Dan slid over the edge

Mountain climbing is safer when you do it with a climbing partner.

If you want to see something really crazy, something that might even bring up some anxiety as you watch it, check out the documentary called Free Solo. This is a National Geographic documentary about a young rock climber named Alex Honnold. His dream was to climb this 3000 foot rock called El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park.

Just climbing it is a great achievement for most rock climbers. But Alex Honnold is not like most rock climbers. He wanted to do it without any ropes, and without any safety equipment. That’s what “free solo” climbing is. Alex planned and trained extensively for it. And he was successful.

My guest today is Dan. Dan loves to climb. One day he was out with his friend and long-time climbing partner, Jim. It was a beautiful day and they were having a great time.

That was the day that Dan learned that when you’re on the mountain, having a partner there with you can mean the difference between life and death.

 

 

 

If you’d like to contact Dan, all of his contact details are at his website – danwenker.com

Dan’s Instagram – agelesshiker_danwenker

Dan’s book – Staying on Guard
https://www.amazon.com/Staying-Guard-Spiritual-Encounter-Gratitude/dp/1636183557/ref=sr_1_1

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/239

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

Mountain climbing is safer when you do it with a climbing partner.

If you want to see something really crazy, something that might even bring up some anxiety as you watch it, check out the documentary called Free Solo. This is a National Geographic documentary about a young rock climber named Alex Honnold. His dream was to climb this 3000 foot rock called El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park.

Just climbing it is a great achievement for most rock climbers. But Alex Honnold is not like most rock climbers. He wanted to do it without any ropes, and without any safety equipment. That’s what “free solo” climbing is. Alex planned and trained extensively for it. And he was successful.

My guest today is Dan. Dan loves to climb. One day he was out with his friend and long-time climbing partner, Jim. It was a beautiful day and they were having a great time.

That was the day that Dan learned that when you’re on the mountain, having a partner there with you can mean the difference between life and death.

Scott
At the time, you had 12 years of experience climbing with these three other people, Jim, Nicholas, and Mark. How would you rate the difficulty of the route that you chose?

Dan
The route that we chose going up to the Grand Teton is pretty much the common route that people take. So, as far as the Grand Teton is concerned, it’s the standard route. However, compared to the other climbs that we had done, Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, which were all strictly what they describe as alpine climbing, where you’re pretty much hiking on ice and that type of thing and you use ropes for safety. It was a technical climb about the last 2200 feet where you’re going straight up and it’s technical rock climbing, as far as going up there.

Scott
Okay. And what made you decide on Grand Teton?

Dan
Well, it caught my eye. Really, a couple things. One is a friend of ours had climbed it maybe about a year or two before, and told me how phenomenal it was. It’s a buddy that lives in Idaho Falls, and he actually did it in a day and said how spectacular the technical part was, but also went through the woods. But then, also, looking at it and researching a little bit, it’s just such a prominent peak. Although it’s not the tallest peak, it’s the most exciting. It’s the most prominent. It’s the one that you see and when you’re in Jackson Hole. That whole scenario is really what attracted us to it.

Scott
Now you live in Atlanta. Where were the other three guys coming from?

Dan
Nicholas and Mark live in Bozeman, Montana. So, they came down from there. Jim Zingerman lives in Selah, Washington, which is in eastern Washington, outside of Yakima. The three of us had lived altogether in Yakima, but spread out over the years.

Scott
Just a little bit of setup on this. Part one, everyone arrived at the trailhead. What does it take to get to that point?

Dan
Well, it’s just really driving into the Grand Teton National Park and coming in and just parking at the parking lot to the trailhead where everything starts.

Scott
And then step two is a place called Lower Saddle. How far is that?

Dan
That’s correct. It’s about a 6-mile hike through the woods, and then it goes above the tree line probably about a half away to the Lower Saddle. There is about a 5,000 foot vertical gain, so 6 miles – 5,000 vertical feet. It’s a good hike. It’s considered a strenuous hike just because it is pretty severe and there’s a couple of large boulder fields that you go over.

Scott
So obviously, people would want to be trained and ready to do something like that.

Dan
Oh, that’s correct. You really wouldn’t want to do that without any kind of training or preparation at all. It is something that people get ready for. Actually, there’s a lot of people that train to hike up to the Lower Saddle.

Scott
Yeah. Just like I’ve heard– for people that are over in Nepal, they would travel over and just take the hike up to base camp and that, in itself, is quite a trek even if they don’t intend to ever summit Everest.

Dan
That’s correct. Actually, hiking to the base camp is something that’s gotten to be very popular on Mount Everest for that very reason. It gives you a good feel for the area. It gives you a good feel for the Himalayas. And even that one is – forget what it is – about a week or two to get just to the Everest base camp at 19,000 feet. So that’s correct. It’s a pretty strenuous hike.

Scott
And it gives you an appreciation for oxygen, right?

Dan
Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely. And that’s really something that you can’t necessarily prepare for either. You really don’t know. You know how altitude’s going to affect you. Usually, altitude sickness comes in at about 9,000 to 10,000 feet and, being at 19,000 feet, you definitely need to take it slow, stay hydrated, and take all the necessary steps.

Scott
You got up to Lower Saddle and set up camp. What were you going to do from there?

Dan
Well, we hiked up there and it was actually a beautiful day. We looked at the weather and the weather looked phenomenal. We got to the trailhead and hiked up to the Lower Saddle on the 28th of June in 2022. The plan was to wake up the next day, hike up to the top of the Grand Teton, come down, and then we’d have a little bit of a– we’d camp there that next night. Then, the thought was to do a casual hike back down on the 30th of June. So, that was the plan. We set everything up and we were good to go.

Scott
Just as an aside, what does this climb actually look like? Are you setting anchors in a flat rock wall or is it just a steep trail or something in between? What were you doing or what would you be doing?

Dan
The stage two – the Lower Saddle – is a hike with the exception of the last half a mile. You go up what’s described as the head wall. The head wall is a technical climb where you’re going straight up on ropes with a harness and you’re scaling a pretty much vertical wall holding on to small rock holds like people have seen with technical rock climbing. Like, it’s nowhere like this, but similar to what you see on something like a free solo where you’re scrambling up a flat rock wall, and then you get to the Lower Saddle.

From there to the top is another technical climb, and you’re doing the combination of what’s described as boulder scrambling, where you’re pretty much on your hands and knees. It’s a low grade technical climb where you don’t necessarily need ropes. Once you get about a third of the way into that portion, then you’re going to pretty much vertical and you’re scaling up a straight rock wall where you’re on a safety rope with a harness. You’re on what’s described as belay. Someone’s holding onto that rope, so when you’re climbing, they’re keeping the tension on the rope while they’re holding onto it so that, if something were to happen, someone’s there to catch you.

There’s some little fixed grommets, if you will, that are in the wall– but also using some technical climbing gear that actually expands and contracts where you put it into a crack in the wall and then you strap your rope to that. That works as a safety device as well so that, if you were to fall, you’re not going to fall all the way down. You want to minimize the amount that you fall just because, although you’ll end up okay, it’s a very painful situation. If you fall too far, it’s going to pull the harness on your waist. So if you fall 10 feet as compared to 50 feet, it’s going to be, obviously, a much better experience.

Now, that rope also is not a static rope like you’d see in your backyard. The rope actually is made of material that expands as well. So, if you do fall, it’s going to give a little bit too. But the second part, going from the Lower Saddle up to the Grand Teton is considered a technical climb.

