Peter Perren

SH: Can you tell me about any rescue/wildlife/enforcement stories that stick out in your memory?

Peter: I am sure that it is no surprise to anybody to hear that the fall that Tim and I had off the east ridge of Mt. Logan was by far the most notable experience of my time as a Warden and indeed this event and its consequences has shaped my life in ways that I am still, well after over 40 years, continuing to appreciate and understand. It happened on June 14th,1980, our last day on the east ridge of Mt. Logan. After successfully ascending the east ridge route we were descending on ropes of 2. Tim was my rope mate that afternoon. We were both carrying heavy packs. He was using ski poles thinking more about walking on the glacier below than the last part of the ridge that we were on. We had just left our last camp on the ridge. The route was just a little bit below the crest of the ridge. Tim was above and about 25 ft. behind me when he either slipped or his step gave way, and he began to slide like a turtle on its back. He called out to me that he was falling. I turned around and saw that he was. Had we been on the crest of the ridge I could have just jumped off the other side to balance us out. I quickly drove my ice axe in the slope, trying to anchor myself. For a brief moment I had him stopped, but there was just so much force that I was unable to absorb it all. I was catapulted out of my stance and went flying past him. He said later that he was aware of something going by him but by the time he’d figured it out I had hit the end of the rope and was tugging him. Neither one of us had helmets. I kept bouncing head downhill. I kept saying to myself “Peter, you dummy if you don’t turn yourself around, you’re going to smash your head into something and that will be the end of you. A thought briefly popped into my head that my poor brothers were going to have to finish winding up not only my mother’s estate, that I had started to do after she was killed in a car accident a few months earlier, but also look after mine.

Tom Davidson

Peter Perren

Tim Auger

Tim Auger, Murray Hindle, Peter Perren, Tom Davidson – East Ridge Camp on Mt.Logan.

I said a quick prayer asking for God’s help and then brought my hands up to my face and held them there over my mouth. We had started a wet snow avalanche that was gathering mass. If I was going to be buried, I wanted to have my hands right by my face so I could protect my airway, fashion an air pocket and claw away at any ice mask that might form as I tried to breathe. One can breathe under the snow for a long time if you keep your airway clear and prevent an ice mask from forming around your face as you exhale. I remembered Peter Fuhrmann telling us a story of a lady who was buried in an avalanche in a house in Italy. She was able to maintain the air pocket around her for a couple of days by scratching away the ice mask that formed around her with her bare hands. According to Peter’s story she ended up scratching a couple of her fingers down to the first knuckle, but she was able to survive.

I started to slow down and thought “okay, this is going to be okay, we are going to stop.” The next thing I knew, I was just free falling through the air. We’d gone over a cliff. Talking to Tim later, he related that at that point he lost consciousness. His last thoughts were wondering if that’s what things were like for Bugs McKeith when he fell off a cornice at the top of Mt. Assiniboine and plummeted to his death a few years earlier.

After a brief free-fall, I landed with a jolt and immediately started rolling, tumbling, and spinning violently. There was absolutely no way I could do anything in terms of orienting myself or controlling any part of my fall. I was in God’s hands that afternoon. Then I started to slow down again and once again thought “okay I guess we’re going to slow down now and maybe we’ll stop”. Once again that brief hope was dashed as I hurtled over another set of cliffs. The rolling, spinning, tumbling, and churning went on and on and on, and then I felt a horrible crunch on my left leg. I continued to roll, spin and tumble. There was another free fall. I can remember three separate free falls, and then rolling and tumbling and churning again. Eventually I got spit out at the bottom of this slope … almost 2000 feet below the top of the ridge from where we’d fallen.

We had fallen out of sight of the other members of our team. The story goes that Tom Davidson and Murray Hindle were behind Tim. They had witnessed the whole thing. Willi Pfisterer was leading the way down. Tom or Murray called out to Willi “Tim has fallen!” Apparently, Willi without even looking, yelled back, “Well tell him to stand up.” Tom or Murray replied saying, “No, no he’s fallen off the ridge and pulled Peter with him. They’re gone!” It must have been just horrifying for them to watch as we tumbled down the slope disappearing over the cliff into the cirque below to what would have seemed to be an almost certain death.

So there I was, spit out at the bottom of the slope in the glaciated cirque below the ridge. I ended up in a sitting position. My pack was shredded. Coils of rope and the frame of the pack remained attached to me. My left leg was splayed 90 degrees at the knee as my ankle had come up laterally towards my hip. I had ripped and torn every ligament and tendon in my knee except for the one on the outside which was crushed.

Looking down the East ridge of Mt. Logan showing red x’s marking our fall.

