Wild stories in the news

Lately what I’ve been up to is not very much, mostly because after a very long time I fell ill again. I had covid for the second time and it made me so totally tired I couldn’t make any posts.

Anyway now I want to make an update about what I’ve been doing for the ALMS. Firstly there was a terrible accident that happened to a friend of my sisters in the Himalayan mountains, at Mt. Annapurna, and I have been searching and following the news about this for many hours. This friend was climbing the mountain, or actually he was descending as he had started feeling ill from the AMS, which happens due to extreme conditions and low amounts of oxygen in the air. It can make one weak and even delirious and that can make all sorts of climbing very dangerous as a lot of the areas require very technical climbing, a lot of caution and skill and some places are almost constantly being swept by avalanches.  Anyhow he had been all the way to the highest camp before the summit, camp 4, but had to start descending due to illness. He was going from camp 3 to camp 2 where he fell for meters after which he rolled and fell into a 50 meters (or so) deep crevasse in the glacier.

He was missing for three days in that crevasse, but he also had some luck with him. Firstly he wasn’t alone when he fell and the people he was with knew the exact place where he fell. Unlucky part here was the area, which was in many places called the most dangerous part of the entire mountain due to it’s constant avalanches and hidden crevasses. This is really something, as it is also the reason along bad weather, why the rescue operation was delayed by two whole days. Another luckier bit was that there were a couple of super talented professional Polish climbers awaiting for better weather to begin their mission, which was to open a new route to the summit. They were asked to join the mission, as nobody else was capable of helping my sisters friend at this point. His family really did a great deal in all of this as they successfully raised awareness, support and money for the operation and got Indian and Nepalese governments involved in helping as well. This was much needed as the operation would be very expensive and very dangerous for the rescuers.

It can only be imagined how the family and close friends must have felt about this, as the rescue mission was nearly impossible to even try and once they could try it they thought they were looking for a dead body. He had fallen down tens of meters after which he was buried in snow at almost 6000 meters above sea level, where he laid for three days. It would have been a miracle if even just the body was found, but  they actually found him alive and managed to get him out and to the hospital. I think he still is in a coma and the recovery won’t be easy, but he’s shown some promising signs of recovering. This has been quite a whirlwind of emotions and unbelievable news and stories to follow – there even was at least one headline in the Finnish papers as well. I will keep on hoping for him to actually be better and to have the strength to survive this.

This entire story consumed me for a few days and I spent plenty of hours reading various news articles about this – which means I’m surely done with that part of the ALMS. I also did spend some more time with this blog, when I wrote about the accessibility of information, so I’ve done that 10 hours as well. When I was sick I was reading Shantaram a lot, and I’m certain I’ve passed 10 hours there too. I’ve also been doing crosswords in English on a phone app which I will add to vocabulary learning, to which I also add going through and learning the words I keep on my own list. I think I’m also done with that. The grammar learning I will finish this week as I keep doing the online tasks this week. I am also done with academic writing by practicing it on my own to become better at argumentative writing.

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