Man survives nine days alone on Columbia icefield

Set with a three day weekend, George Joachim, 46, thought he’d go for a day hike on the Athabasca Glacier.

He put on his favourite running shoes, long johns, gloves, fleece layers top and bottom, rain shell pants and a wind shirt and headed to Jasper National Park (JNP).

Despite a later start, Joachim was ready to hit the Athabasca Glacier around 10:30 a.m. on Sunday (Sept 6).

Knowing the weather forecast was good, and with no real route in mind, he headed past the SnowCoaches waving to the tourists and bus drivers.

What those tourists, and Joachim, didn’t know is that they’d be the last people to see him for nearly nine days.

“I get to where they let the people off on the glacier... and I go climbers right,” he said, “and I ascend that.”

By around 2 p.m. Joachim was well on the icefields and the weather had been good to him.

“About an hour into it I see a squall line coming across, it’s a little misty and it starts snowing.”

Prepared to spend a night out, the Chicago resident had packed a bivy sack, down sleeping bag and a sleeping pad. So, when the weather seemed to take a turn for the worse, he decided to wait it out.

“Where it’d be time to turn around anyway, it’s the thing to wait it out now. If tomorrow, when it’s clear, I’d go down then,” he said calmly.

Bunkering down for the night he kicked out his bivy sack, placing it in a small trench built to withstand the blowing snow.

His first night was spent just south of the Snow Dome glacier, which is just north of the popular Athabasca glacier. 

“Then it proceeded to snow hard, windy, white out conditions for two days.”

Battling the snow throughout the night, Joachim would get out of his warm cocoon and ensure the snow wasn’t building up around him.

Consequently, his down sleeping bag was soaked by morning, but he was still not too concerned, because the forecast was good.

“I thought to myself, ‘yeah, this is uncomfortable’, but the forecast is good for tomorrow, so tomorrow it will be okay.”

With a positive mind, he battled out the first night with little sleep. “You’re certainly optimistic,” he said about getting up on Monday morning. “You get up, pack up, ‘okay lets get back down to the car.’”

Using his GPS Joachim worked out exactly where he was and where he had to go, but that didn’t help him battle the weather.

“That whiteout condition, and the fresh snow... ‘I’m not successfully going to get down there,’ he said. 

Armed with a retractable hiking stick, Joachim decided the Saskatchewan Glacier was a better approach.

“I get to approximately where I started, just south of the SnowDome and you probe for the crevasses. So, you take your stick and you poke,” he explained.

Despite his probing and awareness, Joachim soon discovered that the snow storm had left a wealth of snow behind – creating bridges on the crevasses, which look like solid ice.

He walked cautiously until his right leg dropped into the crevasse, leaving his left above ground.

“My left foot, I’m wearing crampons, is still on the surface hooked there, and my right leg is dangling down there, and I’m face planted.”

Face down in the snow, he thinks to himself, “what’s under me? Is it real ice or is it snow?”

He hit the ice with his left handle and nothing moved. 

Then, he slowly moved his right leg, which is dangling below him, and put it on the bank next to his body.

As he let down his left leg, his right knee collapses into the snow, but he quickly slides his body up and moves away from the gapping crevasse that nearly claimed his life.

Focusing on the task ahead of him, he realizes he has covered just one-tenth of the distance.

“So, what’s my chances of getting all the way down there? Only making half a mile a day, now there is six days to get out.”

Given his exhaustion, and coldness, Joachim admits he doesn’t remember much of the second night.

“I stopped somewhere, kicked out a trench, get in that sleeping bag and now you start fighting to keep warm.”

The realization of his troubles kick in, as he’s only got a little bit of food and all his gear is drenched.

 “You just have to get hypothermia... that’s the (night) where you say, ‘I’m not going to have to step into a crevasse to die here, this is getting close.”

To survive, he did callisthenics in his sleeping bag to keep his body warm.

After battling the cold and fighting to stay alive by morning Joachim is less than rested. 

“The third day, I’m climbing this ridge,” he explained noting that he’s not a rock climber, and did not have any equipment.

“It’s like an open rock face, and a lot of the rock face is loose, and it’s vertical,” he added.

Slowly moving along the ridge, he pulled himself up 20 inches, reached the top of the rock face and moved along. However, the snow was often waist deep - so it was a slow and steady pace, moving a quarter-mile in about four hours.

Tired and cold, he could only walk until midday Tuesday – his third day on the icefields – before he set up his bivy sack and went back to fighting to stay alive. 

“I can’t see what I’m doing. I kind of try to go forward, and don’t know if it’s safe, and your pretty well exhausted... so it’s time to stop moving.” 