Scott
Okay. It sounds technical. So you awoke the next morning planning to start this technical climb, but the weather didn’t agree.

Dan
You’re at an altitude there at about 11,300 feet at the Lower Saddle. You could look at the weather in Jackson, Wyoming on a day like that, and it could be 75 degrees at the Lower Saddle. You could have high winds and it could actually be snowing even at that time of year at the end of June where we were.

What happened is a storm was starting to blow in. Clouds were coming in and we started to get readings that there was a good chance of thunderstorms rolling in as well during that day. So, obviously you don’t want to be on the side of a mountain exposed when there’s lightning and thunder coming across while you have technical climbing gear, which is metal, and you’re standing out there exposed. So once the thunderstorms came in, this time – trying to play it safe on a technical climb – we decided that we would wait until the following day to summit as compared to going up that day. So we just kind of hung out in our tents up at the Lower Saddle, walking around and kind of enjoying the day as it was, but it was cold at that time. The winds were starting to build a little bit.

Scott
Were you guys all the same age, or how old were you?

Dan
Jim and I were about the same age. At that time, Jim’s early sixties. I was 62 at the time. Mark’s about 8 years younger than us, and Nicholas is in his upper twenties. So Mark and Nicholas were really the– that’s the reason why Jim and I were glad they were along because Mark and Nicholas have extensive technical climbing experience and they were going to actually act as our guides, our technical expertise, going up the mountain. Jim and I had done a lot of alpine climbing before, but not a whole lot of technical rock climbing, but they had been doing it. Nicholas had been doing it since he was at a very early age. Mark started technical climbing when he was in his early teens.

Scott
You already had an extra day built into the trip, so this weather delay wasn’t a big hindrance.

Dan
Correct.

Scott
And Jim had already decided he was not going to climb, to make the summit. Why did he decide that?

Dan
When we got to the Lower Saddle– this gives you an example of the difficulty of that hike. Jim’s a guy that’s in good shape. When he got to the Lower Saddle– while we were training in preparation for the climb, he had gotten sick for a couple of weeks and it kind of cut into his training. When we got to the Lower Saddle, he made the decision to say, “This is good for me. I’m spent. I don’t think it would be wise to go up there with you guys at this point. I don’t want to be a hindrance. I don’t want to cause any trouble once we get on the technical rock climbing.” So he was going to stay at camp and we were going to go up and summit and come back and then meet him back there later on when we got to back down.

Overnight was– to say that it was a scary night is minimizing. After climbing and hiking for 12 years – even on the top of some pretty big peaks like Mountain Rainier and some of those overnight camping – it was probably one of the most scary nights I’ve experienced because the winds dramatically increased to the point of– we found out later that the sustained winds were at 40 to 45 miles per hour with gusts up to 50 miles per hour. You need to realize that it’s a saddle. You’re exposed. It’s a saddle like you see on a horse, so it’s between two mountains. It slopes down, so it acts like a tunnel to a certain extent.

The winds were blowing. They got intense. I woke up earlier in the night and it sounded like a freight train running through and the tent was starting to flap pretty hard when the winds really increased. My tent stakes that were connected to the ground actually started to break. They snapped because of the wind, so what I’d have to do in the middle of the night is go out. Because the wind was so strong, I’d go out on my hands and knees in the dark with a headlamp and have to reconnect my tent stakes, and I did that to all four of them at various times throughout the night.

As the wind continued to increase, I was concerned that my tent was going to blow up. It’s a standard REI tent that I use – it’s called a half dome – and quite frankly, it wasn’t really the proper tent for those types of winds. The winds got so strong that I was actually sitting up in my tent, leaning on the backside that was facing the wind. Just because it was bowing in so far, I was concerned that the tent stakes that hold the tent together were going to snap. So while I was sitting there leaning against those, every once in a while, when that big wind gust would come, it would actually push me over and bend me over a little bit just because of how severe it was.

It was when the winds would die down to that 40-45 mile per hour stage, I would think I was in good shape and then I would just start to hear this noise. Within five minutes after that, then those gusts would come back again. So that just repeated on and on throughout the night to the point where I got zero sleep. It’s one of those experiences where you kind of hurl out that prayer that says, “If you get me through this, God, I’ll, promise I’ll be a better person. I promise I’ll do better things. Just get me through this whole situation.”

Scott
And you got through it. So you’ve been an angel since then, right?

Dan
Well, yeah. And that kind of fits in with some other things as well. But yeah, I finally got to sleep probably around 3.30 in the morning. Mark and Nicholas, they were in a separate tent. I was in a tent by myself. Jim was in a tent by himself. Mark and Nicholas shared a tent. When they came up to me – I was in a ridge just a little bit above them – when they hiked by, they stopped by and said they were leaving, asked me if I was going with them, and I said, “No, go ahead without me.” Didn’t go into much detail. At that time, it’s four in the morning. Nobody really wants a big conversation, but just told them to go ahead.

One thing I did want to say is that, with four of us climbing, we needed two climbing ropes with only three of us climbing. We only needed one climbing rope. We had talked about it the night before that they were going to leave one climbing rope at the campsite, and that would lighten their load. What we had talked about was that they were going to go up. We had told Jim that night before that we would come down, we would send them a text, and that was pretty much the understanding that we had with Nicholas and Mark as they went to the top – that they would keep us posted on their progress.

Scott
It sounded like you kind of made a similar decision to what Jim did with you not getting any sleep, not being at your top form. You didn’t want to be a liability to the rest of them.

Dan
That’s correct, especially on a technical climb like that – something I had never done before. For them, they’re very good climbers. Between the lack of sleep and being something first– I wanted to be top of my game if I was going to do that. There’s a quote by a guy by the name of Ed Viesturs. Ed Viesturs is one of the most renowned climbers in the world. He’s climbed Mount Everest a ton of times and done a bunch of peaks in the Himalayas, and his slogan is, “Getting to the top is questionable. Getting down is mandatory.” We’re kind of living on that. Getting to the top, you can always go back and climb, but what you don’t want to do is make a decision to risk your life so you end up dying as a result of that.

When Jim and I woke up, Mark and Nicholas sent us a text saying that the winds were still very strong on the mountain. They were going to keep climbing, but they told us to just head down and we’ll just meet at the trailhead. So we started to pack up camp. It was a beautiful day, still a little breezy, but clear skies and a nice setting to be outside.

We got visited by the Park Rangers. The Jenny Lake Park Rangers are regularly on patrol, especially going up to the Grand Teton. When we were packing up, this guy came up to us and asked us what we were doing. Told him about the situation the night before and that our other two buddies were actually climbing. He talked to us a little bit. He asked us if we were going to be glissading. Glissading, as a definition, is something mountaineers do all the time. Down below, there are huge snow fields and glissading is something mountaineers do to descend pretty quickly. You sit on your butt, you kind of have your feet out in front of you, you have an ice axe off to one side, and you control your speed by digging in your ice axe and your feet. If you start going too fast, you can actually– it’s a routine that we practice all the time with high mountain climbing. You roll over, you dig the pick part of the axe into the mountain and, that way, you can come to a complete stop. So that’s what glissading is.

When he asked us if we’re going to be glissading and we said yes, his advice at the time was, “Well, if you’re going to be glissading, make sure you can see where you’re going and make sure you control your speed.” Now, at that point, Jim and I had been climbing for about 12 years and had been on some pretty dramatic peaks, and we had been glissading. We’ve glissaded probably a hundred times. So, we gave the park ranger the due. We’re polite but, in the back of our minds, we’re kind of rolling our eyes saying, “Buddy, we’ve done this a ton of times, so appreciate the help.”

