Original subtitles

*

NARRATOR: A giant storm of snow, ice, and freezing cold

strikes the US without warning, causing chaos.

The blizzard brings cities to a standstill

and traps people in cars.

If I'd drifted off to sleep, I would have frozen to death.

It rips across mountain ranges with hurricane-force winds.

The blizzard is so horrendous and powerful.

It's just so violent!

This is the power of the blizzard.

Icy mountain peaks are beautiful to look at...

...but this harsh environment

is at the mercy of some of the most powerful blizzards on Earth.

Wind and snow can be a lethal combination.

Without warning, a blizzard can trap anyone who ventures up here.

Basically, within 15 minutes,

it went from blue sky to holding on for dear life.

I'd never seen weather change that fast.

It was hell, basically.

In May, 2005,

three mountaineers, Erik Bjarnson, Alex Snigurowicz, and Don Jardine,

were attempting to climb Mount Logan, Canada's highest peak.

They were near the summit when a powerful blizzard struck.

MAN: We looked up and we could see the black clouds coming,

and they rolled in, like, quicker

than anything I've ever seen in my life.

MAN: Ice pellets were hitting us, and they were stinging.

Visibility was dropped down to almost nothing.

Sleet and snow lashed the climbers.

The wind was so powerful

that we were walking at about 45-degree angles into it.

The weather was getting worse and worse,

and it got to the point where you couldn't see anything any more.

The climbers couldn't move in the blinding white-out.

They had no choice but to try and pitch a tent in the howling wind.

The wind was everything. It was hitting all our senses at one time.

Like somebody punching you in the back of the neck

as hard as they could constantly.

The wind was blowing at over 100km/h - the force of a hurricane.

Think about being in the back of a jet engine.

Unless you huddled down on all fours, you would get blown away.

At last, the tent was up.

They crawled inside, but it was no match for the fury of the storm.

Then we got in,

and from there, it was just like riding a rollercoaster.

The back of the tent was trying to lift up all the time,

trying to get airborne.

Then everything's shaking like this. (MIMICS WHIRRING)

It was picking the three of us up inside the tent,

which is about, you know, over 600lb.

So, that's a terrifying feeling,

to have that much energy surrounding you.

For eight hours, the tent stood up to the storm.

But, finally, it began to come apart.

Knowing they were losing their only shelter,

Don and Alex decided to get out and dig a snow cave.

But with only Erik's weight to hold it down,

the tent began to tear away.

I was yelling at him. I said, 'Erik, you got to get out now.

This thing is going to fly off the ridge with you in it.'

I can still remember the sound of the fabric ripping,

and knowing that this is not good.

All their survival gear was in the tent,

so Erik held on as long as he could.

But the blizzard was too strong.

In less than two seconds, it was gone.

You couldn't see anything. It was gone after that.

All our stuff was disappearing with it.

It was just such a moment of helplessness.

Without that, the chances of survival are very, very small.

In seconds, the storm had taken everything they owned,

leaving them stranded, exposed, and as good as dead.

High on the mountain, it was now a numbing -40 degrees.

With no survival gear,

it was only a matter of time before hypothermia took hold.

Once we lost our shelter, we were in for it.

It was like a ticking time bomb.

ALEX: All we had left was two sleeping bags, one insulating pad,

one ice-axe and one pot lid.

To make matters worse, in the chaos of the blizzard,

Erik's thermal gloves had blown away.

Without them, his hands became paralysed with frostbite,

leaving him helpless.

I was basically the weakest link,

and they were unable to help me at that point.

So, there was only about a two-second discussion

where Don said, 'Erik, stay here. We'll build a shelter.

We'll come back for you if we can,' and then they were gone.

All alone and without his gloves, Erik was in deep trouble.

He was also in agony. The cold was freezing his hands.

ERIK: The pain of freezing...

Basically, a blood vessel is a round object,

and when water freezes, it gets really sharp, like a snowflake,

and it does little pinpricks through each vessel.

