup with tea. Steam rose from the ledge, swirling into the thin air. The sweet chai soothed my throat, my ears hummed in the stillness of the high-altitude night.

“We’re living the dream,” Nick said, as much to himself as to me, breaking the silence.

“We sure are, buddy,” I said, placing my hand on his back.

Losing heat

Shortly after returning to the States, I flew to Arizona to work with my friend Alain. We landed in Tucson around 10 p.m. after a marathon push of delays and traffic. All that was left was the short drive to the hotel.

I saw the headlights an instant before our cars collided.

“Look out!” I screamed, but there was no time.

The car hit me like a sledgehammer. I was sent into a state of dissociation while crackling steel folded around me. I watched it from a distance, unable to move. It was the same state I had felt on Mount Bradley—suspended between two realities. But this time, there was a difference. I recognized this frozen moment as the transition between life and death.

The car filled with chemical smoke. I ran my hands over my numb, vibrating body, searching for blood in the dim glow of the smoldering cabin. The air was thick—I had to get out or I was going to suffocate. I shoved the airbag away from my face and stumbled onto the sidewalk, the streetlights glowing in pale, iridescent white.

Alain was sitting on the sidewalk, his head in his hands. He looked dazed, pale from shock, like he’d just woken up from a nightmare. The blue and red lights from the first responders lit up the cactus-filled street, painting everything in a surreal, eerie glow.

“Are you okay, Alain?” I asked, unsure if I was even OK myself.

“What happened?” His voice was hollow. He lifted his head, his eyes distant like Ryan’s after our fall.

“He ran the red light. It’s gonna be okay.”

The good samaritan who called the ambulance offered me an American Spirit Yellow and a light. I ripped the filter off and took a drag, completely numb.

***

My physical injuries weren’t so bad. I’d ripped the cartilage from my sternum and several ribs and I knew I’d heal with time. But my heart felt heavy. Unlike Mount Bradley, where I could numb any feelings of guilt or fear with work and more climbing, this time I was bedridden. Idle. In so much pain. All I could do was sit and think. And my mind was not a welcoming place to be.

Two days later I lay in bed in North Conway. My phone vibrated, and I picked it up to see a message.

“Have you heard of Wim Hof?” Alain texted, with a link attached.

I clicked the link. The story was about a man who used cold water, heat, and breath work to heal both physical and mental pain.

I followed along with a guided meditation—breathing deep, then deeper—expecting nothing. But after my ninetieth breath, something happened. The meditation carried me into the inflamed circuitry of my nervous system. For a brief moment, I didn’t feel pain. Could it actually be working?

When I finally had enough energy to leave the house, I walked to the river. It was the edge of winter.

The sunny rocks where I’d sat in spring were now dusted with snow. I looked at the clear water and shivered. Still, I felt compelled to get in. I couldn’t fight it. I undressed like a madman, standing barefoot in the snow. My feet—still white from poor circulation—went instantly numb. Terrifyingly numb. I stopped thinking and jumped into the deep.

White, expanding light. Frantic breathing. My body contracted at once like a singular, giant muscle and my ribs seized with pain. When my head broke through the rippled water I breathed deeply, until the pain gave way to warmth. I climbed out, my body flushed red with life, energy vibrating through me. My hands and feet remained ghostly white, scarred by the cold wounds from that night on Mount Bradley—but something inside me had shifted.

Back home, I fell into the deepest sleep I’d had in months.

The next day, I went back to the river. And the next. I kept going.

Within a month, I could stay in the freezing water for 10 minutes. The cold was giving me back my strength. Each plunge confronted the ghost pain, rewiring something in my nervous system. My hands stopped aching. My feet stayed warm, even on long winter belays.

Day by day, I watched the color return to my toes, the life return to my body. I’d stand barefoot in the snow, chanting, praying to life, to the cold. It got weird, sure—but it felt incredible. My ribs healed. My strength returned. I was climbing harder than ever before.

My body had regenerated, but my spirit still lacked something vital. I knew exactly what it was: I had to return to the source from which my dreams flowed.

“Have you looked at the price of tickets to Calgary?” Ryan’s text lit up my phone. It was August. Of course I had. I laughed—I’d been searching for flights to the Rockies that very week.

That kind of synchronicity is a phenomenon, like picking up the phone just before an old friend calls.

***

In the Athabasca River valley, we looked up at the soaring north ridge of Mount Columbia, standing 5,000 feet above us.

On the second day, we summited at sunset. On the tabletop summit of Mount Columbia, we embraced each other with brotherly love—tears in our eyes, not just for this summit, but for the triumph of all we had faced together. To share success was to overcome disaster.

We would spend the night on the summit. With summer-weight sleeping bags, it was going to be cold. But I was not afraid. I knew exactly where my tolerance for this environment lived, forged and tempered by the cold.

***

To Ryan, Daniel, and Eric, this story is so much bigger than could be captured in this piece. Thank you for all that you did to help me stay alive. The rest is for another story.

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