Scott
This isn’t our first rodeo, Mr. Park Ranger.

Dan
Yeah. That’s kind of part of the deal. Then, he kind of wished us well and off he went.

Scott
While you were packing, there was the issue of this extra climbing rope.

Dan
Well, Jim and I are there and our packs are probably about 40 pounds each. We had hiked up the previous day and there’s this extra rope that’s sitting there that we agreed somebody was going to carry down. Jim and I are looking at it and– I think both of us are looking at it saying, “Well, I don’t want to carry it. Do you want to carry it?”

Scott
Because it’s an extra, like, 9 or 10 pounds. Right?

Dan
Exactly, right. It’s more weight on the way down. So, we’re both kind of looking at it back and forth. Finally, Jim – because Jim’s a super nice guy – said, “I’ll carry the rope.” And I was like, “Well, great.” There was no argument on my part. To tell you the truth, I’m a little bit relieved and a little bit selfish, but that’s kind of how that all played out. So Jim volunteered to carry the extra rope down to the trailer.

Scott
And this is not an insignificant stretch of rope. You said it was, like, 70 meters long. That’s 3 quarters the length of a football field.

Dan
Correct.

Scott
This is long. That’s why it was so heavy too, obviously.

Dan
Yeah, it’s a pretty long rope which, quite frankly, is good that it was. But it’s a long rope. With that distance, with that length, rather, you’re going to be carrying that on the top of your pack, wrapped around your pack. So in addition to the weight, it’s going to kind of be flopping around a little bit too. So, no, it’s pretty significant.

Scott
Okay. So you guys started hiking down.

Dan
Yep.

Scott
Tell us about that first part. A steep, narrow chute – what was that?

Dan
When you get up high that way, there are what’s described as chutes, and they’re like alleyways. There’s going to be rocks on one side, there’s going to be rocks on the other side. You get down this chute, and this one was probably maybe 15-20 feet wide, but it’s steep. It’s probably about at a 45 to 50 degree slant.

In order to do it correctly, you put crampons on your feet. For those that don’t know, crampons are things that you strap on the bottom of your boots. They’re like little claws or little ice picks on the bottom of your feet. So we put our crampons on, and started heading down this rather narrow chute. The way that you go down safely is one person goes down to a certain area, then they’ll stop, and then the next person will come down to them. What you don’t want to do is have both people down climbing with crampons on something steep. That way, at the same time, in case somebody loses their balance, they could slide down, hit the other person, and then both of you are going to be sliding down and sliding down with crampons is extremely dangerous because, as you can imagine, you’ve got these little picks on the bottom of your feet. If you were to catch those while you’re sliding, you pretty easily break your ankle or break your leg.

So we decided to get down there, took our time and it was going to be– we downclimbed, which is when you’re facing down the slant compared to facing the hill. When you’re downclimbing, things look a lot steeper than what they look like on the way up. So, what you also want to do with crampons is make sure that you– the slogan with crampons is wide and high, so you want to keep your legs wide enough so that you’re not tripping over your feet and you want to be high enough so you don’t trip over anything that’s on the ground or stumble or whatever, and you don’t want to catch your pant legs as well.

We made our way down there and got to the bottom. Then, there was a little bit of a path that made a hard left turn that we had come up the day before. Then, we walked across to a little more of an organized trailhead or a little more of a boot track, regular trail.

Scott
And what altitude were you at at that point?

Dan
At that point, we’re still at probably about 11,000 feet, and that was at the base of that head wall that I told you about. So yeah, roughly 11,000.

Scott
Did you see anyone else on the trail that morning?

Dan
No, we didn’t see anybody that morning at all. June is considered a relatively early season, which is why there’s so much snow there. So, no, there was nobody else there at the time.

Scott
Alright, so take us through the next section. You were hiking. It was, like, a clear, sunny day.

Dan
Clear, sunny, beautiful day. When we got to that trail, the boot trail that we were going to hike down, although it’s still kind of steep, is just going to be a walk down. So we took off our crampons, we packed those away. We took our ice axes, which we were using to come down that steep part. We actually packed those away. Then, we took off a couple layers of coats because, once we got to the backside of that wall, the winds completely disappeared and the temperature probably jumped from about 45 degrees to about 60-62 degrees. So it was just a phenomenal day.

We’re going to hike down. We started walking down that trail. To the left of us and a little bit lower is this huge gaping snow field that we could see, and looking at that big snow field and thinking about a hike as compared to glissading, I mentioned to Jim and said, “Jim, we ought to really just go out there and glissade instead of hiking down.” We came to that conclusion probably a few hundred yards after hiking. He said, “That sounds like a great idea.” So we made the hard right turn out again, and went out to the snow field. The snow was really soft that day, so we thought, “Well, we’re not really going to need our ice axes and that’ll take a little bit of time to unpack them. So we’ll just use our hiking poles. We’ll hold our hiking poles, two poles in one hand, and we’ll glissade just using these hiking poles and using our feet, to be safe.”

We looked at where we were going to glissade, trying to take the recommendation from the park ranger. There were two ways we could have gone because there was a Y down a little ways on this mountain side, so we looked to the right. I looked at an app that I have – it’s called AllTrails. I downloaded the trail map probably about a week before. It works off a satellite instead of off of cell service. So we could have either gone to the right and it looked like that was a more direct route or we could go to the left. But when I looked at the one on the right, we couldn’t really see where it led. It looked like a pretty big drop off. So we decided to go on the one on the left where we could see where we were going. So that’s the way we went.

Once again, following the same ritual that we had been trained to do, Jim slid down to an area that we thought was a flat area. He got down there, gave me the high sign, and I slid down to him as well, and we took a few minute break there. It was a phenomenal day. We’re there. Frankly, we were laughing, just enjoying the day. It was just a spectacular day. I can’t emphasize that enough because it was just beautiful. No clouds. After going through that whole thing with the weather and the thunder, it was just a spectacular day. And two guys that are out in the woods doing what they love.

Scott
And what you’re doing is less technical than reaching the summit. You’re probably still a little bit tired from not having enough sleep, but still having fun.

Dan
Oh yeah. It’s like sledding on your butt, and it’s just a kick. The way you glissade is in segments, right? So, we had gone to this one segment and then we were going to go to another segment. What we had noticed is that there was a little rock out cropping, which would be kind of nice to sit instead of sitting on the snow, and that was probably a hundred feet or so down. So the plan was Jim would get down to that rock out cropping once again. He would give me the high sign and I would slide down and meet him there.

So off he went and slid down to the rock outcropping. I saw him stand up on this little rocky area, saw him take his pack off, saw him walk around a little bit and thought he gave me what was the high sign, so I thought, “Okay, here we go.” So I started lacing down and, once I started, I realized that this slope was steeper than the previous one that we had done. So instead of being, maybe, 40, this was maybe 45-50 degrees.

Scott
That’s really steep.

Dan
Yeah, it’s pretty steep. I’m sliding along there. I’m pressing on my poles to try and slow down, and I’m pressing so hard on them holding the top and digging the bottom in that they started to bow a little bit just from the pressure I was putting on them, trying to dig my heels in. When I got about halfway to Jim, I realized I’m out of control at this point. So now, Jim’s coming at me quicker and quicker. When I got two thirds of the way to Jim, I realized I’m not going to stop before I get to him. “But he’s standing next to these big boulders. I’m going to hit these boulders and I’m going to stop.” This is going through my mind. I’m thinking this is really going to hurt when I run into him.