Miraculously, for everything that went wrong that day, there were so many things that went right. The first thing was that I didn’t sustain any damage to any arteries or veins in my leg, so my circulatory system was intact. Otherwise, I could have bled out internally. As grotesque as it looked there was no immediate and disabling pain as there was so much adrenalin going through my body. I straightened my leg and called out to Tim. There was just no answer, just silence. I reached into the pocket of my shirt and pulled out my Swiss Army knife and watched two $20 bills fall out of my pocket float off into the wind. I just laughed and watched them blow away. I cut myself out of the rope with my knife. I started looking around. The slope above looked like the aftermath of Mountain Equipment Coop store explosion. There was gear scattered everywhere. Once again, I called out to Tim. Again, only silence. I wondered, do I dig along the rope that was attached to me and find him or maybe I’ll just spend a whole bunch of time digging and come up with a broken end of a rope. In the end I decided to use my good leg to push myself around a little bit to see if I could find any sign of Tim. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go far before I was able to locate the heel of Tim’s red Hanwag boot sticking out of the snow. To my great relief I was able to clear away some snow with my bare hands and expose his face. He was blue but he came around spontaneously. I didn’t have to do anything more than just expose his face.

East ridge of Mt. Logan – red x’s mark points on the ridge and in the cirque below marking the start and finish of their fall.

Although conscious, Tim was disoriented. He thought he had been involved in a skiing accident at Sunshine Village. By that time the adrenalin had worn off and I was in a lot of pain. I finished digging him out. He was soaked. I coached him into picking up some of the gear scattered around us so we could huddle and warm up. So that’s what we did. We just sat there because we knew eventually somebody would come to get us. I lost my watch; it’s up there in the glacier somewhere, so we had no sense of time. Eventually after what must have been several hours, given the distances and logistics of getting a helicopter into the area, we heard the helicopter come in and land somewhere further down the glacier. We thought they’ll get their rescue gear out and then they’ll fly up to get us. We’d been laying there talking about working for Parks and our lives as Wardens. At one point Tim mused that he always wanted to be an architect. I was telling him I didn’t know what I wanted to do but would have to think about something different given what I had just done to my knee. When we heard the helicopter start, we thought, great this ordeal is over, they are on their way to get us. We could hear the distinctive noise of the Alouette 3 helicopter but couldn’t see any sign of it. Its’ sounds echoed in the cirque and then it shut down. Puzzled, we began to wonder how this was all going to end as it continued to repeat this pattern of running and running, and then stopping for more times than I can remember. We couldn’t figure out what was going on.

East ridge of Mt. Logan – red xs’ mark points on the ridge and in the cirque below marking the start and finish of their fall.

Part way through these cycles we looked up the slope and observed another wet snow slide coming down from the ridge above us. Tim had been complaining about his back being sore. I was trying to keep him quiet, encouraging him not to move around too much and risk further injury to his back. When he saw the slide coming in our direction, his first reaction was to stand up and shuffle off to the side to get out of the way. At that point in time, I just laughed and said to myself “God this is crazy, to have survived this and now we’re going to get wiped out by a secondary avalanche?” I really didn’t want to move because it just hurt too much. Knowing that we had brought down so much snow in our avalanche I guessed that there was not enough volume of snow in this second avalanche to reach us. It was a slow-moving wet snow slide so I made a bargain with myself. I picked a point on the slide path above me and promised to drag myself off to the side if it got to that point.

I guessed correctly. It stopped above us. Thankfully it stopped. Another prayer was answered. I didn’t have to move but Tim was left standing up like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. His back had seized up. He couldn’t sit down again. Meanwhile the helicopter continued to repeatedly start up, run for a bit and then shut down. We were overjoyed when it finally crested the glacier and came into view. They landed beside us and to their surprise we were both alive and in good shape. They loaded me onto the floor of the helicopter behind the front bench seat. Tim was seated in the front with the Wardens and the pilot Ron Eland.

Approach to East ridge of Mt. Logan. This is the route from Base Camp to the cirque that the helicopter taxied up to in the fog to pick up Peter and Tim.

I will always remember the initial difficulty that Ron had restarting the helicopter. Despite repeated efforts it would not start. If I remember correctly, it was Ron Chambers, who said to Ron the pilot “Just turn all the switches off, pretend you’ve left the helicopter for the day, and now you’re coming back to work in the morning to start the helicopter. Take a deep breath and do it that way.” So that’s what he did, and the helicopter started. We flew off and crested the ridge. Apparently, Willi was observed jumping up and down like a little gnome because he was so happy to learn that we were okay.

It wasn’t until the warden reunion held in the mid 1990’s that I finally heard the full story surrounding the helicopter and challenges facing Ron that afternoon. Apparently, when he first flew in, little information about the accident had been relayed out by radio so, when he flew over the staging area at the base of the east ridge and saw people on the ground waving, he landed there. It turned out that the people who had been waiving had nothing to do with our situation. While this was being sorted out some fog rolled in making it impossible to take off notwithstanding Willi’s pleas over the radio to do so. From his perspective, still on the ridge Willi could see that the fog layer was thin and there were clear skies in the cirque where Tim and I were. As I mentioned the helicopter was an Alouette 3. The unique thing about an Alouette 3 is that it is equipped with wheels and skis. Ron took advantage of this feature of the helicopter to taxi on the glacier following the wands placed by climbing parties as a way of getting to us instead of flying in the fog layer. At times the swirling snow and fog obscured his ground reference and he had to shut down. I was told that at some point one of the Wardens on board got out. He tied a climbing rope to the helicopter and walked out the length of the rope. Ron then restarted the helicopter and taxied up to the waiting Warden before shutting down and restarting the process until they cleared the fog and were able to fly in where they landed near us. Once landed, Ron was advised to remain in the helicopter while the Wardens got out to handle our rescue as there was the possibility of falling into a hidden crevasse. I guess curiosity got the better of Ron and he ventured out of the helicopter and promptly fell up to his armpits into a small crevasse. He had to be hauled out of it by the Wardens. Understandably, with his mind racing from this experience he had trouble focusing on the helicopter starting sequence.

