Imagine this. You’re high up in the mountains when suddenly a ferocious storm comes in. The air temperature drops to -60oC. 60mph cross winds. Your face starts to freeze. You need to get out now. What would you do? Unbelievably, this is the exact situation Nigel Vardy found himself in.
Vardy, also known as “Mr Frostbite”, is a mountaineer, motivational speaker, and author, whose life-changing experience suffering frostbite on Mount McKinley teaches us about resilience, decision-making, and facing challenges head on.
When Vardy found himself caught in the storm, alongside two friends, he knew they had to act quickly. Packing themselves into a crevasse on the side of a hill, Vardy’s thoughts didn’t dally on the long-term consequences of his decisions. The next 5 minutes was crucial and the next 5 minutes was all he allowed himself to think about.
They got themselves out and eventually help came. But the next battle would be the hardest of Vardy’s life. Told that he would essentially be watching parts of his body die or live, understandably Vardy was angry with the world. He lost all of his fingers and toes, part of his left foot, his nose and part of his cheek. He started to think the worst… But, with help from staff, he turned his thinking around.
Vardy describes suffering frostbite as “probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” It made him appreciate what’s important in life. Grateful to be here. Eager to learn more. He shows us that no matter what adversity you face in life, there is hope. Take the next best step and don’t let obstacles define you. Defeat it. Move it. You make the chance.
Nigel Vardy – video transcript
Suffering frostbite was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. It makes you understand what's important in life. It just makes you feel grateful and human. All of a sudden you go, no, I will make the choices. Yes, I'm battered, but I want to learn as well. And I want to understand how I work and how I don't. And that is exactly what this accident did to me.
I never thought as a child or as a teenager I'd ever be a climber. It was something I just found an ability for; I felt alive, I felt really excited. It got me away from the rigours of normal life. And that is ultimately what propelled me to go into further mountaineering, which then resulted of course in Mount McKinley.
Like any mountain in the world, there's a standard route; we took a different one. Fighting through crevasse fields, sleeping in your harness, eye screwed into the floor, because you're worried you might fall through a crevasse in the night. Route finding yourself, going places, lead climbing in sections getting across these huge ridges, to put yourself in that position to go for the summit. And that's where we'd got after two or three weeks.
So we set a high camp up, as high as we did get on the route, and rested the best we could and then pushed and pushed and pushed and onto the plateau. But the plateau of course is open.
And that's where it got us, because on the plateau the weather changed. A summit storm came in; 60 mile an hour cross winds. The air temperature dropped apparently to minus 60, we're told. And it became very apparent, that this side of my face was starting to freeze. The two of the guys are really cold, might be frostbitten as well. We've somehow got to get off this mountain. And this is where you start taking decisions in your life, and you start taking them now, and you have to live with them. We battered away across this plateau and we found a crevasse going into the side of the hill. And basically we smashed the entrance open with axes to open it up, and slid the three of us in to get out the wind. We packed the entrance closed with rucksacks and then we start taking more decisions.
It's hard to imagine how time passes when you are on the top of a mountain, in a hole, in a storm, freezing to death. I never really had great long conversations with myself of, will I get out of this? What will it be like? What's happening to my life? I was always, what's the next five minutes? How can we make things better? What have we got in the rucksack that can help? And I know I fell asleep. And I drifted in and out of consciousness in sleep on a number of occasions. And I'm sure the other lads, Anthony and Steve, did as well. And we're just stuck in this bizarre situation, really. Not knowing where the storm's going to go, what it's going to do, how long it's going to last. But never thinking, this is the end. Never thinking, we'll never get out of this. We got this thing in our head that I think everybody does need to get in their head. If you get yourself into trouble, the best people to get out of it are you. You get yourself in, you get yourself out.
Now we know we needed help. But nobody's ever going to find you buried in the ice on a mountain. We had to take a decision to get out of the hole. I'll always remember pushing the rucksack out and I stood up and I tried to walk and I fell over. And I thought, "This is wrong." Even though I was falling around I couldn't understand why my feet and hands wouldn't work. It wasn't until somebody looked at me and saw that all my face was frostbitten this side. My left eye was nearly closed, I was in a right state. And it was where I saw Steve take the bravest decision I think I've ever seen anybody take in their lives.
He took the decision to go for help and try and save my life, basically. Anthony would stay with me. We would sit together and Steve would go. And we sat there for hours. And again, I can't tell you how long. And eventually that day started to close and the sun started to fade. And right in front of us a chopper popped out of the cloud from nowhere. And they flew us back to Talkeetna and back to Anchorage. And that was where the next part of my life began.
It took a while to understand that I was going to lose anything. I'm told to lie in bed, and I'm told to watch my body die or live, as your toes go from red to purple to black and your fingers do the same. And I can remember particularly when they took the fingers off my right hand first, I was absolutely sick to death with the world and everything it stood for and my life. I would have very happily killed myself. Chucked myself out of a window, anything. And I felt emotionally so dead but I didn't know how to cope with that.
The saving grace was with some tellings off by the staff. And an American doctor came out of retirement and said, "Mr. Vardy, you'll certainly get into the outdoors and you will climb again." And it wasn't until months, if not years later, I don't think I realised how important a statement that was. Yes, you've lost things. You've got to move on now. You have to face the realities of life. You cannot run away from them.
We all have to make a start again and that's what I had to do. And I had to be really regimented with it. Emotionally, I wanted to do more. Physically, I wanted to do more but my mind had to say, "Look, small steps." With two physiotherapists and a walking frame assisting me, I go a few steps. And the physios just take the frame off me, because what they want you to do is not have the crutch to stand on the rest of your life, physically and mentally. Stand up, join the world. And every day from this point on I started to walk, and that was critical.
In mountaineering, I didn't tackle Everest on day one. What you've got to do is put your apprenticeship in and serve that time and learn.
Everybody has something put in front of them in their life. What we have to do is understand what that is before we can tackle it. But we cannot let it define us. If you take this challenge and you take the stance, this is an obstacle and I will go round it, go over it, defeat it, move it, then you have a fighting chance of making something of your life. But the only person that can make that chance is you.
END CARD
Nigel Vardy became a record-breaking British mountaineer.
After his 36 hour ordeal on Mount McKinley, he lost all of his fingers and toes, part of his left foot, his nose and part of his cheek.
He went on to become the first Briton to climb the seven highest mountains on the seven largest islands in the world.
He is now the President of a mountain rescue team to help other climbers who need urgent assistance.
