Voices
Avalanche!
Video Transcript
Background Description: A black and white photograph shows an avalanche in progress where a large cloud of snow obscures a mountain and looks to be traveling across a snowy plateau. The title, “Avalanche!” with an exclamation appears with the name Alice Purdey beneath it.
As Alice begins to speak, the cover of an issue of the National Geographic appears with Edmund Hillary, a famous mountaineer. The title of the feature is “Life and Death on Everest”.
Alice Purdey speaks: I discovered the thrilling idea of mountaineering through the eyes of Edmund Hillary. My family subscribed to National Geographic.
Background Description: A black and white photograph of Alice Purdey appears as a young girl guide standing on a driveway and some houses in the background.
Purdey speaks: I was eight and living in flat country. Then I moved to Vancouver and found mountains.
Background Description: A colour photograph shows a snowy mountainous terrain with sun hitting the peaks and Alice sitting on the edge of a cliff in the lower left corner looking on.
Purdey speaks: Soon, I was going along on expeditions into unexplored ranges.
Background Description: A colour panorama shows a wide and completely snow-covered mountain. It transitions to a top-down view of an unforgiving area with a sharp ridge.
Purdey speaks: 1967, Canada’s centennial year, rolled around. Five of us decided to celebrate in style. We would climb Mount Logan, the highest peak in Canada, and we would ascend via the unclimbed north ridge.
Background Description: A shot looking up at an avalanche hurling down a mountain side appears.
Purdey speaks: The overwhelming size of the mountain and the number of avalanches thundering down its slopes was sobering to us. We told ourselves we would be safe on our ridge crest.
Background Description: In a shot from above and behind them, we see three people following a ridge and continue to zoom closer.
Purdey speaks: But, the June snow was mushy, not firm and comforting.
Background Description: Another photograph is shot from below a climber heading us a steep edge. Deep foot prints in the snow pattern the route
Purdey speaks: We climbed only at night, when the snow was firmer, with two people preparing the route ahead while three slept.
Background Description: A shot from above shows a heavily loaded climber with snowshoes sticking up out of the back pack making her way up using rope.
Purdey speaks: Then the three would ferry loads while the two slept.
Background Description: A photograph showing a long rugged snow ridge running diagonally up the scene has the morning light on the left and shadow on the right. A person can be spotted in the lower left on the dark side of the ridge.
Purdey speaks: One morning, after a week of this, I awoke to shouts of ‘help!’ Where Peter and Vince had been cutting trail there was only an avalanche track.
Background Description: A side view of the steep and naturally ridged mountain demonstrates the apparent dangers.
Purdey speaks: They had tumbled seven hundred feet down the face of the mountain before the rope tying them together miraculously got caught. Desperate, they managed to struggle back up.
Background Description: A headshot shows a calmly smiling male climber with blood streaming down half his face.
Purdey speaks: Peter had a ragged cut on his forehead and Vince had a broken arm.
Background Description: A photograph shows a close up of a demonstration where thread is tied by hand to the handle of a plain white mug.
Purdey speaks: I had recently learned how to stitch up a wound by practicing on the handle of a mug. Now I was put to the test:
Background Description: We return to the head shot of Peter.
Purdey speaks:...clean the dried blood off Peter’s face, clean the porridge pot to sterilize the forceps, and find the cleanest sock that Peter could chew on when I pierced his skin twenty-six times.
Background Description: A black and white photograph shows Peter all cleaned and stitched up wearing glasses and looking relieved.
Purdey speaks: Peter’s worst fear? That the snippet of hair I had to cut off wouldn’t re-grow!
Background Description: A photograph emerges from a black screen showing a light orange crisscross drawn in the lumpy snow-covered ground. Beyond the platform are mountain peaks and ridges jutting out of a sea of clouds below
Purdey speaks: Meanwhile, there was Vince with his broken arm. We flattened a tiny landing pad and used red Kool-Aid powder to write an SOS.
Background Description: A photograph shows a frontal view of a helicopter with the pilot seen clearly through the glass bubble and other people are entering from the left side.
Purdey speaks: Before long, an observant pilot spotted us.
Background Description: We are taken from a close up of the leaving helicopter in the blue sky to the vast cold mountain range it is heading over.
Purdey speaks: Within hours, Vince and his gear swooped away by helicopter. Peter opted to stay with us.
Background Description: A black and white photograph of the snow-covered mountainside shows a dotted trail along which the team had climbed. The onscreen text says, “With deteriorating weather and snow conditions, we decided to retreat from the mountain and descend the face of the ridge near the track of the avalanche.” The next onscreen text reads, “After 20 harrowing hours, we reached safety.”
Acknowledgements: ‘Avalanche’ was written and produced by Alice Purdey during a February 2009 Centre for Digital Storytelling Workshop that was organized by the North Vancouver Museum and Archives as part of the Virtual Museum of Canada’s project, ‘Climbing to the Clouds: A People’s History of BC Mountaineering’. Alice Purdey extends her appreciation to mountaineers and adventurers Peter Thompson, Vince Bauer, Jim Craig and Bob Cuthbert who are featured in the story. Vignette includes cover image from National Geographic Volume 203, No 5, May 2003. Measured Places by Kevin MacLeod http://:incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/
