A Grandmother Needing the Bathroom Saved My Life

The snow started to reach my knees, and I considered turning back, but the hill was too steep and slippery to climb, with nothing to hold on to but piles of snowy powder. I stopped wasting my energy trying to go backwards, and just decided to power on. It wasn't far, and it was a well-trodden path after all.

The snow started to reach my hips. To continue at this point, I had to compact the surrounding snow with my hands, and use the compacted area to hoist my body up out of the hole, and launch myself further down the hill. This process would then repeat: I would be up to my waist in powder, bash it down until it was solid, and then use my arms to explosively push up and hurl myself into the next patch of powdered snow.

After some time, I decided that I was in a bit of a rough situation… I tried to get my phone, but my hands were frozen solid from compacting snow. I couldn't bring my fingers together to grab the zip, and I couldn't breathe enough warm air to thaw them. I had to continue. I had to get to the road. The snow got deeper, and I started to panic, screaming for help as I continued to compact the surrounding snow, which now reached my chest. I was nearing the limit of how far I could reach, really having to stretch to give the snow one last push, just making it solid enough to be my launchpad.

I was screaming and screaming, yelling "HELP!" as loud as I possibly could, hoping someone would hear. The logical part of me knew, however, that there was no one in the wilderness, and only a couple of the fancy chalets close enough to potentially hear me. Were they awake at this time? Were they in? Were they even occupied? I didn't know, but none of their lights were on… so I continued to scream, and I continued to bash the snow as far as my body could stretch, straining for every extra millimetre of reach.

Pure panic started to set in. I was hyperventilating rapidly, tears were streaming down my face, freezing to a light slush as they did so. I battled the panic with calming breaths, just enough to manage an intermittent "HELP!", before panicking further.

Then it happened. I pushed the snow down, it wasn't yet solid. I pushed further, it still wasn't solid. I stretched further still, forcing my body to contort itself into painful positions, pushing the snow a tiny smidgen extra each time. It still wasn't solid. My hands were frozen blocks, and I didn't know what to do.

My screams for help continued, but became few and far between. I started thinking about my family, friends, and what I was doing with my life. At the time, I was working at a startup, had a very enticing job offer abroad, and was considering a PhD. I had spent countless hours contemplating my future, my goals, and my purpose entirely. But in this moment, I was sad that I had never had the chance to do a PhD, to push the boundaries of a scientific field. I knew I wanted to work on speech technologies for people with dementia, and knew the path to try to get funding, but was hesitating — tempted by the allure of a non-student salary. While stuck there in the snow, I regretted not starting a PhD already, and was gutted that I would never get the chance.

I had stopped screaming for help now due to exhaustion. My breathing had slowed, the tears had stopped. I was just cold. I lay back. And, terrifyingly, I closed my eyes.

My body was wrapped in a fluffy feeling. I could hear chatter. My core was still freezing cold, but on the outside, on my skin, I felt warmth. I opened my eyes to a beautiful wooden lodge and five people. I repositioned myself to see better, and they noticed my movement, suddenly stopping all conversation. Five concerned faces surrounded me. The details of our discussion escape my memory, presumably due to stress, or the fact that I was barely conscious. They gave me hot drinks, sugar, and I was warm dry clothes wrapped within a huge fluffy blanket.

The next morning I awoke to the same beautiful lodge kitchen, the smell of coffee in the air. As they kindly made me a cup, I apologised profusely for wasting their skiing time. I felt terrible that instead of spending their day as a family on the slopes, they were stuck inside caring for me. They laughed, "don't worry, all the slopes are shut due to the avalanche warning" the mother explained. "Luckily, you got some avalanche training in yourself". We all had a chuckle, but my reaction must have revealed that I was missing a layer of the joke. They explained that I had got stuck in the deepest section of snow, the exact spot where all the resort staff do their emergency avalanche training.

I explained my story. I was lost, saw a road that I recognised, and popped down a well-trodden path to get to it. We chatted more, confused by this path, and then realised what had happened. All resort staff have to refresh their avalanche training if there is a serious warning, and they do it in the deep snow at the edge of the resort. Every member of the resort staff had walked the same path the day before… Unfortunately for me, they were walking deliberately into dangerous deep-snow conditions.

The family explained that all five of them, unbelievably, were doctors. Two adult children, their parents, and their grandmother — all doctors! In one of the few chalets that could possibly hear me, the grandmother of the group had woken up to go to the bathroom. On her walk back to bed, she thought she would pop onto her balcony to admire the view into the wilderness of the French Alps. While standing there for that brief moment, she thought she heard a scream for help, and then another. She woke up her family, but they stood and waited to hear it… and couldn't. There were no more yells for help. Despite this, as the grandmother was certain she heard the yells, the younger members of the family donned their snow shoes, grabbed a shovel, and stomped out into the deep snow. She had established a search party.

Miraculously, they found me. I don't know how long it took, but they dug me out of the huge snow pit I was in with only their head torches for light. I was out cold.

After the coffee that morning, and sharing each of our accounts of the night's astonishing chain of events, the son walked me back to my hotel. I didn't know how to thank them. How do you say thanks to a family for literally saving your life? He pointed out where they found me, and it was remarkably close to the road…

I have had a few near-death experiences (I do need to be a little less wreckless), but this was the one time that I had truly given up. I had stopped calling for help, stopped trying to push myself forward, I had even stopped panicking. I just lay back and closed my eyes. After fighting and clambering down this mountain for so long, it terrified me that I had stopped battling forward so close to safety. I swore to never do that again.

Some good things came of this experience. I started my PhD funding application as soon as I got back to Scotland. I could still feel the regret of not doing it, and that made my decision clear. I also realised that I needed to cultivate and test my new-found determination, doing stupid things like a Spartan Ultramarathon (58k with 72 obstacles in the Welsh mountains). This perseverance helped when COVID cancelled a year of my work, and has helped with several moments of my life, when bad news builds and builds, making your goals seem impossible. This experience was truly awful and terrifying, but I am sure what I learned will help me again in the future.

I have now finally finished my PhD, and I have many people to thank. But, without this family, I would never have even had the opportunity to work on it. If that grandmother hadn't needed the bathroom, and hadn't popped onto her balcony at that exact moment, I would not be here today.

Thank you unknown family, I hope you are all doing well.