Transcript
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Welcome to Round Trip Death. This week in the United States we're celebrating our Thanksgiving
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holiday. So before we get to today's near-death experience, and it's a good one, I'd like
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to thank all of our listeners. We've had the show going for just a few months now,
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but the response has been amazing. We have listeners all over North America, on six continents,
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and in 54 foreign countries. And a special thank you to our dozens of guests who have
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been willing to open up and share their inspiring personal experiences. Thank you so very much.
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Oh yeah, and if you haven't heard an experience of someone who is frozen to death, keep listening
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to this episode.
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All right, we have with us today Peter Panagor. And Peter is smiling big and he forgot that
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we don't have a camera, so that's okay. I'm happy to see you and everybody else is happy
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to listen to you this morning. But Peter, we're going to get into your story momentarily.
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I just want to give our listeners a little heads up. Quite often the NDE itself is the
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star of the show in these stories. But what led up to your NDE and how you guys self-rescued
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is really an amazing story. So we're going to be talking a lot about that today too.
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Anyway, good morning.
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Good morning, Eric.
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And for people all over the world, good evening, afternoon, whatever time of day you have.
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Yeah, hello everybody.
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Anyway, Peter, would you tell us a little bit of your background just so we can get
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to know you a little bit?
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Eric, I grew up outside of Boston, went to Catholic high school, was raised Roman Catholic
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and Greek Orthodox, the two warring churches didn't like each other much. I am a near-death
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experiencer. I died ice climbing in 1981. I got ordained in a denomination, United Church
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of Christ. I was talked into this by the Dean of Students when I went off to Yale to study
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mysticism. They don't teach mysticism at Yale, not really. They have classes and professors
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and my Dean of Students allowed me a three-year independence study. And I went off and kind
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of hid in the church as a non-believing mystic. I worked in religion, but I am not religious
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as a result of my NDE. I worked in television for 15 years. I had a TV spot with 30 million
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views a year on two NBC stations here in Maine. And I died a second time in 2015.
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And rumor has it you're a bestselling author. Is that true?
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I'm an international bestselling author. I am. And I'm as surprised as anyone. And when
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the, when my book came out, I was personally more nervous about my writing than I was about
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my NDE. By that point, some people around me knew my NDE and I was kind of comfortable
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with it, but I was scared to be a writer in public.
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Yeah. I mean, everybody's reading your work for good or bad. It must be good.
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It worked out okay. I was an English major as an undergraduate. I was dyslexic. Here's
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another thing. I was dyslexic and didn't really learn to read until seventh grade. And then
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I took to story and storytelling and was an English major and writing has been a major
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part of my life since I was an undergrad. I love the persnickety aspect of the detail
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of the structure of language.
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Wow. Okay. I'll ruminate on exactly what that means. You're allowed to give a shameless
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plug for your book.
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Oh, shameless. It's been acquired for a film. I've been working for two years with some
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major producers in Hollywood. I just came back from Malibu a couple of weeks ago, meeting
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with them for the first time. I've been working with them for two years. It's kind of been
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made into a movie and we're pretty far along in the process for the pre process.
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What's the book called?
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Heaven is Beautiful and it is available worldwide. Heaven is Beautiful. How Dying taught me that
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death was just the beginning. It's full of metaphor and simile.
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Can't wait to read it. All right. Let's go back to 1981. You like ice climbing and I
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assume other mountaineering kind of stuff. What exactly happened on that day?
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So I'd never been an ice climber up to that point. I'd been a mountaineer. I climbed lots
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of large mountains in the United States all over the Northwest and in New England for
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many, many years and had spent a lot of time in the winter outdoor camping. So this was
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in my element and I'd climbed rock, but I'd never climbed ice. So I was in Alberta, Canada,
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north of Banff in March of 1980. There was about 10 feet of snow on the ground. We're
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on the Icefields Parkway. It's a most spectacularly beautiful place. If you ever headed out that
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way, it's worth seeing. It's also very, very remote compared to especially where I live.
