Climbing
A mountain climber credits his quick thinking, and a lot of luck, helping him survive when he fell into a crevasse on Mount Rainier, WA. The incident occurred at the beginning of August, but Graham Parrington and his team are just now talking about it.
Graham Parrington and his team had just summited Rainier and were heading back down to camp, thinking the hardest part of their expedition was behind them. They were at the 11,000-foot level at Ingraham Flats when Parrington plummeted 30 feet through a crack in the ice.
“We were on our way back down, we’d gotten past the most dangerous parts and we could see our tents,” Parrington told CNN. “And all of a sudden I disappeared into a crevasse. I was smashing through melting layers of snow, which broke my fall a bit. I got to the bottom, and I was dangling above a giant blade of ice.”
Parrington said he was pretty happy when he realized he was unhurt and not dead. So he did what anyone would do in his life or death situation, snap a selfie.
“For me, it was just happy to be alive and now I just need to execute the plan,” he said.
Parrington said the light was dim, making it hard to see what was around him. At his feet, a drain hole loomed so dark he couldn’t even see the bottom of it. Parrington credits his team for catching his fall. The team managed to situate a second rope, and once the anchor was set, Parrington was able to inch his way up back to the top. It took 15 to 20 minutes of steady but difficult climbing.
Parrington and the other climbers continued their trip back down the glacier which a teammate punched through another crevasse, but luckily he was able to stop himself from falling in.
