An American academic has filmed his escape from “certain” death as he crawled in agony to safety after falling 70 feet into a Himalayan mountain crevasse, breaking his arm, ribs and suffering severe cuts and bruises.

Dr John All, a geography lecturer from West Kentucky University who specialises in mountain science, was collecting snow samples on 23,379ft Mount Himlung, close to Everest in the Nepal Himalayas, when he fell into a deep crevasse, which had been hidden by recent heavy snow. His body ricocheted between the walls of the crevasse as he fell; he then landed on a precarious ice ridge 70 feet down but more than 300 feet from the bottom.

He spent the next six hours in excruciating agony, crawling inch by inch with his ice pick, knowing that at any moment one slip and he would fall to death.

“My body was shattered and I was in agony,” he said last night. “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,” he said. (© Daily Telegraph, London)

Irish Independent

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