Original subtitles

MAN: This story, for me, it's a mystery,

because once that you live through something,

it's very hard to comprehend really what you went through.

It's disquieting to understand that

we human beings can adapt to horror very fast.

NARRATOR: On Friday the 13th of October, 1972,

a charter plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed

in a remote area of the Argentinian Andes

during the heart of the snowy season.

Since the plane's broken fuselage was white, and half-buried in snow,

it was virtually impossible to spot from the air.

A search was abandoned after only 10 days,

and all aboard were presumed dead.

But of the 45 passengers and crew,

32 had survived the initial impact.

For 72 unimaginable days and nights,

they endured starvation, sub-zero temperatures,

even an avalanche that took 8 more lives.

The bodies of the dead became the survivors' only source of food.

And all attempts at saving themselves proved hopeless.

Then, just before Christmas,

the world was stunned to learn that

2 emaciated men had emerged from the mountains,

having travelled on foot for 10 days,

and leaving 14 more survivors back at the crash site.

The unthinkable ordeal of the Andes survivors

is one of the greatest examples of human endurance

in recorded history.

Now, 50 years later,

an expedition that includes one of the survivors

returns to the remote crash site in summer,

where glacial melting and the effects of climate change

have stripped the area of snow and ice

that was once up to 100 feet deep.

With this dramatic transformation,

the site has begun revealing long-hidden secrets,

from buried wreckage, to personal items,

to preserved human remains.

The means by which 16 young men survived the impossible

have never been more clearly revealed.

This is the story of both the worst of nightmares

and the most astonishing of miracles.

My name is Ricardo Pena.

I'm a professional alpinist and explorer.

For the 50th anniversary of the Andes tragedy,

I led a special expedition to the crash site

to answer the unanswered questions

about history's greatest survival story.

The journey to the remote area known as the Valley of Tears

is a difficult one,

requiring a full day's drive from the nearest sign of civilisation,

followed by an exhausting two-day journey on horseback

into the treacherous Argentinian Andes.

It is a no-man's land, lying almost dead-centre

of the longest mountain range in the world.

Accompanying Pena on the expedition

is his wife, and climate scientist, Ulyana Horodyskyj Pena,

as well as one of the actual survivors of the ordeal,

74-year-old Eduardo Strauch.

I never imagined that I would...

..feel the need of coming back to the place

after what I had lived at that time.

But something happened in my mind, my spirit, my soul,

that this mountain called me.

My name is Nando Parrado.

I survived for 2.5 months in the high peaks of the Andes

after my plane crashed there in October 13, 1972.

The tale of the Andes survivors begins with a friendly game of rugby

to be played between

the Old Christians Club from Montevideo, Uruguay,

and the Old Grangonian Club from Santiago, Chile.

When we boarded that plane to fly to Santiago, Chile with my rugby team,

I invited my mother - Xenia was her name -

and my little sister Susanna to fly with me.

They were fans of my team,

and we always liked to have them near the matches.

And I said, "Why don't you come with us?

"We'll do some shopping in Santiago, we'll go to a game on Sunday,

"and we'll fly back to Montevideo on Monday."

The team's chartered plane,

a Fairchild FH-227D,

lands in Mendoza, Argentina,

due to reports of bad weather over the Andes.

The next morning, it takes off and flies south for the Planchon Pass

where crossing the range would be less dangerous.

Strangely, an incident similar to the crash of Flight 571

had occurred just 11 years earlier,

and roughly 100 miles due south.

On April 3, 1961,

a plane carrying a Chilean football team

vanished over the Andes.

The search was eventually abandoned.

Wreckage and the remains of those aboard

were not discovered until 2015,

54 years later.

In November of 2016,

a plane carrying a Brazilian football team

crashed in the Colombian Andes,

killing 71 of the 77 on board.

(INDISTINCT EXCLAMATIONS)

Flying over the Andes Mountains

can be a harrowing experience, even today.

This video was shot in June of 2022.

(EXCLAMATIONS AND SCREAMS)

The route between Mendoza and Santiago

is a challenge for pilots,

due to a phenomenon called 'mountain wave'.

(SCREAMING)

RICARDO: Mendoza to Santiago,

same flight as the survivors,

is the worst turbulence I've ever experienced in my life.

I love flying, but that was very scary.