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And it was a world famous climb. There's a wall called Weeping Wall and Weeping Wall
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is at the bottom of Cirrus Mountain north of Banff, south of Jasper. And we went to
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have an adventure. I wasn't trained on ice. My partner was. He was a certified lead climber.
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His name was Tim. When we got to the bottom of the climb that day, he was instructing
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me what to do and telling me how to do stuff. I knew enough about ropes and carabiners and
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that sort of stuff, but I hadn't planted an axe in ice ever. And one of the things about
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ice climbing is that you need two axes. I only had one axe and a hammer and the hammer
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is significantly shorter. And because it was so short, it delayed my climb all day long.
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I was slower on each. When you put the axe in the ice and you put the other, for me,
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hammer in the ice, you can swing the axe pretty far, but you can only swing the hammer
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a third of that distance because of its length. And so my climb was shorter in every single
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planting of the axe. And it was longer because I was exhausted because I was holding onto
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this hammer with all my might. The axe you can set in the ice and dangle from it. You
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can support yourself with it with a strap that's around your wrist, but the hammer has
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the strap off the bottom. And when you plant it in the ice, you have to hold on. So all
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of this combined to me being much slower than every other person on the ice that day. And
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there were other teams, maybe six. I don't really know. I don't remember how many teams
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there were a bunch of people on the ice that day.
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And it sounds like you were pretty exhausted as well.
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By the time I got even halfway up the climb. So yes, my exhaustion set in early because
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I was expending all this energy that no one else was because nobody else had to cling
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like I did. So I was I was burning out my muscle. So I wasn't I wasn't completely physically
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exhausted, but my forearms were totally burned. And so that meant I had a lot of resting periods
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when I just couldn't I couldn't swing that axe that hammer one more time at the weight.
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And I would guess that especially if you haven't done this, you haven't really built up those
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muscles and that muscle memory. Now, I'm trying to I'm picturing this whole thing in my mind.
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How high is this climb?
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It's about 500 feet, five or 600 feet. It's at the bottom of maybe a 10,000 foot mountain.
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It's a wall of ice with rock around it.
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That's that's high. 500 plus feet. Tell me about the hammer. I know what the ice axe
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looks like. What does the hammer look like?
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The hammer is maybe eight inches long. It has someone had drilled a hole in the bottom
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of it and taken a nylon piece of tubing and attached to the bottom with this with a screw
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a well set screw. The axe was looks like a pardon me the hammer looks like the axe okay
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it's got the same bird beak on it with the charade edge like a sawzall blade right but
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thicker and stronger but it doesn't have it doesn't have any length to it. And it doesn't
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have a blade on the back of it. A lot of ice axes have a blade on the back where you can
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chip with it. This didn't have a blade on the back of it. It was a flat flat side. And
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so when I set this thing in the ice it it's still held at the physics was the same for
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the large axe and the hammer as you set the axe into the ice and you tip the bottom in
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on the pin is a pin on the bottom like a little sharp end and that whole thing sets in place.
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And the physics are that you can release your hand with this hypotenuse and this right angle
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you can dangle on this thing and it holds you to the mountain but the hammer if I plant
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the hammer it didn't have a pick on the bottom that's the first thing and so instead of picking
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into the ice it rested against the ice and I could not ever let go of it because if I
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tried to release my hand and the hammer would just pull away from the ice. I had to keep
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myself like strongly in position. So and usually the hammer is used for chipping holes so you
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chip the hole and you put the ice screw in and then you put the hammer on the top of
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the ice screw like an Archimedes screw and you use this lever use the hammer as a lever
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to wind this thing and my job was to take the hammer and remove the screws. So I was
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using this tool not only to climb but every time I stopped to remove a screw that my partner
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Tim had set in the ice because we we were collecting our screws as we went I didn't
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want to leave them there so I unscrewed these things that also worked my this arm my right
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arm primarily and sometimes my left because I was trying to distribute the exercise but
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you are completely right. I had not done these motions with my muscles ever basically and
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I was not built muscularly for this. I'd been skiing all season had been on the National
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Ski Patrol and so I had some muscle mass in my legs and my upper body was somewhat trained
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from cross-country and downhill skiing so I had I had some strength it's just that that
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those particular motions were not included in my workouts.