So, basically every vessel is being frozen one at a time,

and it feels like you can feel every blood vessel freezing.

While Erik was suffering,

Don and Alex were desperately digging a shelter somewhere in the blizzard.

But in the white-out conditions,

Erik had no idea if they were alive or dead.

They were probably less than 40ft, 50ft away,

but unfortunately, I couldn't see them, couldn't hear them.

I just assumed the wind was so powerful,

it blew them off the mountain.

Alone in the blizzard and unable to fend for himself,

Erik resigned himself to death.

That was probably the loneliest time of my life.

To be up there all alone was terrifying.

I accepted the fact that I would probably die,

and during that time, God, everything went through my mind.

They talk about the phases of death. Like, I went through them all.

Like, I was angry at first,

and then I started to bargain with God for my life,

then finally accepted it.

But out in the blizzard, Don and Alex had not given up.

After about five to six hours, we got this snow cave built,

which was more like a sardine can.

With the cave built, they found Erik,

and, together, the three men climbed into their freezing shelter.

The snow cave was so uncomfortable.

It was just incredibly painful to be in it,

but it was so much better than what we had outside.

Picture this - three guys spooning in a sardine can.

That's literally what it was.

DON: It was fairly claustrophobic,

and it seemed like all you could do now was just to sit and wait to die

because the storm seemed like it wasn't going to peter out.

The storm raged on around the trapped climbers for two days.

But finally the snow began to ease, and the winds died down.

The blizzard was blowing itself out.

At last, a rescue helicopter was sent up into the now clear sky.

And the men were brought down the mountain.

Against the odds,

the climbers had survived one of the most ferocious blizzards on record.

The men spent months in the hospital

before they recovered from their ordeal.

Erik, who had suffered three days in freezing temperatures with no gloves,

lost nine fingers to frostbite.

ERIK: In all my 20 years of climbing,

I have never been in a blizzard like this.

Having that feeling of helplessness

just gave me a new respect for Mother Nature -

how powerful she is, how insignificant we are,

and you know, we're only allowed to be there because she lets us.

ALEX: I've never been in a blizzard that bad, period,

and I don't ever want to go back and be in a situation like that ever.

Nobody should.

The men had survived the full power of a blizzard,

partly because they were experienced climbers who knew what to do

and partly because they were lucky.

But sometimes luck alone just isn't enough.

*

*

NARRATOR: A blizzard is defined as a severe snowstorm

with sustained winds of over 56km/h.

Blizzards form when freezing cold air in the atmosphere

collides with warm, moist air,

creating a weather phenomenon called a front.

This collision of warm and cold air

produces heavy snow and howling winds.

But wind and snow aren't the most dangerous part of a blizzard.

The biggest killer is the cold.

A drop of just four degrees in core temperature,

and the human body becomes hypothermic.

It's a condition that Dr Colin Grissom is an expert at treating.

A person experiencing mild hypothermia typically feels cold,

and they start shivering.

The shivering progresses to an uncontrollable shivering.

Shivering is the body's way

of generating critical heat to keep you alive.

But if body temperature continues to fall, hypothermia deepens.

Then the shivering stops, and that's the beginning of the end.

When you stop shivering, the body is losing its ability to rewarm itself.

So, it is failing.

Everything slows down -

metabolism slows down, so, the heartbeat slows down,

the breathing slows down,

and all the cells slow down, including the brain.

Left unchecked, severe hypothermia like this will lead to death.

A fact one hiker discovered all too tragically.

In March, 2004,

Russell Cox set off on a day trip with his wife, Brenda.

They went hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

It's a region famous

for its unpredictable and sometimes extreme weather.

The day that we started out, the weather was sort of mixed.

There was blue sky, there were some clouds,

but we just intended to do a day hike and return to the car.

To document their day, Russell took photos of Brenda as they climbed.

We got about three quarters of the way up,

and the weather began to change.

We were hiking up into the clouds now,

and the snow was sort of lightly falling.