In order to get to the crash site,

you have to enter from the east side.

It's really quite beautiful, and still, to this day, very remote

and it feels untouched by man.

But as you get higher and higher, the vegetation thins out,

the landscape transforms into rock, ice.

You can imagine this place in 1972.

It was a glacier completely covered in snow.

WOMAN: We can see these glaciers just melting away,

disappearing before our eyes.

The interesting thing is when you have a lot of this bare rock,

it's much darker than that clean ice.

and something that's darker, like this darker shirt I'm wearing,

will absorb more of the sun's heat,

so it can actually cause even more melting.

So this is a problem in two ways.

One, rising temperatures causing these glaciers to melt,

revealing more rock.

Then the rock absorbing more heat and causing even more melting.

We're approaching the crash site.

The way the glacier has melted in 50 years is unbelievable.

It has lost so much mass.

The snowy peaks around us

have nothing, almost nothing - no snow at all.

So it's dramatically different.

It would be unrecognisable

if we hadn't studied this place and know it so well -

him through what he's lived,

and me through all my studying of this and visiting this place.

Pena's friendship with survivor Eduardo Strauch

and connection to the tragedy began in the most unexpected of ways.

In 2005, on my first visit there,

I found a coat buried in rocks.

On the documents that I found inside the coat,

I recognised the name, Eduardo Strauch -

one of the survivors -

which blew my mind.

My wallet, my money, my documents, my passport,

and just beside them, my sunglasses.

It's really amazing, that story.

We eventually met in person,

and it was the beginning of an incredible friendship

that has changed my life.

He painted the cover of an album

that I recorded with my band called Los Bohemios.

And he did this beautiful painting.

Approximately a half mile downhill from the actual crash site

is a memorial dedicated to the victims of Flight 571.

It was erected in 1973

in an area believed to be safe from avalanches.

It contains an iron cross and a simple stone altar.

Through the years, plaques have been added to the altar

by family members.

I could sense, when we were getting closer to the crash site,

that Eduardo was getting quiet,

emotional, introspective.

I could see that...

..that being in this place definitely brings him back

and makes him think of his friends, of his lost friends,

and everything he lived.

NANDO: When we were flying over the Andes on a very small airplane,

a twin turboprop engine, Fairchild F27,

full of people, full of cargo,

bad weather, inexperienced pilots -

everything added up to a bad result.

The pilot's plan is to fly west,

then turn north at Curico,

and descend into Santiago.

But they made a fatal error in calculating the distance to Curico.

Inexplicably, and over a blanket of total cloud cover,

they turned north 9 minutes too soon.

Only when they descended through the clouds

do they realise their mistake.

Passengers are briefly aware that something is terribly wrong

as they descend into menacing peaks on all sides.

The plane struggles to gain altitude, but it's too late.

The sound of the engines... (IMITATES HIGH-PITCHED WHINE)

..and the plane starts jumping and jumping.

I closed my eyes,

and put in this position,

just waiting for the end.

The right wing clips a ridge and breaks off,

and the tail separates from the aircraft.

7 people are sucked out of the plane

as it arcs over the ridge toward a steep, snow-covered slope.

The left wing breaks away

and the fuselage impacts the slope at such an angle

that it toboggans for more than 2,000 feet,

before slamming to a stop against a glacier.

While 32 of 45 passengers miraculously survived impact,

they couldn't have crashed in a more remote, inhospitable place on earth,

with no trees, plants, or animals,

only jagged, treacherous peaks

as far as the eye can see.

This is the place where the fuselage of the Fairchild,

the airplane that the Andes survivors crashed in,

this is where it was.

Up here

is the impact point

where the plane hit the mountain

and then started sliding down.

You have to imagine all of this completely covered in snow.

It was the beginning of spring, so there was tons of snow.

And it slid down that whole gully.

And the slope changed steepness,

and that's what finally made the fuselage come to a stop.

When it came to a stop, that's when all the seats went forward.

A lot of people died in that moment,

and this is where the fuselage stayed,

pointing that way,

for the whole 72 days that they were here.

It's a miracle that some passengers survived,

because nobody survives a plane crash at cruising altitude

and at cruising speed, against a mountain.

1972 to 73 was a very strong El Nino year.