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Well sure I mean that's just not something you do every day and there may not even be
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anything at the gym to replicate that so I get it. So okay the day goes on do the other
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teams get done before you so it's just you and Tim left on the ice?
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The other teams got done before us we were at the top of the climb and it was sunset
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and the temperature dropped about 30 degrees even before we got to that place most of the
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teams had left and as we sit as the sun went down we watched the last team leave they turned
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and they looked at us and they waved at us or they raised their arms they were little
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tiny specks they were 500 feet below us so we waved back and I had this distinct impression
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because I was very emotional about this I knew the circumstance we were in I knew we
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were in a deadly place and so I had all this like this fear that had been building throughout
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the whole end of the second half of the climb knowing that we were going to be so late because
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of me so they left and I don't know whether they were like what are you doing man up there
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you know with their hands raised or all I did was wave to them and I had this despondency
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that set into me as I watched them walk out.
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Yeah and you guys are still there is the idea that once you get to the top you can just
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repel down so it's pretty easy to get down or is it a reverse motion the whole way down
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compared to what you came up doing?
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Well it's a lot easier to go down than to go up because it is it was a three pitch climb
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so there were three repels and I've done a lot of repelling in my life up to that point
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and repelling is pretty easy and that wasn't what happened to us so we the repelling itself
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was simple but all of the things that happened in between the repels those caused us further
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problems and we that we made mistakes and it was always dangerous because we're traversing
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in the dark so there was starlight we could see but it's still in the dark there's still
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dark shadow and there's a 500 foot drop to your to my left and we were on ice or rock
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in in hypothermia steals your your cognitive capacity it takes away your ability to think
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and make rational decisions and this is this is seen often in the end of a hypothermic
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situation and happened to me to an extent is a lot of sometimes people are found naked
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I unzipped my coat at the end I knew I knew better okay national ski patrol trained in
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wilderness understood exactly what was going on but I really just didn't care so the repelling
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could have been simple and actually when we were on the lines it was but in between all
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sorts of terrible things okay so when did you realize everything had gone bad did you
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get stuck somewhere oh and by the way did you have headlamps and extra clothing were
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you prepared for this nobody was prepared for a night climb as far as we knew nobody
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carried up extra clothes or extra food or extra water and so no I mean I've done a during
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day climbing you know if I go rock climbing I don't bring up a extra clothes I bring up
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a you know I bring up a little extra warmth right you know it's like backpacking but no
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we didn't plan on being there after dark and no one else had so we were we were out of
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food out of water skinny as a church mouse and because we were in our 20s no extra body
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fat and we were wet from the sweat and the ice because the ice was falling down my neck
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all day I'm wearing wool because I don't have any eye tech here because it doesn't really
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exist at this point there's all this all the fancy stuff didn't come out till after and
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we we knew I knew about two-thirds of the way up that our situation was deadly and you
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can't just descend on an ice climb you can't like just go down the way you came up you
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have to go to the top and you have to go to the repel spaces and it's not like a written
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rule you have to do this it's like you it's not possible to do it the other way okay that
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helps because some people would say well why didn't you just go down when it started getting
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dark okay that makes sense now okay what happened next so we were at the top of this climb legs
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dangling over on this little ledge sun goes down temperature drops about 30 degrees we
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get violent shivers all of my muscles micro muscles and massive muscles were independently
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pulsating from each other it was like this this chaotic expansion and contraction of
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every individual muscle in my body each one doing its own thing and so I had this massive
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shiver going on shaking uncontrollably clattering jaw Tim had the same thing and he hauled up
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the line and the line got tangled first big mistake of the night and so then that took
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a long time for me to untangle that in the dark as we discussed our deadly situation
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knowing that that this where we were was going to kill us and that we were 500 feet up and
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that we had three repels to go in the dark the that our chances of survival were pretty
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low from our point of view but we knew that if we tried to stay there in the wilderness
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you're supposed to stay where you are when you have an emergency so the people can find
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you but that wasn't an option for us we talked about snuggling into each other to try to