He tried, for the last time, to contact anyone on his GPS radio, but his batteries died. “Now it doesn’t look real good that I’m going to get out there on my own power,” he said.

Frozen, Joachim doesn’t even get in his sleeping bag on the third night. Nor did he take off his shoes, instead putting them inside his empty backpack, for added insulation. Doing callisthenics throughout the night, he battles through another blizzard night.

“At one point, I had got out to scrape the blowing snow out of my trench... so my hands are freezing. I think I passed out, so I didn’t get that foot in the backpack, so that left foot is just frozen.”

Despite his positive mindset, he admitted that on that third night he thought “it’s unlikely I”m going to live. Yeah, it’s possible, you can beat the odds... what can you do to try to survive? Just work it, hopefully someone will rescue me because right now I have no ability to save myself – it’s not working out.”

What Joachim didn’t know was the JNP public safety crew had began scouring the icefields – knowing he was due at work on Tuesday night - they did helicopter searches, ground searches, and dog searches. But, Joachim had no set plan, and had not told friends or family his route which left officials with a needle in a haystack scenario. 

In an interview prior to Joachim being found, public safety manager for JNP Steve Blake said, “in absence of a single clue we don’t even know where to continue looking”. 

After a shivering third night Joachim was more than relieved to see the winds calm down and the skies clear up on Wednesday morning.

“You just think, ‘it’s one of your many second chances at life.’ Would I have made it through another night like that? Highly unlikely,” he explained.

Deciding now that he needed to be rescued, and could no longer make his own way down, Joachim rationed his food.

“I’ve got a days food left, and the trick to living is to eat 100 calories per day,” he said noting that in Leningrad the Germans would feed the Jewish prisoners only the water that beans were boiled in so they could work and survive.

So, he relaxed and waited. The sunshine was out and Joachim enjoyed the view while he dried out his equipment.

“A lot of it was really pleasant, sunny, beautiful days. I had beautiful view of Mount Columbia, and I would lay in the sun like a cat, pulled up my shirt and sun tan my back,” he said, “yeah, I might die, but in a pretty nice way.”

During these days, Joachim heard planes and even saw small tourist flights over the icefields. He would wave his bright orange sleeping pad at them without success.

Now a week since Joachim embarked on his day hike, with only a pouch of tuna that he was keeping for a “bad day or when I go for it” and one more meal left, the hiker moved on from his sun tanning location.

With consolidated snow under foot, he was more at ease than before and looked for somewhere new to make a camp while contemplating the route to get back to his car. 

Joachim spent five hours working on a snow cave on Sunday. “I’ve got 600 calories left... I could live for another twenty days,” he said.

Surprised by how much energy he had, and noting there was significantly less helicopters on Sunday than Saturday, he made the decision to head down to the car on Monday.

“If it’s bad in the morning, I stay. If it’s nice tomorrow, I get down or I die trying.”

After his final night on a glacier, Joachim rose to another sunny day. “I could see over into B.C. And there’s a little bit of light cloud – I think it’s going to be the day.”

Eating his final pack of tuna, he filled his water bottle and went for it.

Heading down the climbers left of the Athabasca Glacier, the opposite side that he ascended, highway 93 slowly creeps into his view.

Hugging the left face of the glacier, he climbed down crevasses and along the cliff wall of the valley.

Finally, he is reunited with the large Snowcoaches that he last saw nine days ago.

“There’s just two people in there washing the windows of the bus. I saw them, I waved... but at this point the mind is on my fresh bag of chips in the car,” he said.

Walking towards his car, his feet are aching and his stomach rumbling. 

“I’m pretty dead tired now, I’m going to get in the car, and turn the heat on, and I’m going to eat these chips... life will be good after an hour of sitting there. I’ll start doing what I need to do. I had a box of baby wipes, I could clean myself up, got a change of clothes and go on with the world.”

But, his car has been taken by the RCMP as it was now evidence in a missing person report.

After contemplating his losses, the man wanders to the Icefields Centre where he buys a couple candy bars, and does his “duty” to call his wife.

“It’s who? Oh my god, kids it’s your father. You know what I’ve been living through?” he recalls her saying.

Now he’s made contact, she tells him to call the RCMP, which he decides to do in the morning. 

“So, I just go out the back (of the centre) and kick out the bivy sack,” he said.

In the morning, Blake and his crew get the call that he’s alive. 

“We took him to the Sunwapta Warden Station and gave him a bit of breakfast and some tea... and he said he was feeling okay, and he just said, ‘right, I should be on my way back to work’,” said Blake.

The hiker said he’s decided to stick to “established trails” on solid ground, and keep off glaciers.

“That’s just far too many times to being close to death,” he said. But, he also said, “Okay, so I almost died,” he admits, “that’s not the worst thing.”