An El Nino year is when the Pacific Ocean gets very warm

and it can actually dump a lot of moisture onto this part of the Andes

when it normally wouldn't.

And so the snow was kind of their... what saved them.

Because when the plane hit and when the fuselage was going down,

it tobogganed down the snow,

but then it also became their trap.

The 12 killed in the initial crash

include the pilot and 2 crew members.

Stumbling out of the fuselage,

a few of the survivors report seeing a human figure

staggering down this mountain side,

a passenger sucked out of the plane,

before he sinks into the snow and disappears.

My mother died.

My sister Susy was very badly injured

and I was very badly hurt.

I was in a coma four days.

Medical student, Roberto Canessa,

only superficially injured,

helps tend to the critically injured and dying.

Eduardo Strauch has minor injuries but is in shock,

and repeatedly tries to leave the plane,

only to be pulled back in by his cousin.

We were surrounded...

with people dying, dead people,

blood over the snow.

It was very cold.

They said we had 35 centigrade below zero that night.

We did not know where we were,

so we prepared to pass that night

and wait for the rescue the morning after.

But morning arrives with no rescue,

and 5 more dead,

including the co-pilot,

who had been begging for some of the boys

to fetch his revolver from his bag

so that he could shoot himself.

The crash site is a deep valley

surrounded by mountains on three sides.

Because the dying co-pilot had repeatedly told them - quote -

"We passed Curico,"

the survivors believe they are in Chile,

and that following the valley east, the seemingly easiest way out,

would only take them deeper into the Andes.

The route west,

which the survivors BELIEVE

is the shortest way out of the mountains,

is blocked by a massive 15,000-foot head wall.

This mountain would become an obsession with the survivors.

For, on the other side of it, they believed they would find

the green valleys of Chile, and freedom.

What they DON'T know

is that they are in Argentina,

in an area so remote

many of the mountains have not even been named.

In the days following the crash,

search and rescue teams from Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay

scour the Andes looking for the missing plane.

But because the pilots of Flight 571

had erroneously reported their position prior to the crash,

the search area is broad.

And while some of the boys claim to hear planes passing overhead,

no-one spots the white fuselage against the white snow.

This is amazing. This is the front wheel of the Fairchild.

Remember, they... Wow.

Some pieces of the plane wreckage emerging from the melting glacier

have been unseen since 1972.

Look at this.

This is the front wheel of the Fairchild.

It's unmistakable because

the Fairchild had a single front wheel

and then double wheels in the back.

And when you see the historic pictures,

the Fairchild's got the front all crushed in,

and the wheel is revealing.

So you could compare this to the historical pictures.

The survivors have almost no food -

some wine someone had purchased in Mendoza,

and a few meagre bits of candy to distribute among 27 people.

They learn quickly how to melt snow for water

using reflective metal from the seatbacks.

But they are weak in the high altitude,

and their bodies cry out for sustenance.

After 3 days, Nando Parrado regains consciousness.

He immediately gravitates to his sister, who is clinging to life.

When I woke up from my coma, I crawled to where she was,

and the only thing I could do was to embrace her.

For 5 days, Parrado remained at his sister's side,

but Susanna could not be saved.

She died in my arms.

The survivors have a transistor radio

to which they fashion a makeshift antenna

so they can get updates on the search.

But on the 10th day,

they hear the devastating news that the search has been called off.

Hearing over the radio, they're not coming, it's up to us.

The incredible courage that they showed, how they came together.

With no hope for rescue,

the survivors begin short journeys away from the fuselage

to search for an escape route.

But they return exhausted and humiliated.

Saving themselves without consuming anything for energy is impossible.

It's like being on Mars or Venus.

It's a completely alien landscape,

and there's nothing you can eat.

Absolutely nothing.

Hunger is very difficult to explain, in the way that we felt hunger.

Hunger is the most primal fear of the human being.

It's the worst fear that you can have,

and it's a fear that you will never, ever experience

unless the stakes are real.

Not knowing when you are going to eat again

is the most horrible fear that you can have.

There's nothing worse than that.

Everything was gone,

and we started feeling very, very weak.

And it was difficult to think and to take decisions.

So we tried to eat the leather from the luggage - suitcases.

It was impossible, and...

..it start coming into our minds...

..that the only way to get protein

was in the bodies of the... the people who have died.

Everybody, at the same time, started to have the same thought.