Scott
That’s not the way you want to stop, obviously.

Dan
No. You don’t want to come to an abrupt stop while you’re sliding down something like that at a speed that’s out of control. At that point, you’re committed to go in that way. So you’re committed to that and the only way you’re going to stop is, once I get to Jim, I’m going to run into these boulders and that’s pretty much going to be it.

But, as I got closer to him, and saw him getting bigger and bigger, I noticed there was a little bit of a gap in the boulders next to where he was standing. When I got to the gap, I realized I was going to miss the two boulders. I slid through the gap, which had smaller rocks and all in it and, instead of them slowing me down, they actually accelerated my speed. I think it was because of the snow and being wet. So accelerated, my speed went by. I noticed Jim going by me and realized at that point that he was actually standing on the edge of a cliff.

Went by Jim, went over the cliff, and started to fall, started to drop down in what’s described as an ice moat, which is a hole in the ice that’s formed by an underground waterfall. Went over there, screamed out a little bit, and then dropped into this hole in the ice. As I’m falling, I had– when I hit the hole, I had actually slammed the backside of my hands – the pinky side of my hands slammed – into there and then started to drop. I got the wind knocked out of me at that point, started falling and it’s like falling when you fall in a dream. I really didn’t think I was going to stop. At some point along the way, I went unconscious.

Then, when I came to, I was standing on a small ledge underneath the ice in the dark. It was cold. It was very wet because to the right of me was this raging underground waterfall. It’s called the Spalding Falls. Behind me, behind this ledge that I was standing on was an ice wall. To the left of me was a solid ice wall, and in front of me was a sheer rock wall that went straight up. As I looked up, I knew it was a significant distance. I would find out later it was 60 feet and saw a small opening of light, a little slash of light where it had actually fallen through. It was wet to the point where this raging waterfall is– this waterfall is fed by the glaciers up higher, so the water is extremely cold, probably about 35 degrees, but it drops– the total of this waterfall is probably about 125-150 feet. It’s raging on the left of me. It’s extremely loud and I thought to myself, “This is not a good situation at all.”

Scott
You said you saw that little opening at the top where you came in. That’s where you could see the light coming through that? Did that opening shed any light where you were? Could you see anything around you?

Dan
No, I couldn’t see anything around me. All I could see was that small speck of light, because it wasn’t big enough to cast down for that distance.

Scott
You could see the hole with the light through it, but it wasn’t illuminating at all. So you were just in pitch dark?

Dan
Correct. In pitch dark. I could see the waterfall, I could feel it, but like I said, the ledge was about 3 feet wide and I’d say maybe 10 feet long, but it was pitch black in there and loud. What came to my mind at that point– I believe it’s a little bit of divine intervention also from our training because we had done crevasse training where we had actually repelled down into crevasses on Mount Rainier previously. So the thing that came to my mind was to remain calm, breathe easy, Knowing that panic at this point would really be a really bad situation just because there was no way out from what I saw, and trying to think of, “How am I going to get out of here?” But thinking to myself, “I don’t think this is going to end very well for me.”

Scott
Yeah. You try to think of all the possibilities of how this could play out and, seemingly, none of them involved you somehow getting up 60 feet to where that light was.

Dan
Correct. I looked at the rock wall in front of me. We had done some rock climbing training to do the top of the Grand Teton, so I knew that if I had something I could grab my hands on, even if it was small, it would be good. But I felt the wall in the dark and couldn’t feel anything to grab onto. And also, the wall was affected by that waterfall, so the wall was wet as well, so it was slippery. It was then, in the back of my mind, I heard something that said, “Today’s not your day to die.” Even though I heard that, I really had a hard time believing that that’s really how the day was going to end.

Scott
Jim, still at the top, had seen you go by and go over the cliff.

Dan
Yep.

Jim
Watching Dan sail past me placed me at a moment where time stood still, not unlike the rollover car accident I had experienced years ago.

Scott
This is Dan’s climbing partner, Jim.

Dan
All was very quiet as time stood still. Panic set in, thinking, “I had just witnessed my buddy die.” There was no turning back. When I had stopped sliding, coming to a not-so-gracious halt from my own glissade, I crept over to the edge of the drop. To my horror, I saw a large circular hole in the snow through which water flowed down into the canyon below. The water was only visible for a few feet before it dove beneath the snowfield, forming a river under the icy snow. At this point, I turned to wave to Dan, “No go.” But this apparently sent the message, “Here I am. All good.” I guess the reason for my not plunging over the edge as well was due to my sense early that it was steep, and I applied serious brakes with my feet and poles, which definitely slowed my glissade.

Scott
You said you went unconscious for a little while. Did you have any sense of how much time had passed?

Dan
No, I had no idea. During the fall, I really didn’t have any clue at all as far as how much time had passed down there. I was down there probably about 25-30 minutes and, after a while, screamed out Jim’s name, thinking that I knew that he had seen me go in there. Once I kind of started to think clearly, I just screamed out his name in a kind of a panicked plea, not knowing if he could hear me or not because that waterfall was just so loud. So I’m screaming out his name, trying to see if there’s anything that could possibly happen and hoping that he’s able to get to a rescue team or let the rangers know, kind of, what was happening down there.

Scott
Once again, Jim…

Jim
How do you set up a plan for what to do next? It’s an emergency. Call 911? No service, and very little battery left. Then, a chilling voice came up from the crevasse, “Jim!” He’s alive. First reaction. Second reaction, not as good. He’s down under the icy river in the dark and there’s not a thing I can do about it. “Jim!” Again, a desperate yell for help. I knew he couldn’t hear me from under the snow with the rush of water. Great. So now, I’m going to sit here on the edge and listen to the cries for help, succumbing to hypothermia and injury. What happened next was a miracle. The only thing left I could think of was pray. It was a short prayer that simply went, “God, I need you now!” Yelled from the edge of the cliff. I don’t know if it was an audible voice, but the word rope interjected my mind from nowhere. That’s right. I agreed to carry down the unused climbing rope now somewhere in my pack.

Dan
While I’m in the dark – after feeling the wall and realizing that there wasn’t a way out of there and thinking that I was about at the point where I’d given up hope, quite frankly, and thought, “This is where I’m going to die” – suddenly, I felt a tapping on my, right shoulder. I didn’t want to move too much, so I reached around with my left hand and my right shoulder. When I did that, I realized it was a climbing rope. All the words would flush through your head at that time – elation, relief. I realized at least I had a chance now. I knew that there was a lot to be involved, but at least I had a chance. I tugged on the rope three times. Whoever was on the other end, gave me a little bit of slack. I released the backpack that was on my back.

Scott
Wow. You fell 60 feet and your backpack was still on your back?

Dan
Correct. And part of the thought is that the ice moat was so narrow that the theory is that– as a result of having that backpack on my back and rubbing that against one side, it may have decreased my rate of descent as I fell down there. Anyway, I looped the rope around one hand and then around the other hand because I wanted some kind of safety measures in case it came unwrapped from my waist. Leaned back a little bit and waited for what I expected to be a pull – for people to pull me out of there.

Scott
I got to ask you this. This is like a side question. Since you guys had spent so much time climbing together, did you already understand some kind of communication – of how to message – just by tugging on the rope? I mean, I’m picturing you still working on getting the rope tied around your waist and he starts pulling you up and you’re like, “No, I’m not ready yet.” How did that work?