But as they got higher, the snow began to fall harder.

The wind picked up, and the snow especially picked up,

which meant that the visibility was poor.

They reached the summit, but when they headed back down,

they walked into a full blizzard.

The sky and the ground sort of took on this greyness.

It was becoming hard to tell

where the ground ended and where the sky began.

Russell and Brenda were soon lost in the white-out.

In the freezing cold, they quickly became hypothermic.

We would go into these uncontrollable shivers.

It was so cold that I remember

I didn't want to lift my arms out of just hugging my body.

Trapped in the blizzard, they got colder and colder.

At one point, I realised that Brenda had not shivered in a while,

and, um, I began to become concerned.

With no shivering to generate heat,

the -40-degree temperatures did their worst.

I reached over and I just put my hand on her thigh,

and I just felt her,

and I immediately pulled my hand back,

because at that point, I realised that she was gone.

Brenda had frozen to death in the blizzard.

The next morning, Russell was rescued off the mountain.

He was airlifted to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Russell recovered from his hypothermia,

but suffered terrible frostbite,

losing 70% of his right foot and 30% of his left.

But, of course, the real tragedy was Brenda.

36 hours in the freezing cold was too much,

and it cost her her life.

It was clear that these forces that we were feeling had overcome us,

and we felt extremely insignificant

in this enormous force that was happening around us.

The freezing conditions on the White Mountains proved to be fatal.

You don't need to venture into the mountains

to get caught in a blizzard.

For one unlucky man,

a weekend road trip would become a 15-day fight for survival.

*

*

NARRATOR: The remote wilderness of the Pacific North-West

gets an average snowfall of up to 15m a year...

...making it the snowiest place in the US.

This soft powder might look harmless, but it's deceptive.

It can bond together, forming an impenetrable layer,

trapping anyone caught in the open.

That's a fact that turned a two-day road trip

into a two-week fight for survival.

In November, 2006,

a single car drove toward the remote mountains

along the Washington-Oregon border.

Its driver, Daryl Jane,

was looking forward to a weekend break in the country.

MAN: Beautiful day, middle of November.

Blue sky, not a cloud anywhere to be seen.

I was in pants and a T-shirt,

and got about halfway up the mountain, over the pass,

and started noticing a little bit of snow.

As Daryl continued into the wilderness,

the snow on the ground became deeper.

Now 80km from the nearest town,

he became worried about getting trapped in the snow,

and decided to turn back.

I came to a stop, put my jeep into reverse,

tried to go back, and my tyres started spinning.

Daryl's car soon became completely stuck in the snow.

There was no phone coverage. Daryl was now in deep trouble.

And things were about to get a lot worse.

(WIND ROARS)

160km away, a powerful blizzard was building

and moving directly towards Daryl.

The heavy snow and ice had already blanketed cities and closed roads.

The full force of the blizzard

hadn't yet reached Daryl stuck out in the hills.

But it wouldn't be long.

Unaware of the approaching storm,

he decided to try and get help on foot.

But slogging through deep snow was heavy going.

(COUGHS)

DARYL: But I'd say I got probably about 500 or 600 yards away.

Then I stopped and I thought,

'You know, I'm getting kind of cold right now.

It's probably about four o'clock.

I have maybe two hours of sunlight left.'

And I started feeling a little fearful

because I'm in the middle of the wilderness, nobody around.

With nowhere to turn, Daryl decided to go back to his car.

A wise decision.

The leading edge of the storm was almost upon him,

and in a blizzard,

your chances of survival in the open are next to nothing.

Especially with a storm this size.

The cloud sweeping towards Daryl

had crossed the Pacific Ocean for thousands of kilometres,

picking up enormous amounts of moisture.

As these heavy clouds plough into the mountains running along the coast,

they're forced high into the icy upper atmosphere.

Up here, the water vapour in the clouds begins to freeze,

forming snowflakes.

As the flakes become too heavy to float,

they fall thick and fast, creating a giant blizzard.

