Dr John All was taking snow samples on his own on Mount Himlung — in Nepal’s Himalayas — when the glacier broke under his feet. He fell into a 21m crevasse and suffered multiple injuries, but he managed to escape using an ice pick, filming himself during an agonic adventure that lasted six hours.
John is a geography lecturer from West Kentucky University who specialises in mountain science. After the accident he said:
My body was shattered and I was in agony. My face hit one wall, my back and stomach hit the back wall and I bounced between them. My face was pretty torn up. I landed on a piece of ice at a midpoint.
I could have fallen another 100 metres and it’s amazing I didn’t. The entire time climbing out I knew if I slipped I would have been dead.