At the end, we human beings, we are animals,

and we have to eat.

We were doomed. We were condemned to die.

So your brain starts to work on a different wavelength.

What can I do if I don't want to die?

And there's only one option.

But the survivors face a difficult dilemma -

who to eat first?

You're in a tribe, you are with your friends.

We are very tight, the same team.

Obviously, it's common sense.

Who is the furthest away from our system,

from our family, from our tribe.

And it was the pilot.

It is medical student Roberto Canessa,

who volunteers to take the first taste of human flesh.

Using a broken piece of glass for a knife,

he cuts a small morsel.

Once others see him do it, they partake as well.

There are passengers who initially refused,

like Liliana Methol, the group's only surviving female.

The term 'cannibalism' would later be used by the media

to describe the act of eating human flesh.

But the term is less than accurate.

It's not cannibalism.

Cannibalism is usually when you kill somebody to eat.

What we had done was anthropophagy, which is completely different.

Indeed the flesh-eating aspect of the story

would be exploited in an early film made about the ordeal

called Survive.

As a societal taboo, the idea of consuming human flesh

has fascinated us since the earliest oral traditions

and has found its way into

our contemporary culture and entertainment

as a source of shock value.

Good lord!

WOMAN: These are the extremes of human nature.

And certainly, if you're in the Andes, and you have to survive,

it's not a moral thing, it's not a religious thing.

It's just survival.

You would nowhere compare somebody's eating flesh to survive

to somebody who's doing it to... out of evil.

So it was horrifying and yet, necessary.

The 1993 feature film Alive,

starring Ethan Hawke as Nando Parrado,

Josh Hamilton as Roberto Canessa,

and Gian DiDonna as Eduardo Strauch

is a MOSTLY faithful account of the tragedy.

Although a box office success, film critic Roger Ebert wrote,

"There are some stories you simply can't tell.

"The story of the Andes survivors may be one of them."

The truth about what Flight 571's passengers did to survive

can be found in evidence at the crash site,

only now revealed after being hidden for half a century.

ULYANA: Oh, wow.

They used to... They would cut the bones.

Eduardo has told me about... cut the bones to eat the marrow.

I mean, they were so desperate,

they ate everything, every part of the body.

That's another bone.

Maybe a rib. Right. Like a rib.

This is the view that they saw for 72 days.

The mountains like this,

and El Sosneado, that 17,000 foot mountain.

Uh...

Eduardo remembers this so well, you know?

They looked at this for thousands of hours.

And he has actually painted that mountain many times.

This view is etched in the survivors' minds forever.

They saw it so many hours, so many days.

That ridge in the background and all of those little points,

Eduardo has talked a lot about them.

He used to look at them for hours and think,

"Wait, are those people coming through the ridge?

"Are those rescuers coming to see us?"

You know, and, obviously, there wasn't real movement,

it wasn't really a rescue.

EDUARDO: The moon give us light in the dark nights,

and we feel much better.

The light of the moon just reflecting on the snow.

And then you also use the moon to try to connect with our mothers.

Just sending them messages.

Looking to the moon

with the hope that they were looking to the same moon

and they would receive our message, "We are alive."

The way we know that this is the exact spot

where the fuselage was

is because this is the only spot with all these ridges.

That submarine shaped rock in the back ridge

line up in this specific way.

Also, you can see those rocks

in many of the historical photographs

that the survivors took during the ordeal.

On the 18th day of the ordeal,

disaster strikes in the dead of the night.

The survivors are awakened by a loud rumbling sound,

like an approaching train.

And before they can react,

an avalanche slams into the open end of the plane,

collapsing a wall they had built from luggage

and filling the fuselage with packed snow.

Eight are suffocated,

including the last surviving crew member, the team's captain,

and Liliana Methol, who had just begun to eat flesh with the others

because she said she wanted to live for her children.

It was just such a tragedy that when she finally made the decision,

you know, to eat the human flesh

and to live for her four children,

that then she was taken by the avalanche.

Just 19 souls remain.

They are trapped inside the completely buried fuselage

and must poke a hole in the ceiling of the plane

and insert a pipe in order to breathe.

Not knowing how long they will be trapped,

they resort to consuming flesh from the freshly dead for sustenance.

NANDO: When you have to do something like that,

you have to survive the only way that you can survive.