Dan
Yeah, tugging on is something that just climbers know just from, like I said, crevasse rescue training and everything else because verbal communication kind of goes away. I wasn’t sure if he could hear me or not. So yeah, that’s the reason for tugging on it that way.

Scott
All right. So you’re there waiting for a pull.

Dan
Waiting for a poll. After a few minutes, nothing was happening, so I started to think, “Well, I can’t stay down here and wait any longer.” So, I leaned back in what’s best described as a reverse repel position. So when you repel, you have your feet against the rocks, and you’re leaned back at about a 90-degree angle from the flat rock wall. I started climbing, sliding my hands up, and climbing up the wall, and what I noticed is, as I was climbing, the slack in the rope was being pulled up so it could keep the tension on my waist to keep from falling back down. I could slide my hands up in the rope and was gradually walking my way up. When I got about halfway up, the ice wall behind me got a little closer to the rock wall in front of me, so I could lean against that ice wall. I could press my legs against the rock wall in front of me and there was some wedge between the two – like you would a doorway – and then I could kind of shimmy and climb my way up while I’m holding onto this rope.

Gradually worked my way up, popped my head out of that hole that I had been looking at, and there sits Jim. The first thing he says is something I’ll never forget. He screams out, “Dan, it’s so good to see your face!” And I said, “Yeah, it’s great to be here.” So, I climbed out of the hall. I was still about 15 feet away from him, so I took a little bit of a rest there. Then, as I got up to Jim, because we were on this steep slope and– you got to picture Jim sitting there by himself. He’s got this rope wrapped around his waist. His knees are in his chest. His heels are dug into this slope. And what needs to be said is, if he would’ve lost his balance while I was climbing up there, he would’ve fallen in the hole as well, then both of us would’ve been there without anybody knowing kind of where we are. So he took a huge chance by doing that.

So I climbed up there. He would later say that, when I saw him, my skin was as white as his sheet. He told me to jump on top of him, so I did that. He put a coat over top of me. What he would also say at the same time is that my body temperature was as cold as ice when I’m on top of him. I thought I was dead at the bottom of that ice moat – I have a feeling Jim kind of thought the same way. So the two of us are on top of each other in the middle of the wilderness – no one around – and we’re just laughing and crying in this emotional embrace in the middle of the wilderness, and it’s probably the most emotional thing I’ve ever been through in my life.

Scott
And only the two of you can identify with that because you experienced it.

Dan
Oh, absolutely. We’re there. That’s when he informed me that he had tried calling for help before and he informed me that he didn’t have cell phone service. What he said is, “I’m going to leave you tied. I’m going to take that extra end of this rope. I’m going to put the rope underneath your arms instead of around your waist. I’m going to secure it. I’m going to hike up a little higher here on these rocks. There’s a boulder up here. I’m going to secure you off, and I’m going to try and see if I can get cell service by being a little higher.” As he’s working his way up there with the rope, keeping that tension on, he’s blowing a rescue whistle, which most hikers will carry for this very reason. It’s one of those pieces of equipment that you always carry and you never know why you’re carrying it. In this case, it kind of came to–

So he’s blowing this rescue whistle and screaming for help and trying to climb up a little higher. After a little while of him doing that, I could hear him talking to somebody. I can hear him talking to somebody that had identified himself as a ranger. I don’t know, I’m probably 30 feet below Jim and hear him talking to him. As he’s talking to the ranger, he goes, “My buddy’s down there. He went over the cliff, went into that ice moat. I don’t know how far he fell, but when he disappeared. I thought he was dead.” And he’s a bit emotional at the time.

At that point, the ranger comes down to me and says, “So what happened?” Told him about, “Gone over the cliff, gone into the ice moat.” He’s talking to me. Went through the whole medical procedure. I was an REI guide for a while, so there’s a procedure that you do when you run across people you really don’t know if they’re hurt or not. So he’s grabbing my legs, seeing if there’s anything broken and going through that whole procedure. As I’m looking at him, that’s when I realized, “This is the same ranger that we ran into when we left in the morning in the Lower Saddle.”

Scott
The one that told you to be careful, use your ice axes while you’re glissading?

Dan
Correct.

Scott
And you brushed him off. Boy, if there was ever an opportunity for “I told you so”, this would’ve been it for him. Right?

Dan
Well, not only an opportunity, but deserved a bit of a tongue lashing. I said to him, “I guess now’s the time when you’re going to preach to me about proper glissading.” You need to meet park rangers. They’re probably the humblest angels of the wilderness that you’ll ever meet in your life. His comment back to me is, “No, there’s no judgment here. I’m just really glad you’re alive.” So the two of us were there for a while. He was keeping an eye on me. I was telling him, “I had actually been out there for my daughter’s wedding the week before, and that’s the reason why this timing came through. Thought I could come up.” He was asking me what we were doing out there. I said, “I was at my daughter’s wedding,” which is a pretty monumental thing. He started sharing to me that he had two little kids, and I told him the old guy advice of saying, “Just enjoy these times because they go by fast.” So we had a great moment there.

What he informed me at that time too is, “Because you’ve fallen that far, because you were unconscious–” I told him at the time I was on blood thinners. He said, “I’m not sure if you’re bleeding somewhere and I don’t know, so I’m going to call for a helicopter rescue,” which he did. What he told me at that time, he said, “I’m going to call for this helicopter. It’s going to take about 45 minutes for them to get here because there’s some things I think have gone down in the valley, so we’re just going to sit tight here.” And he radioed for the helicopter.

Scott
And how were you feeling at that point? Were you still shivering from the cold?

Dan
I was shivering uncontrollably almost to the point of– I’ve never had a seizure, but if I was going to experience a seizure, that’s what it would be. Still shivering uncontrollably. Behind me on my back were these– it was rock at that point. So we were out of the ice and its exposed rock that had been sitting in the sun for a little bit.

Scott
Oh, so it was warm. Okay.

Dan
Oh man. It was the best feeling in the world. That part felt great – the sun being on my face, I’m just lying there. I didn’t want to pick up my head because I was just so afraid of moving at all for fear of falling back into that hole. I’m lying there. The warmth is on my back. I’m still shivering. The warmth from the sun is on my face. I’m looking straight up at this crystal clear blue sky and I’m thinking to myself, “This is just phenomenal.” It’s just with elation and gratitude and just really thinking, “I really don’t believe that I’m in this position compared to where I was.”

Scott
Yeah. I got to think that is, like, peak appreciation of being alive right there.

Dan
Oh man. Yeah, very much so. The rangers were apologizing for the helicopter taking too long, and I’m like, “You don’t need to apologize for me.” I just compared to where I was. This is awesome to be laying here. I could stay here for a week. It was just so wonderful.

Scott
Now it seems like you were at that slope of the terrain. How could a helicopter land?

Dan
Well, actually they don’t. There’s a procedure called a short haul rescue. A short haul rescue really came into play, I want to say, 15 or 20 years ago. They designed it to rescue mountaineers off its side of mountains when the helicopter can’t land. What they do is they have a basket, they call it a litter, but it looks like a stretcher that’s enclosed – a basket that’s the length of somebody’s body – and it’s dangling from underneath the helicopter on a rope that’s probably about 125 feet long. So what they do is this.