The snowflakes seemed fairly large - bigger than a normal snowflake.

So, it started piling up very fast.

That's when I really thought...

I thought, 'Uh-oh. I could be in trouble here.'

Daryl was now trapped with no chance of escape.

Daylight began to fade, and the temperature dropped.

In the car, it was a freezing 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Daryl tried to dry his wet clothes,

but they immediately iced up in the numbing cold.

My pants were... They were frozen.

So, I would pick them up, unfreeze them, kind of...

You know how they get kind of crunchy?

Put them on as best I could,

and they were still kind of just... putting on like frozen cardboard.

Unable to fend off the cold,

Daryl drifted off into a fitful sleep.

In the morning,

the blizzard was still raging with no sign of stopping.

Day after day, it continued nonstop,

dumping nearly 60cm of powder over the region.

For almost a week, Daryl was at the mercy of the snowstorm,

trapped in freezing, solitary confinement.

As that blizzard kept getting heavier and heavier,

I thought, 'There's a good chance

I'm going to just get buried alive out here.'

The blizzard just kept coming and coming,

and so I felt it was kind of cruel, you know?

Nature was really just handing it to me,

and I remember shouting out to the sky a few times,

'Just give me a chance,' because this storm was ridiculous!

Fortunately, Daryl had a few basic supplies,

including a few litres of water.

But he had very little with which to fight off the freezing temperatures.

The only relief from the intense cold was the car's heater.

(FAN WHIRRS)

But with no idea how long he'd be trapped,

Daryl rationed the heat to just 15 minutes twice a day.

I knew I needed that heat, that defrost,

even that few minutes in the morning and the evening.

I really felt it was saving me.

Now, after over a week trapped in freezing temperatures,

the cold began to affect Daryl's mind.

I just started hallucinating.

I kept thinking I was hearing a helicopter.

I'd go, look out, and there wouldn't be anything there,

and this sound sort of just started playing in my mind all the time.

(HELICOPTER WHIRRS)

It didn't stop. I just kept hearing it, hearing it, hearing it.

Convinced that rescue helicopters were flying over head,

Daryl started clearing the roof of his car

so he'd be easier to see from the air.

After over a week in the blizzard, the cold was slowly killing Daryl.

Just being outside for 10, 15 minutes -

freezing, uncontrollable shaking.

My mind would start to go.

I could tell when my brain was getting too cold.

The constant snow forced Daryl to stay in his car.

His situation was about to become even worse.

The snow that had been falling for ten days

was now beginning to fall in supersized flakes -

the most dangerous type of snow.

In a blizzard, the bigger the flakes, the more moisture they contain.

The big wet flakes bond together and set like concrete.

This type of snow can bury anyone caught out in the open.

This is bad news for Daryl.

After days trapped in the blizzard,

the heavy layers of snow and ice settling on his car

finally reached a critical mass, and sealed him inside.

It was completely sealed shut.

I couldn't get out the passenger side, I couldn't get out the back.

So, that was my only exit and my only way to get oxygen in.

Claustrophobic and desperate for air,

Daryl attempted to force the door open.

Ah!

He was free, but the fear of being buried alive haunted him

for his final few days in the storm.

Nightfall on day 14,

and the blizzard is finally starting to clear.

After two weeks of constant snow,

the clouds suddenly thin and the stars come out.

But when the clouds break up,

the insulation they'd been providing also disappears,

and the temperature plummets to a freezing seven degrees.

DARYL: The temperature dropped drastically.

The inside of the jeep was like a meat freezer.

Believing he might not survive,

Daryl decided to write a goodbye note.

It felt like my body was freezing, and I could feel it freezing.

So, the only thing I could do to sort of ward off that cold

was just to constantly keep in motion.

I really felt that if I'd drifted off to sleep,

that would've been it, I would've frozen to death.

In the deadly cold, Daryl desperately tried to stay awake and alive.

Day 15, and the blizzard was finally over.

But after two weeks in the freezing cold,

Daryl had almost given up hope.

