Stuck Ice Climber's Only Choice Is Stomach-Churning Move Caught on Video
If you regularly scale icy rock faces, you’re bound to encounter some perilous situations.
But if you scale those icy rocks while completely alone in the wilderness, a perilous situation could turn deadly.
Thankfully for Hansjörg Auer, he survived one such terrifying encounter unscathed.
And thankfully for all of us, he recorded the entire stomach-churning ordeal.
In a video posted to Facebook on March 1, the professional Austrian climber and alpinist explained what happened.
“When you’re climbing solo, you realize that you got off the route but there is no option anymore to climb up or down?!” Auer began.
“By the way you have no gear except a thin rope, one ice screw, your harness, a belay device and you need your crampons and ice axes to finish the climb. Challenging!”
Challenging is right.
In a typical rock-climbing situation, a climber will simply bail if there’s no possible way to continue climbing.
For Auer, however, his options were limited. He had lost his route and had no way to climb up or down. As Deadspin explained, “This is a terrifying place to be, even with the proper safety equipment.”
But as Auer wrote in his Facebook post, he only had one thin rope, one ice screw, a harness and a belay device.
He did what he had to do and slipped his thin rope over a tiny frozen rock.
Presumably praying the rock didn’t dislodge, or the rope break, Auer slowly belayed down to solid ground.
Watch what happened in the clip below:
Incredible.
Auer’s years of training undoubtedly helped him stay calm in such a dangerous situation — and hopefully will come in handy during his future wilderness exploits.
Check out the clip below to see more about Hansjörg Auer and his other solo adventures.
Share this story on Facebook and let us know if you’ve ever experienced any scary situations in the wilderness.
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