You realise that humans get used to horrible things very fast.

After several days,

some of the survivors are able to tunnel their way out of their coffin.

And in the weeks that follow, the sun melted away much of the snow

and exposes the fuselage to the elements once again.

With an ample supply of frozen corpses for food,

some of the survivors set out on expeditions

to see how far away from the plane they can go and still return alive.

These expeditionaries,

generally the strongest or in the best health,

are supported by the others,

who construct snowshoes out of seat cushions

and a sleeping bag made by stitching together

pieces of the plane's insulation.

One month after the crash,

Nando Parrado, Roberto Canessa, and Antonio Vizintin

set off to the east.

To their delight, they discover the tail of the plane

which yields more candy.

They also discover a camera in a suitcase,

which is used to take the photos we now have from their ordeal.

Most important of all, they discover the plane's battery,

which they hope they can hook up to the cockpit radio

and signal for help.

That experiment, however, is ultimately a failure.

When you guys dismantled the radio in the cockpit,

did you have to connect all those wires?

Was it like this kind of wire? Yes, absolutely.

Hundreds of wires.

The desperation of trying to make that work...

Further up the south slope,

Ricardo and Ulyana make some revealing discoveries.

With global warming, this has melted all the ice and snow,

so we're down to barren rock.

Look at that. That's... That's a seat.

The armrest. Oh, that's the armrest.

Yeah, they had the ashtrays right there.

A sweater. It's a sweater. Yeah.

Look at it, you can even see the stitching.

That's unbelievable. Look at this.

Oh, wow, look.

That's the wine bottle right?

Yeah, yeah. I think that's the bottom of it.

Whoa!

That's a coin.

You know, if this... if it's from Uruguay,

and if it's got the year, we can totally confirm it's...

What is it? "20... cents." Let me see.

Whoa.

What does it say there? Oh, here.

"Uruguay." Uruguay, yeah it does. Look at that.

And, what is it? 70?

Where is the year supposed to be on it?

Here, here. Uruguay. What is that?

I think it's 1970?

It's a '70'? I think it's a 7-0.

Wow. (LAUGHS) Unbelievable.

Just laying out here.

And look, there's so many more parts over there.

Whoa, what... (GASPS)

A pen! With ink still in it. Oh, yeah.

It's the cartridge of a pen, right? Oh, my gosh.

That's unbelievable.

As they examine tattered remnants of clothing,

Ricardo and Ulyana discover something even more sobering.

Look. Ohh...

What is it? What is it? You have...

You know what that is? You know what this is?

I think this is skin.

Wow. As you can see... You see...

Is that, like, the hair follicles?

Yeah. Look.

Yeah.

Wow. The preservation is unbelievable.

The team's discovery is the first of its kind.

No-one has ever seen these remains before.

You realise that...

..all the people that died,

the survivors used to -

I think it's one of those -

they talk about making these socks out of this piece of skin...

'Cause it's tougher?

..from the dead, and they would try to make it warmer for them,

for the expeditions.

So they would cut parts like that of skin.

Maybe something like that.

But it's just so sad, you know, to see... It just brings it home.

It's all these kids that died,

so young, and horrible deaths.

I've never experienced finding human remains at a site.

I knew they were potentially there,

knowing what had transpired, and how the glacier was melting.

And I remember seeing it,

um, and...

..being very moved, emotionally.

Who was this person? What happened?

And...it was tough.

Yeah, it was tough to see that.

So, when you find something like this,

it's really sad, you know?

Just knowing that this was a human being.

Yeah, yeah. What is the protocol? What do you do?

We could take it back to the cross

and bury it under the rocks that are on the tomb.

Where all the other remains are.

As November rolls on, the survivors begin to lose hope.

During the 5th week after the crash,

2 more die from gangrenous wounds sustained from the crash.

One young man, Numa Turcatti,

considered one of the toughest and fittest of the group,

stops eating and begins wasting away.

He lasts nearly 4 weeks before succumbing to starvation.

2 months after the crash,

only 16 of the original 45 passengers remain alive.

Eating in the way that we were eating,

it was not enough to counter

the energy that we were spending.

So we were getting thinner, even if we were eating that way.

So we understood that the situation was not going to be infinite there.