He drifted off into a state of deep unconsciousness.

Only a miracle could save him.

(MOTOR WHINES)

DARYL: And next thing I knew, I heard this high-pitched sound,

and I sat up, and I thought, 'That's not a hallucination.'

And I look up, and there was a guy on a snowmobile.

The search and rescue operation that had been scouring the region

had finally found Daryl.

MAN: I'll get you out, OK?

Just such a feeling of elation.

The pinnacle moment of my life, I think, knowing that I'd made it.

I couldn't really believe it. It was hard to believe.

Daryl had lost 5kg, but, incredibly, he suffered no long-term effects.

He survived the snowstorm because he stayed in his car.

But there's one place on Earth where the blizzards are so fierce

that even experienced explorers are lucky to get out alive.

Patagonia - a remote land of rock, snow, and ice.

On the southern tip of South America,

Patagonia is located in one of the most windswept regions on Earth.

At this southern latitude, the ocean storms that form here

can sweep right around the globe unchecked,

gaining in strength as they go.

When these winds hit the icy world of Patagonia,

they race over the surface,

whipping up huge amounts of snow into the air.

This creates a violent type of snowstorm

known as a ground blizzard.

Steve Ogle and Chad Sayers are two explorers

with first-hand experience of these ferocious ground blizzards.

MAN: I think Patagonia is defined by the wind.

You'll never really know what it feels like

to encounter a real storm in Patagonia

until you go out there and experience it yourself.

The way the wind moves in Patagonia, it comes sometimes in fierce gusts.

You know, you just can't predict it.

In 2004, Steve and Chad shot this expedition video.

They were attempting to ski across a never-before-visited part

of the Southern Patagonian Ice Cap.

We trekked all over this Patagonian place, so we're very thirsty.

At first, everything seemed fine.

STEVE: The weather was incredible.

It was calm, clear, warm. It was like paradise.

CHAD: They were postcard days.

Initially, we were thinking, 'This is too good to be true.'

But, in Patagonia, weather like this can change in a heartbeat.

30km away, a powerful Pacific storm was rolling in off the ocean,

moving directly towards them.

And just like that, it got black.

And it started coming in. The wind picked up.

They pitched a tent to get out of the wind.

We had 100mph winds hammering our tent.

It sounds like a freight train. Really loud.

You can barely talk to each other.

You literally couldn't hear yourself think.

You know, it was just so violent.

As the wind tore across the ice cap,

it hurled any loose surface snow into the air.

The explorers were caught in one of Patagonia's ground blizzards.

For three days, they remained in their tent

as it slowly began to get buried under the wind-driven snow.

STEVE: Every particle of snow that blew across that ice cap

would cover the tent, and we got buried pretty bad.

With their tent now about to collapse under the growing weight of snow,

they were forced to face the blizzard,

and begin the endless job of digging themselves out.

You had your goggles on and you were right rigged up,

and you weren't going five feet away from that tent

because you'd never find it again.

If you left part of your pocket open when you went outside,

within ten minutes, it would be packed full of snow.

It was just so powerful,

and it was, like, sticking to you like glue.

They remained trapped in their tent for ten more days.

The build-up of snow threatened to bury them completely.

There was a lot of fear.

I think basically one of the primeval fears

of being buried alive.

When we were in that tent and that storm was hitting us so hard,

we really felt like we could just disappear out there.

The storm raged nonstop for two weeks.

Their food was running low and they were completely exhausted

when the storm finally eased up.

There was now 2.5m of snow.

Incredibly, this level of blizzard is not that unusual.

The explorers learned that the hard way.

It's a real experience, being out there in a Patagonian blizzard.

You know, the snow flying all around you,

getting knocked over by the wind.

It was just beyond anything that we had ever imagined.

To date, no-one has returned

to this windswept part of the Patagonian ice cap.

A blizzard is bad in more ways than one.

On the ground, too much snow can be dangerous,

but in the air, a white-out can be fatal.

