A Mountain Rescue
Not my story really, but that of my brothers and his best mate.
My brother is a proper outdoorsy type, fit, an accomplished climber, cyclist adventurer, can fly a plane and pretty much conquer most things once he sets his mind to it. His mate is ex-army and discovered a love of climbing early on his career and once he became a civvy they used to go out into the wilds together on a regular basis.

They both live in Scotland and decided one day to do a snowy climb up the 3,565ft Stob Ghabar one of the fine Munros. Well prepared and geared up and aware of the conditions, they set off.
They had a great time, and when they stopped to take in the amazing views, my brother turned round to see that he was now, well and truly all alone.

His mate was gone, disappeared, nowhere to be seen. As his stomach hit his crampons and then came back up into his mouth, he searched the lower slopes for any sign, desperately wanting to see any sign of his friend, even a broken body would be better than nothing, but there was no sign, not a sausage.

His mate had lost his footing, he had banged his head as he fell, and a simple mistake sent him careering 1000ft down a frozen slope, he was trying to catch the ice with his axe, but ended up bouncing over boulders, sliding down the rough cliff face, thrown around the rocks and stones and ice for only 10 seconds, but to him it felt like a lifetime as he struggled, desperately to cling onto something.
Amazingly he came to a sudden, abrupt, stop on a ridge, with a shoulder broken in 3 places, and bleeding and covered in cuts and bruises.
He looked up the mountain and could see a trail of blood behind him. The only thing that stopped him flying over the ridge, into the frozen Loch and to his certain death, was a simple strap on his rucksack. It had snagged on a rock and saved his life, and stopped his back from being broken.
Bleeding and disorientated he finally managed to blow his whistle, and while looking for a way to get back up, he started stumbling along the ridge.

By now my brother and another climber had heard the whistle and spotted him, ‘GO BACK GO BACK GO BACK’ he screamed at the top of his voice, and waved his arms like some kind of maniac , as he could see that if his friend took another confused step, he would go off the end of the ridge that he had landed on and be gone forever.
Thankfully he saw them and collapsed where he stood.
They slowly and carefully made their way down to his friend and gave him sugar and fluid to try to stop him going into shock.

2 hours later the mountain rescue arrived and 6 of them winched down from the helicopter and carried him in a stretcher 300m down the hill and finally got him to hospital.
The Glencoe rescue team were amazed at how lucky he had been, if it had not been for his rucksack he would be dead.
He thankfully survived to see his then newly pregnant wife give birth to their second child and gave climbing a break for a while. He also got some free rucksacks and a first class trip to Italy to be on a talk show to tell his tale, but I think being alive was the best thing he got out of it.
Being prepared did help, but be careful out there kids, you never know what could happen!
( Herb Alpert's Taxi Driver I have very beautiful lips, Tue 3 Apr 2012, 22:00, 2 replies)

Way scary!
Icy mountains are more dangerous than people realize. I came uncomfortably-close once to a similar fate (but no bloody pieces): b3ta.com/questions/holidays/post30169
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Wed 4 Apr 2012, 0:26, closed)

scary story,

(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Wed 4 Apr 2012, 12:28, closed)