We would have to find a solution,

or get out of there as soon as we can,

because, finally, we were going to die anyway.

More and more, Parrado begins to talk amongst the group

about climbing to the top of the 15,000-foot head wall

to the west.

It's a seemingly impossible task,

but it's the only way, they believe, to find rescue.

Perhaps no other image captures the group's yearning

that salvation lie just over that ridge

than this painting later done By Eduardo Strauch.

It is titled simply To The West.

Having made up his mind to try to reach the head wall,

Nando requests two others to join him,

Roberto Canessa and Antonio Vizintin.

They agree, and the 3 are offered the best rations of food

in order to build up their energy.

If I have to answer why did I took the decision to leave the fuselage

and go into a...kamikaze trek,

I go back, I retrace my mind, my steps

and I think it was fear of dying.

I didn't want to die.

I had spat in the face of death so many times.

She embraced me and I didn't like it.

I didn't like it.

I didn't want those mountains to steal away from me

my life, my future.

The possibility of having a child, a family.

Before leaving, Parrado grants the group his permission

to do the unthinkable should the need arise.

I told them, you have to use my mother and my sister.

Their bodies, you can use them.

You can do it.

They're only bodies now.

And they're no different from my other friends.

After 61 days on the mountain,

and with several days' rations of human flesh packed inside socks,

they set off.

After a full day, they barely get beyond the base of the head wall.

A second day of treacherous climbing takes them roughly halfway up,

where they camp on a steep, snowy ledge.

On the 3rd day, Canessa and Vizintin stop shy of the summit, exhausted.

But Parrado doggedly continues.

And when he reaches the top,

instead of seeing the green valleys of Chile...

..this is what he sees.

RICARDO: When Nando got to the top of the mountain

and did not see the green valleys of Chile,

but instead realised he was surrounded by peaks all around him,

he had to make a choice.

Go back to the fuselage and die,

or die trying to get out of there.

Parrado coaxes Canessa to the top,

where the two discuss whether to go on.

Eventually, they decide that

they should take all of Vizintin's food and supplies

and send him back down to the fuselage.

Then they will continue ahead.

I will die trying to cross this mountains.

I will do whatever I need to do, but I won't be here.

I will not be here.

It's just amazing to think that they had the courage and bravity

to just go into the unknown, seeing what they were seeing.

People say, "You were so courageous."

I was so afraid, you cannot imagine.

So afraid.

On December 2005,

I set out to retrace the escape route of Nando and Roberto.

I wanted to see what it was like for them to cross the Andes

and what they experienced.

When I stood there and saw what they saw,

I just felt like, "God, these poor guys," you know?

What a horrible choice, and what bravery

to launch themselves into the complete unknown.

You know, the chances of surviving are very, very low.

Ricardo Pena documents his trek with GPS,

and by taking a stunning set of photographs,

snapped in exactly the same time of year

and along the exact same route Parrado and Canessa travelled.

The total distance they travelled was about 37 miles

of very rugged and challenging terrain.

It's very impressive, what they survived,

what they went through.

In the lower altitudes, the two expeditionaries encounter

fresh water, grass, and other vegetation,

which they relish.

Their supply of human flesh, however,

begins to spoil in the warmer weather,

and Canessa is stricken with dysentery.

Back at the crash site, the survivors hope and pray

that their friends make it to freedom.

In the meantime, they continue to feed on the remaining bodies

of their dead friends.

By the 10th day of their journey,

Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa are weak and physically exhausted.

They have no idea where they are.

In actuality, they have crossed into Chile from Argentina,

and travelled nearly 40 miles, on foot,

through steep and jagged terrain

to arrive at a remote area of the Colchagua Provence

near a mountain village called Los Maitenes.

It is here where they spot something that they never thought they'd see.

Across a river is a man on a horse,

an arriero or Andean herdsman,

by the name of Sergio Catalan.

While the river itself is impassable,

Parrado hastily scribbles a note,

ties it around a rock

and heaves it across the raging current.

The man reads it and indicates he understands,

and will return later with help.

The next morning, he indeed returns,

and Parrado and Canessa are saved.

When the press gets word that two survivors of Flight 571

have emerged from the Andes,

crews rush to the remote site.

Authorities are sceptical when Parrado tells them

how far into the mountains the fuselage lies.

So he is asked to accompany helicopter pilots

to the site of the crash.