*

*

NARRATOR: A blinding winter storm.

This disorientating mix of snow, clouds and fog

is called a white-out.

In these conditions, it's easy to get lost in seconds.

Driving blind in a white-out is a real danger on the ground...

...but in the air, it can be fatal.

January, 2001.

The sun's set on a crisp winter's day in the high mountains of Utah.

(RADIO CHATTER)

A lightweight plane took off from a small airstrip.

There were two men aboard.

The copilot, Michael Rampton,

was expecting an uneventful flight.

MAN: All we were going to plan on doing

was circling the airport once and then landing,

you know, to check out how it flew.

The weather was pretty good.

I did see a few isolated areas of some fog.

But after a routine take-off, the men were in for a nasty surprise.

(RADIO CHATTER)

In the freezing temperatures,

moisture in the air was condensing into a thick icy fog.

MICHAEL: One minute, I'm enjoying the nice scenery out the window,

and the next minute, everything just went white.

And I just got a terrible feeling come over me.

I don't see anything out there.

In white-out conditions, visibility can drop to just a few feet.

MAN: Tell me if you see lights or anything.

Jeez, it is just so thick.

We began losing altitude without actually knowing it.

Can't see anything. Can't find anything behind us.

They were flying dangerously low

when their flight came to an abrupt and violent end.

Can't see a thing.

One minute we're flying along and all we see is white,

and then the next minute, it's just a violent impact.

(CRASH!)

The plane had crashed on a frozen lake

and was now balanced on thin ice.

The two men were stranded on top of the aircraft.

They were surrounded by ice that stretched away in every direction.

And worse, they were already soaked and getting cold.

MICHAEL: I was shivering really hard,

and it was a combination of chattering

and almost involuntary muscle spasms.

The human body loses heat 25 times faster when wet.

In the frigid night air,

the men had very little time before they became critically hypothermic.

In my mind, there was a very real sense of urgency

because we were cold, getting colder,

and it was almost like there was just a clock ticking.

Knowing he had to act fast,

Michael decided to attempt to walk off the frozen lake to shore.

But he had to walk on ice just a few centimetres thick.

As soon as I put my weight on the ice,

it was making cracking noises.

And that was very... That was extremely unnerving.

Every step I took, it would crack and then it would stop,

and if I held my position, I wouldn't hear anything,

and as soon as I started moving again,

the cracking noises would resume.

Michael made painfully slow progress walking in his sandals.

Then the ice began to get dramatically thinner.

As I got closer in, it started getting worse.

To spread his weight, Michael lay flat on the ice

and pulled himself along.

MICHAEL: There was an area that was just completely dark.

It was open water, and I started getting a real uneasy feeling.

But then, through the white-out, Michael spotted the shoreline.

He stood up, and the fragile ice beneath him broke.

Oh! Oh!

As I was trying to climb back up on top of the ice, it would break,

and then I would try to struggle forward,

and it would keep breaking.

Michael finally got out of the icy water,

but the shock of the intense cold had taken its toll.

MICHAEL: It just chilled me to the bone,

and I just thought, 'This is crazy.'

I could just feel it sucking the life out of me.

Frozen and on the verge of collapse, Michael finally made it to shore.

He was wet, and had been completely exposed to the freezing night air

for over two hours.

Once on shore, he was just a few metres away from an airstrip.

Desperate for help, he tried to run to the airport perimeter,

but his legs were so cold, they'd lost all feeling.

I just realised how cold I was at that point,

because my brain was trying to tell my legs,

'Run,' you know, 'as fast as you can,'

but my legs just didn't want to move.

It took him minutes to stumble to the airport.

Hypothermic and lucky to be alive,

his ordeal had pushed him to the limit.

But he got help,

and his injured companion was rescued from the wreckage,

freezing, but still alive.

Blizzards are a deadly mix of heavy snow, violent winds,

freezing temperatures, and white-out conditions.

Anyone caught in the open

stands little chance of surviving this raging force of nature.

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...**