A novice mountaineer had a brush with disaster while practicing his ice navigation skills on glacier in France when he lost his footing and was unable to self-arrest.
“I made a few key mistakes on a particular section when going down and ended up sliding down toward an icy river. In the middle of the slide, my crampon got caught behind a lump of ice and my body and motion changed direction down an even steeper slide.”
Although he did not use his ice axe to stop his uncontrolled descent towards a rushing glacier river, a pile of rocks stopped his progress and saved him from plunging into the frigid water. The mountaineer reports he was lucky and walked away uninjured from the fall.