I could hear this helicopter coming up the valley – sweetest sound in the world, by the way. The helicopter’s coming up. They lower this basket down. By that point, there were probably about three or four rangers that had made their way to me. Noah, who was the park ranger, had put a sleeping bag on top of me as well. They lift me up. They put me in this litter. But what happens is they drop the litter and – Noah told me this ahead of time that – they actually detach the litter from the rope on the helicopter because they don’t want to be hovering while they’re trying to keep you stable. So the helicopter actually goes away. So he warned me, “Now the helicopter’s gone away. Don’t freak out. He’ll be back. He’s not leaving.” I found out later that’s kind of a common paranoia that people have that are being rescued. So they put me in this basket, they attached me to it, and then the helicopter came back. A short time later, they reattach the helicopter, and then one of the rangers attaches himself with a carabiner and a couple other things to the side of this basket.

So I’m lying in the basket. The ranger is strapped to the side of this basket, so his legs are dangling, but his head is right by my shoulder and he got a helmet on and a walkie-talkie and a microphone that’s there. So up we go. I’m lying there, looking up at this 125 foot rope and looking up at this helicopter and this ranger’s sitting on the side of me and it’s just the most surreal thing I could ever think of in my life. Now he tells me he is going to have to cover my eyes from the backwash. I asked him not to do that because I was so afraid of having my face covered over. He said, “Well, I got to do it for a little while. It’ll be okay.” So he covered my eyes and lifted up. I could feel myself being lifted up and down the valley we go. We’re going down the valley. That lasted probably about 20 minutes or so – 20 to 30 minutes.

When we got close to this field where they would eventually lower me down, he said the backwash isn’t going to be as bad, so I’m going to–” He uncovers my eyes and I’m looking up again at this rope, this helicopter hovering over top of me, this guy in my shoulder on the side of me. I couldn’t tell how high I was, but I could tell that I was still way high in the air. They gradually lowered me down into a field close to where the trailhead was, where we had started our hike a couple days before.

There’s probably a ton of rangers there at that point. They get me out of there, put me on a stretcher, and then, put me in an ambulance where there’s a rescue EMT in the ambulance. So they put me into the ambulance. The rescue EMT guy was phenomenal – a guy named John. He was talking to me in order to– find out later that he is talking to me to kind of keep me calm as I’m in this ambulance. We’re making our way to the Jackson Memorial Hospital emergency room.

Scott
Were you experiencing adrenaline rush this whole time? Or how did that feel?

Dan
I don’t know if it was adrenaline rush. It was elation. Your heart’s beating fast just because you’re thinking to yourself, “My friends are going to be blown away by this helicopter rescue and everything else.” When we ski in the winter– it’s kind of a joke that we have between us. If somebody’s rescued and gets hurt on the mountain, they put them in a litter similar to one I was put in, and we always joked about that being the sled of shame because you ought to be able to make your way down, and so here I am. I was thinking that these guys are just going to howl and I’m going to have a great example of why the sled of shame is a great thing. So it was more elation. I was alert. I was awake. This rescue EMT is talking to me and it’s just a phenomenal time. He’s talking to me. They’re putting an IV in my arm. The other person in the ambulance actually missed my vein twice, so he’s all apologetic and I’m like, “Hey, man, don’t think about that for a minute. I’m just glad to be here. If you have to keep doing that, it’s fine by me.” Finally, they get the IV in.

This rescue EMT named John says, “I understand that you ended up climbing out of that ice moat while your buddy pulled up the slack.” I said, “Yeah, I did.” He said, “Man, you’re pretty lucky.” When he said that, I thought to myself, “Well, that’s kind of a strange thing because the ranger that first found us kind of said the same thing. When I said I had climbed out of there, he said, “Man, you’re pretty lucky.” Even the ranger that was strapped to the side– because we were so close, we could actually talk because he could monitor my condition. He said, “I understand you climbed out while your buddy pulled up the slack.” I said, “Yeah, I did.” And he said, “You’re very lucky.” So when this guy said the third time, “You were pretty lucky,” I said, “Yeah, I think I’m pretty lucky.” And I kind of blew him off a little bit. He was pretty stern when he said, “No, you don’t understand.” He said over the past few years, there were three other people that have gone into ice moats close to where you went in. He said, “And you’re the first rescue that we’ve had.” The other three were just body recoveries.

When he said that, the emotions at that time went from telling my buddies how wonderful this ride was and everything else to realizing how dire a situation I was actually in. So a dose of reality set in about how fortunate I was.

Scott
For sure, yeah. Did the ambulance EMT assess your injuries or was that when you got to the hospital?

Dan
They didn’t really assess my injuries until I got to the hospital. He more or less put me on an IV. They put me obviously on a monitor and everything else. I got to the emergency room and that was a pretty wild scene. We’re coming in. I’m feeling okay at that point but, all of a sudden, I get surrounded by these doctors and nurses and it was like something that you see from ER, one of the medical shows where all these people just converge on you. They cut off my jacket. They obviously took off all your clothes and then they put this gown on you, and then they told me they were going to do some CAT scans and X-rays because, at that point, my hip was starting to hurt a lot, but that was pretty much it. I thought, “Well, they’re just doing this as a precautionary measure.”

So I got all that done at the hospital – a bunch of X-rays, a bunch of CAT scans – and would later find out when they came back into the room– when those results came back, that’s when they told me that I had actually broken my leg. I didn’t believe them at first because I was in no pain, but they showed me the X-ray and it showed that the bone was actually snapped. They thought I had some torn ligaments in my one knee and some pretty bad bruising on my hip that would later kind of go down all the way to my ankle. But when they told me about the broken leg, I had a hard time believing him, quite frankly.

Scott
Yeah, that is amazing because I’m picturing, when you’re at the bottom on that ledge, strapping yourself into the rope and you’re sort of doing a reverse repel as you climb up with your body, your feet against the wall and your body horizontal, how do you not feel a broken leg? There’s lots of pressure on your legs at that point.

Dan
What I actually found out is that I had broken my fibula. Fibula is a long bone that goes on the outside, but it’s not a weight-bearing bone. So, fortunately, it wasn’t the weight-bearing bone that I had broken. It was this other bone, which was really very fortunate.

Scott
There’s a question that occurred to me as may occur to other people that live here in the US. Did you have to pay for that helicopter?

Dan
Ah, that’s a very good question. I’ve been asked that more than once. Actually, in Teton National Park, the rescue helicopter is free. They rescue people off of there and they don’t charge you, which, when I found out about it, was kind of interesting because I found out about it from the rescue EMT in the ambulance because, when they put me in the ambulance, he said, “I got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the helicopter ride that you just had is at no charge. Starting now is when the clock starts as far as the charges.” When he said that, it was fine. Even if he would’ve told me it would cost a bunch of money, I really wouldn’t have cared at that point, but it’s a phenomenal service that they provide to rescue people out of there all the time.

Scott
That’s a great idea. And I’m sure the helicopter would’ve been a lot more expensive than that ambulance ride too.

Dan
Extremely– because I’ve known people that have been rescued off other mountains, Mount Rainier or some of the others, and it’s a hundred grand or slightly less than a hundred thousand dollars to be rescued by that helicopter that way. So, it’s a pretty big deal.

Scott
I’m just thinking things could have gone so differently here. There are seemingly little parts of the story back when Jim volunteered to carry that rope. The fact that he had the rope– if you had it, it would’ve been useless and you could have broken something other than your leg, which may have affected getting out.

Dan
Correct.

Scott
And you fell on that ledge. I mean, what are the chances, as you’re free falling, that ledge was there to catch you?

