John All, a climber and university professor, is pretty much as badass as they come.
One morning back in 2014, All was walking near his tent on a remote Himalayan peak when he fell through a layer of snow and dropped 70 feet into a tight crevasse.
All suffered 15 bone breaks, a dislocated shoulder and was bleeding internally, but amazingly he was able to get himself rescued thanks to social media.
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Watch All's video documenting the fall below:
In previous interviews, All said he was certain his life was over, but miraculously he landed on a small ledge instead of plummeting all the way to the bottom of the crevasse.
All, who was conducting climate research in the Himalayas, whipped out his camera and started to film his bloody face, telling the camera: “Well, I’m pretty well f****d.”
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All’s teammates had recently descended to base camp, which put them at least a day away from his location, meaning he had no choice but to try and crawl out the crevasse using his legs – as his broken arms were no use.
He spent the next four hours worming his way out of the gap, and once he hauled himself from the crevasse, it took All two hours to crawl to his tent.
Once there, he sent a text message from his satellite phone, which was programmed to automatically post to the American Climber Science Program’s Facebook page.
All’s message read: “Please call Global Rescue. John broke arm, ribs, internal bleeding. Fell 70 ft crevasse. Climbed out. Himlung Camp 2. Please hurry.”
Thankfully, his message was quickly spotted by members of the group and a rescue was launched, but a helicopter took around 16 hours to arrive.
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Speaking shortly after the ordeal, All said: “It probably took me four or five hours to climb out. I kept moving sideways, slightly up, sideways, slightly up, until I found an area where there was enough hard snow that I could get an ax in and pull myself up and over.”
He added: “I knew that if I fell at any time in that entire four or five hours, I, of course, was going to fall all the way to the bottom of the crevasse. Any mistake, or any sort of rest or anything, I was going to die."
As for his escape from the crevasse, All shared: “Biggest problem was, because my ribs were so broken in my right side, I had to do everything with just my right foot, but not the upper part of my right leg, and my left leg, and then my left arm.”
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Topics: World News