U.S. Navy SEAL Guide to Mountain and Arctic Survival Secrets by Don Mann

Author:Don Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2012-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

Keizo Funatsu—Lost Overnight in a Hurricane-Force Blizzard

Keizo Funatsu was the sole Japanese member of the six-man International Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1989-1990 that had successfully dog-sledded 3,725 miles across Antarctica. They were sixteen miles from their destination—Russia’s Mirnyy base—when Keizo Funatsu vanished in a raging blizzard.

He’d gone outside at four-thirty in the afternoon to feed the sled dogs. At that time snow had stated falling and it was about minus twenty-five degrees F. Within minutes the wind picked up dramatically, and visibility became problematic. Keizo, who was wearing only Gore-Tex boots, a wind parka, and wind pants, long underwear, and wool socks, couldn’t find his second ski, even though he’d planted his ski poles upright in the snow to serve as guideposts.

He waited ten minutes for the visibility to improve without any luck. When he tried to move back toward his first ski, he found it almost impossible to walk straight ahead into the wind. He tried moving left, then right, and realized that because of the lack of visibility, he wouldn’t be able to find anything even though his skis were, at most, a few feet away.

He tried shouting, “I’m here. I’m here. Come on.” Frustrated by the fact that he wasn’t far from the camp, he tried pushing through the wind. Initially the cold didn’t bother him because the adrenaline in his body was keeping him warm. But Keizo was worried about his toes, which were getting cold.

He spotted some dog excrement and a faint sled trail of a sled, which he tried to follow. It quickly disappeared. The sled trail meant that Keizo was positioned behind the camp, so he stopped.

Using a pair of pliers he carried in his pocket to help unfreeze dog collars and fix broken ones, Keizo started to dig into the icy surface and scooped out a shallow ditch about two and a half feet deep. He put his feet in and allowed the storm to bury him just as he’d watched the sled dogs do to protect them from the elements.

The blowing snow covered him in seconds. Now, he was completely covered and breathing through an air hole close to his body. Unfortunately he wasn’t wearing much and the snow, which was heavy, pressed down on his wind jacket, so his clothes touched his skin. That left no room for a layer of warm air to form.

As time wore on, Keizo realized that he’d probably have to spend the night in the snow ditch since the storm hadn’t let up and there was probably zero chance of his teammates finding him in the dark.

He was cold and worried about losing energy. He didn’t know if he should lie still or move around to try to warm his body. He kicked his feet to keep the blood circulating. Every twenty or thirty minutes he pulled himself out of the snow ditch, jumped up and down, and rubbed his arms. At first, he tried shouting but realized that he couldn’t be heard through the raging wind.

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