Dan
I’m not sure where you are on your spiritual journey, but I consider it a miracle as far as what happened – a God-sent miracle. Here’s the reason why I say that, and I don’t say it lightly because, quite frankly, I wasn’t a big believer in miracles before I got in this situation. But here’s the reason why I say that. First of all, the fact that– you’re right. The fact that Jim carried that rope– if I would’ve carried that rope, it would’ve gone down the hole with me. By the time the severity of hypothermia starts to kick in about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes, what happens is you start to lose control of your hands and your legs because they’re the furthest away from your heart, so your body protects your organs. I would’ve slowly frozen to death and would’ve died from hypothermia down there by the time they would’ve found a rope. So, the fact that Jim carried the rope–

The other part is that Jim had tried throwing that rope into the hole a couple times, but the power of that waterfall kept blowing the rope back out. So, what he decided to do is feed it down like a fishing line slowly into there so that it could fall down into a little better spot and kind of find its way to me. The fact that he did that and it landed right on my shoulder and tapped me on the shoulder– now, you need to realize that it was so dark down there and he couldn’t talk to me. He didn’t know where I was. If that rope would’ve been a foot and a half to the left, a foot and a half to the right, I would’ve never seen it, would’ve never known it was there, and would probably have ended up like the other people.

The fact that my injuries– I broke my leg, obviously, but being able to climb out of there– if I would’ve broken my hands or my shoulder, still been unconscious, or would’ve broken my other bone in my leg, I probably wouldn’t have been able to climb out and would’ve died like the others.

And the fact that I landed on that ledge where it was– I found out later that, in one of the rescues of the people that actually passed away, they were down further than where I was. When they went into that ice moat, the rope that the rescuers had wasn’t long enough to reach him. So, by the time they went and got a longer rope and came back, he had already died. So the fact that I landed on that ledge where it was and the rope was long enough to get there was a big deal.

And then finally, the deal that this park ranger had just happened to be walking by us late in the afternoon that day. In June, like I said, there aren’t a whole lot of people out there because it’s kind of an early season. In fact, he’s walking by right at the right time. He had actually scaled down a wall in order to get to us. If he hadn’t been able to get to us that day, we probably would’ve ended up at the side of the mountain exposed and have to stay out there overnight. And finding out the injuries and all later, who knows what would’ve happened then.

So a lot of things fell into place and that’s why I refer to it as a miracle.

Scott
When you were on that ledge, you said you still had your backpack. What became of that?

Dan
That’s a great story and I appreciate you asking because–

Scott
We love great stories here.

Dan
Alright. Actually, the Jenny Lake Rangers– I was back and forth with them after I got back home to Atlanta. I actually called them to see if there’s any way they could see if they could find a cell phone because the pocket on my pants was ripped off where I had my cell phone and I lost my phone. So I was talking to them and I said, “If there’s any chance about my backpack, if you see that–” And they said, “Oh no. When that ice melts away–” All that ice melts away in the summertime, so that waterfall is just completely exposed, coming down to sheer rock face. They said, “No, that’ll probably melt away and it’ll show up somewhere and we’ll check it out and see if we can find it.”

Probably about a month later, about the middle of August – this happened on the 30th of June – I got a call from the Jenny Lake Rangers that said, “We found your backpack.” Then, they sent me an email and said, “Here it is. We’re drying it out, because it was soaked and it was underwater there for about a month. We’ll dry it out and then we’ll ship it back to you.” So I gave him the information in order to pay to have it shipped back and, by the first week in October, I got this huge box and it’s my backpack with all my gear dried out. Good to go. I got my sleeping bag. You’ve got to think about these are all my hiking gear, my tent, my sleeping bag, my cooking things, my headlamp, a couple of heavy coats, down coats. So, there’s probably $800 – $900 worth of equipment that’s involved in this thing and I get it back. I light my headlamp after all this and it lights up right away. I lit the little Jetboil that I had for cooking, clicked it one time and it click on right away. So the fact that they go up there and get it, to not just ship it back to me all wet, to lay it out and dry it out, and send it back to me is just spectacular. I can’t say enough about those guys.

Scott
They’re amazing. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they had replaced your headlamp with new batteries. Right?

Dan
Oh, yeah. Yeah, exactly right. That would’ve been above and beyond as well. But no. It’s pretty spectacular.

Scott
I understand you later on ran into someone who was involved with your rescue. How did that happen?

Dan
I did. It’s a pretty remarkable situation. In 2022, obviously, we didn’t summit and came down. As I was recovering from what happened, in the back of my mind, I started thinking it would be pretty slick to summit the Grant Teton. So, after 3 years, this past September, I made an attempt again and got up to one of the peaks and summited one of the peaks at the Grand Teton, which was, as you can imagine, a phenomenal experience. We climbed down and everything went well, went better than the first time I went up there.

We’re hiking down on the trail below the tree line and were with a guide at that time. We noticed that there’s a park ranger coming toward us. Like I said, they’re on patrol all the time. He walks up and he starts talking to the guide I was with, and I could tell he was a little older, he is closer to my age than the guy. I’m looking at him, I’m thinking, “Man, this guy looks really familiar.” So he’s talking to the guide that I had and, at the end, they introduced themselves and the guy introduced his name and said his name was John. I looked at him and I said, “Are you John Peletus?” And he goes, “Yeah, I am.” And I said, “John, I’m Dan Wenker.” And I went to tell him, kind of explain to him who I was, and he goes, “I know who you are.” When I told him my name, he goes, “Yeah, I remember you. I remember you from that fall.”

I was actually doing a little bit of a talk in Jackson, Wyoming that night. He said, “Yeah, I’m coming to your talk tonight because I saw it advertised and I bought your book” and we had just a phenomenal moment at that time. “Here’s this guy that was in the ambulance. He gave me a little bit of advice in the ambulance. Not only did he scold me about taking “being so lucky” lightly but, when I was talking to him, I told him that my wife is going to put me on a short rope after the accident about mountain climbing and all that kind of thing, and he was very emphatic with that. He said, “You need to get back out there. You need to get back out there and you need to get back out climbing. There’s inherent dangers with being in the mountains. Unfortunately, that’s what happened to you, but you need to get back out there.”

So the fact that I went up and got to the summit at this enclosure and, on my way back down, after doing that, I run into the guy that had given me the advice I need to get back out there is just– I’ll tell you Scott, it’s just mind blowing – the sequence of events of what happened. Obviously, the nicest guy in the world. We had a chance to talk for a while and then talked a little bit longer that night as well.

Scott
What a great way to punctuate your actual summit of that mountain.

Dan
Oh yeah.

Scott
You’ve written a book about this whole adventure. It’s called “Staying on Guard”. Why the title? Tell us about the book.

Dan
Well, the book is a story of my accident and how my accident has impacted me and my life. It also tells the story of how I got involved with mountaineering. I got involved in mountaineering when I was living in the state of Washington. I was approaching my 50th birthday and wanted to do something. As everybody approaches your birthday or 50th birthday especially, some people start to think, “Okay, I’m on the backside of what’s gone on here.” I didn’t want that to happen, so I needed to do something that would be monumental, first of all, to celebrate a 50th birthday but also that would force me to get into great shape. While we were living in Washington, I looked at Mount Rainier and thought I’d like to climb Mount Rainier, which is kind of a funny thing. I’m a guy. I grew up in Philadelphia, never did any mountaineering, never did anything at all. The only thing I had climbed when I made that statement were the stairs in my house. So, the long story is that I met some people, ended up getting some advice from a guy who told me how to train for Mount Rainier. We ended up climbing Mount Rainier to celebrate my 50th birthday.