It is one final heroic moment

for a man who had been left for dead 72 days earlier.

Nando, you did something.

And I congratulate myself.

Not because of what I did,

but because when I look to my right

and my wife is there, and my daughters are there,

and my grandchildren,

and they wouldn't be alive if I hadn't done that,

that's when I say, "Thank you, Nando. You did it."

The 14 who remain at the fuselage

are rescued over the course of two days,

just in time to celebrate Christmas with loved ones,

most of whom had long given up hope.

ULYANA: What it must've been like,

how horrific those circumstances were that they found themselves in,

that they didn't have the experience to know

what was happening at altitude in these extreme conditions,

how they had such will power and resilience to survive.

The survivors can't keep their source of food a secret for long,

and within days, sensationalised stories about cannibalism

circulate in the press.

But the public at large,

and even the Catholic church to which the boys belonged,

saw no cause to condemn what had to be done to survive.

Irony is certainly part of the Andes survivors' story.

Only 13 miles east of the crash site,

directly down the valley, the survivors looked at for 72 days,

is the Hotel Termas del Sosneado.

These are the ruins of the former luxury resort today.

While it was closed at the time of the crash,

it could have provided shelter and safety from avalanches

and possibly food.

With the Andean glaciers continuing to melt away,

only time will tell what other traces

of history's greatest survival story

will emerge from the Valley of Tears.

Globally averaged, glaciers are shrinking about a metre per year.

Obviously, that changes depending on which mountain range you are...

For example, here, in the Andes,

we see about 30m of loss,

about that vertical loss,

over this 50-year time frame.

So it is disappearing.

Where is the ice when you look at it?

'Cause you just see all these rocks covering a landscape.

And, in fact, the ice is still underneath,

it's just when a glacier starts to melt,

any rocks that it's taken along for the ride as it's flowing downhill

will start to melt out and be on top.

The one thing that the glacier still holds that we haven't seen

is the fuselage,

which is the most important part of the story.

It was their shelter, what saved their lives.

The last time it was seen was in the '90s,

when the survivors visited the site for the first time.

There were no pictures taken. It was inside a crevasse.

And that was the last it's ever been seen.

Back in Mendoza, Argentina,

Eduardo Strauch views some of the finds Ricardo and Ulyana discover

high up on the south ridge.

He is particularly interested in the fate of one discovery.

What did you do with the skin? With the piece of skin?

So...we didn't want to leave it in the glacier...

..so I took it back to the cross and got a few rocks,

put it in there, buried. OK.

Do you think that was the right thing to do?

Yeah. I believe that.

While Eduardo finds solace in revisiting the site of the ordeal,

others, like Nando Parrado,

will likely never return again.

NANDO: I don't envision going, myself, into the crash site again,

because I've been there, with my father,

putting flowers in the grave of my mother's and my sister's.

And, uh...

It's a... It's a gruelling thing to do.

But some of the survivors go there.

In the 50 years since

what has become known as the 'Miracle in the Andes',

only one of the 16 survivors has passed away,

Javier Methol, the husband of Liliana.

Javier, he was the oldest one.

He was 16 to 17 years older than we were

at the time of the crash.

But all of the other, the 15, are perfectly OK.

Each year, this sacred society of brothers

meets to celebrate life and commemorate the dead.

It is a private celebration, allowing no press or visitors,

only family.

We see each other quite a lot.

Especially, I see five or six of them almost every week,

on our rugby games, or we have dinner together, barbecues.

So... They were my friends before the crash.

They were my friends during the crash.

And they are my brothers now.

In 2002, the survivors played a symbolic rugby match

against the Chilean Old Grange squad,

which had been the original reason for their fateful flight.

They flew across the Andes uneventfully,

although flight attendants reported

that they ran out of meals for the passengers.

EDUARDO: We have seen, very clear,

what are the important things in life

and what are the not-important things.

And, uh...

That's one of the reasons that the mountain call me,

and I'm here again, 50 years later.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary is celebrating life,

and a time to celebrate the memories of the friends who didn't make it,

of my family who didn't make it.

But they would be proud and happy

to see how our lives have developed.

16 guys came out of there.

Now we are more than 140.

I reflect and I look back

and I've been blessed with a fantastic life.

A fantastic life.

Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2023