The Alouette 3 lands at Base Camp on our way in (note wheels and skis).

We flew to a fuel cache, re-fueled and then continued to Haines Junction. There was a nursing station there. A nurse came out, gave me something for my pain and we then flew into the hospital in Whitehorse. It was a Saturday and the emergency doctor on call that day was the local gynecologist. My knee was very swollen and so incredibly painful that they gave me a general anesthetic while they proceeded to properly align and stabilize it in a cast. Initially they were going to fly me to Vancouver for surgery, but I was able to convince them to try and find a surgeon for me in Calgary. Anticipating that this was going to be a long process it was going to be much more convenient to have a physician in Calgary rather than Vancouver.

Peter Fuhrmann was able to find an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Vince Murphy, who was the team doctor for the Calgary Stampeders in those days. I was flown to Calgary and ended up in the Holy Cross hospital for the last part of June and most of July. I went from having been outdoors almost continuously since graduating from university in the spring of 1977 to being indoors and mostly bedridden full time. That was a real shock.

I was beginning to feel sorry for myself. But you know, within a day of being in the hospital, a young man about my age was admitted for an amputation of his infected leg. He’d been in a car accident and had broken his leg. He had sustained a compound fracture. Unfortunately, with the compound fracture, the bone had been exposed and got infected. The antibiotics weren’t stopping the spread of the infection that had taken hold in his leg. With the infection working its way towards his core they had no option but to amputate. It didn’t take me too long to stop feeling sorry for myself.

SH: Wow, that’s wild.

Peter: I ended up in a room on the fourth or fifth floor of a wing facing south in Holy Cross hospital. It was miserably hot in there. The windows would open but you needed a special key from the nursing station to do it. The nurses wouldn’t open the window and leave it unattended because their policies were such that they didn’t want to run the risk of having a patient jump out. I can always remember teasing them saying “You know, you really think I’m going to jump out of this window here after what I’ve been through? Ya right.” Thankfully my eventual mother-in-law Lorna Purdy would come by almost daily with ice cream. She also left me a small fan that was such a simple joy to have.

SH: Do you ever dream about that still?

Peter: No, it has never given me any nightmares. There were things that went wrong that day but there were so many more things that went right. My mother had been killed by a drunk driver in a freak accident a few months earlier where she was headed eastbound on a multilane highway late one weekday evening in early March at a time when traffic was supposed to be light. Yet at the time of her accident, the lanes beside her just happened to have vehicles in them preventing her from swerving out of the way of the oncoming driver who hit her head on as he was driving the wrong way in her lane. From a purely worldly perspective, her death was senseless and should never have happened. From that same perspective Tim and I should never have survived and yet we did. It was nothing less than miraculous that we made it.

This event has given me a greater sense of peace in life than I ever had before, especially in situations that don’t seem to be going well or not as I might have intended. I came into existence and continue to exist not through my own power but only through the gifts received from God. That day God had me in his hands; there was absolutely nothing I could do. I surrendered to His providence not out of any decision I made but because everything was beyond my control. We survived simply because of Divine Providence, God’s will. It’s just that simple. We are eternal beings created by a God who created us out of love for love. Our lives on this earth are just a small part in the grand scheme of things. This event served to strengthen my belief that there is a plan for our lives and deepen my trust in Divine Providence. If we approach each and every event that we encounter in life looking for the good to be found in it, the opportunities and the lessons to be learned, I believe that in time we will realize our full potential both in this life on this earth and more importantly on into eternity when we will see God face to face and fully appreciate His love and our dignity as His children made in His image. That’s always been my faith and as I look in the rearview mirror of my life, not only is my faith reinforced by such times of reflection but I gain such a great sense of hope and inner peace for what awaits me on the other side of the doorway of death when God decides to call me home regardless of the manner in which He feels is best for me. I firmly believe that if I but trust in God, His perfect plan for my life will be realized. With that thought ever before me all I need to do is cooperate with God by properly exercising the free will He has given me. It’s Thy (God’s) will, not my will. We all have unique gifts that, if used in the way God intended us to use them, will bring about a world of peace and harmony enabling us to reach our full human potential as eternal beings created by and for love. Selfishness and poor stewardship of our God given gifts are the root cause of the rancor and division that has plagued mankind throughout history and continues to prevent us from realizing our full potential as children of our heavenly Father.

Chris at Red Earth Creek.