What I would say is that, with the exception of the marriage to my wife or the birth of my children, Mount Rainier was the most monumental thing I’d ever done in my life. Instead of being a one-and-done climb, it became a passion for me and got in my blood. So I started climbing. In the book, I go through the idea of what ifs, and I think that’s really very important. When people get to their fifties, they start to say, “I don’t do this anymore.” I ski in the winter and I have plenty of friends that say, “I don’t ski anymore. I don’t do this anymore” because they think they’re past their age. What I say is, “Forget the ‘not anymore’. Live a life of what-ifs. What if I could do this or what if I could run a 5K or what if I could do something like that and still continue to live a very vibrant life?”

And so I wrote this book about my climbing adventures. I’ve climbed mountains not only in the US but all over the world. I’ve done it with some great friends, have climbed mountains with my daughter and have summited at the top of the mountains with my daughter, which is always an emotional time. That climbing career is also what I’ve gained out of this fall. People say, “It must be the worst experience of your life.” And I say, “Contrary to that. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me just because it has given me a greater appreciation for life. It’s helped me really look at the little things– and people say that all the time to look at the little things in life, but facing death will really change your outlook on a lot of things.

We had a good friend of ours – Jim and I – that actually, during a training hike outside of Yakima that he was on one time, fell off a ledge, and actually fell and died. It strikes home that you think to yourself, “This guy died as a result of his fall. I lived. I lived to tell about it because of some miraculous things that happened. Why did it happen?” And it helps to find a little bit of purpose out of life. So telling people to be on guard, staying on guard comes through with our descent down because we let our guard down when we were coming down the mountain. We didn’t take our ice axes like we were trained. That 15 minutes of taking that out could have cost me my life.

So stay on guard as you’re in the wilderness. The wilderness is impersonal. But stay on guard, like I said, in your life. Beware of getting out of shape. Stay on guard. Whether you’re out and about or walking in the city or whatever, just to stay on guard in life as well as when you’re out in the wilderness because it’s impersonal and things can happen quickly.

Scott
Sure can. Alright, you’ve got a website. How can people get in touch with you and get your book?

Dan
Love it. You get in touch with the book at danwenker.com. There, you can order my book as well as see some of the other adventures I’ve been on. Like I said, it’s become a purpose of mine to share this story and share this message and go on there. Danwenker.com is the best way to do it or feel free to reach out to me at, dan@danwenker.com.

Scott
Yeah, we’ll have links to all of that as well as your Instagram – I know you’re on there. Even your phone number– people can send you a text message if they want. We’ll put that all on the episode notes for this.

Dan
Excellent.

Scott
So, wow. It sounds like, from this experience, you are now appreciating life and living deliberately every day.

Dan
Very much so. Much comes through with the miracle part, and I’ll share that with you, Scott, is that I wake up a little differently. The first thing I do is – it’s very important for me to stay in shape – do some exercises and do some stretching and that kind of thing. Then, I have a little devotional time. Then, quite frankly, pray on my knees and, the first thing I say is, thanks for the day because that’s not what everybody can do and they can’t do it. Not only have they not made it to that day but, also, a lot of things happen to people where they’re not feeling well or other things that are going on. So, just wake up and celebrate the day with a little bit of gratitude and a little bit of meditation to just be grateful. Wiggled my toes, got out of bed, and off we go, and it’s phenomenal.

Scott
Not too long ago I went to a local place that offers indoor climbing. It is great exercise, gets your heart pumping for a good cardio workout, and there’s a mental component to it as you’re trying to figure out where your next handhold or foothold will be. Getting to the top was a mix of emotions – it was great to achieve that goal, but it was also a little scary looking down from that height. But the danger was all in my head, because I was strapped in.

That’s really the only option we have here in Florida because it’s all just flat. I’d probably enjoy living in a place where there was some variation in the terrain, but I think I would probably stick to strenuous hiking rather than trying to get myself up a flat rock wall.

If you’re curious about something that I didn’t ask Dan, he’s in the Facebook group so you can just find the post for this episode and comment there with your question.

And speaking of the Facebook group – our Facebook question this past Tuesday was: Is your birthday a big deal to you? Why or why not? We’d love to hear what you have to think about that. You can join the discussion at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And now, it’s time for the Listener Story! This is a story that is sent in by a listener. And it doesn’t have to be anything earth-shattering. Just something interesting or funny or sad or whatever, that happened to you. Just record it on your phone and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

This listener has a story that fits in with today’s  theme – mishaps on the mountain trail.

Stay safe, and we’ll see you next time.

(Listener story)

Let me start with a little backstory. My family’s always been very outdoorsy. When I was growing up, we had a tradition every– around Halloween, every year, we’d head up to the Adirondack Mountains and we’d go backpacking and we’d meet up with another 20 or 30 people. It was called the Halloween Hike. While we were up there, we would hold strange pumpkin ceremonies and sing pumpkin carols. It was a lot of fun. So did that as a kid.

When I started a family, I wanted my kids to experience that as well. I went on the hike when I was pregnant, no problem. Then, when my son was 5 months old, we went on the hike again. We didn’t really feel up to backpacking and tent camping with a five month old, so we found that the Adirondack Mountain Club had little cabins, very rustic cabins, that you could rent. We did that for a year, had bunk beds and it worked out really well. So, that was a go the next year.

My son was 17 months old. My dad and I decided, “Hey, we want to get out there even earlier.” So just the two of us went out on Friday and we were going to hike up Friday night with my son. So we drove out in the afternoon. We got to the trailhead. He was hiking all the gear, although we didn’t have a tent, we didn’t have sleeping bags. It was just our clothes and some food. I had my son on my back, and we headed out.

It was pretty cold, but not too bad. It’s probably a 3-5 mile hike. I don’t remember exactly how far but, at some point, it started snowing. This is not good. My son did not like that. He didn’t like the snow coming down his face and it was getting on his favorite stuffed animal, Mr. Levy – he was called. Every now and then, he would throw Mr. Levy in a fit of rage and Mr. Levy would fall on the muddy trail and yeah, that wasn’t great. It wasn’t terrible. We were trying to keep him happy. We were singing songs, hiking on the trail.

Right around sunset, we finally made it up to the cabin – same cabin we’ve been at last year – but this time, my dad went to enter the code that the Adirondack Mountain Club had given him to get into the cabin. There was, like, a lock with a combination – kind of lock of some sort – and it didn’t open. Now it’s sunset, it’s snowing – there’s probably a couple inches on the ground. My son is crying and I’m like, “Where are we going to sleep?” Because no tent, no sleeping bags. My toddler was not in a good moment.

Luckily, my dad had remembered there were some more cabins up a little further on the trail, so we kept going and we found it was a bigger cabin and there were people in it and they were inside, so we talked to them. It turns out when they had reached the cabin, it also wouldn’t open with the code, but luckily one of them had a screwdriver and they had managed to somehow pry it off or break it open somehow. So, they loaned us that screwdriver.

We headed back to our cabins. It’s fully dark now. We managed to break into our cabin and give them back their screwdriver. So it was basically a happy ending. I mean, clearly, someone screwed up the codes because there’s a lot of people trying to get into cabins that weekend and they were locked. But the rest of the family joined us the next day and we had a grand old time. Unfortunately, the Halloween hike tradition is now no more. The people running it– my dad’s now in his eighties and so, yeah, they just got to where they couldn’t really do it anymore, but I have decades of wonderful memories to think back on.