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stay warm against each other against the face of the mountain but neither of us were warm
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so there was no chance that that was going to work so we make this first repel pardon
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me traverse we get to the to the first repel the next mistake was that I should say this
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is the third because I made the first one with the axe and the hammer so the there was
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this we took a piece of nylon webbing tied in a square knot that you wrap around this
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little tiny tree and then you put your rope through it so that when you're down below
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you can slide your rope to the webbing but when we saw this we're like we don't want
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to waste that webbing Tim's like this cost this is this is my webbing it's cost me money
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and I don't want I'm a college student and I'm not going to do that and I'm like all
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right that's a good idea to me and five bucks come on right and although that's what you're
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supposed to do we knew what we were supposed to do so we threw the rope around we descend
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and when I tried Tim was went first and when I pulled on the rope the rope had stuck to
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the tree had frozen to the tree and so now and at the bottom of this repel so it was
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a bouncy bounce off the rock as you go rock and ice and then we get to this place where
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there's a bit of an inverted overhang maybe I don't know 30 degrees or 45 degrees or whatever
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it is but it's it's a little bit of a distance and so there's where there's this space we
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slid down in midair so I'm pulling on the rope and the ropes frozen I can't get it
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loose and I called Tim hey Tim I need help with the rope he comes over we're both hanging
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our weight on this thing lifting ourselves up and the thing just won't move and now you
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know meanwhile hypothermia is advancing rapidly so now we're we've lost coordination I'm falling
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in the snow I live in snowland Tim's Tim was from Iowa there's snow there you know how
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to walk in the snow couldn't hardly do it just tripping over my own feet falling we
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fell down a bunch of times now lips were becoming so cold that speaking articulation was very
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difficult and we decided that all communications needed to be minimalized along with all of
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our motions to be minimalized because every single word we said every motion that we made
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drained our limited energy so I felt like I had this gas tank or a watt meter I don't
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know how many how many electrons in my battery I left you know you see that and every time
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I spoke that energy level I watched it decline and decline and decline what that meant was
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that we had we had time was against us or the cold was against us our energy levels
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were against us and all of these things were in combination to try to be as efficient as
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possible to save our own lives so we're both actually fully terrified I am I am I have
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this is the most in my life I after I died I'm not afraid of death I have zero fear of
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death but I've been in harrowing situations in my life and none of them compared to this
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in terms of terror for fear of death okay so my fear of death was removed by this I
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was in fear of my life and I knew that I was dying and I'm 21 years old and we're trapped
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on this mountain the density of the population I remember this because I looked it up was
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1.7 people per square mile so this is like nobody there and the whole province and well
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and there's no cell phones no sat phones it's not like you can call search and rescue to
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bring a helicopter and lift you off you you are on your own you and Tim we were on our
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own in the wilderness and I should say we had spent the previous eight days on our own
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in British Columbia right across the border backcountry skiing and snow caving into Mount
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Descente Boyne and so we learned in that week to trust each other and neither of us there
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were some exciting events that happened on that ski but neither of us ever lost our head
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and during this entire trip both of us knew that fear of if fear produces panic panic
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is going to kill you that panic kills people in the wilderness that's one of the things
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and so we both were operating part of our mental energy was operating to repress our
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fear so I'm in this big huge repression of my fear I'm trying to think things through
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with a muddled mind communicate with frozen face eyeballs are beginning to freeze my eyeballs
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are cold my eyeballs my eyeballs still get cold I'm wearing half audience you can't see
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but I'm wearing half gloves right now because when the temperature goes below 55 degrees
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I my hands I have I have cold hands I just have cold hands my whole my whole thermal
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system got wrecked by this so we're in this situation the rope is above us we can't get
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it loose by pulling on it with both our weights Tim decides that he can re-ascend the rope
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itself no protection no just re-ascend the rope itself as if he was free climbing on
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a rope and to do that he took out this took out this line this very thin climbing line
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and formed two large loops that he used a particular kind of hitch on both sides of
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the line called a persic hitch he put one on the right side one on the left side with
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these like four foot loops and he put was right foot into the right loop and his left
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foot into the left loop and this particular hitch is like all hitches they have a high
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frequency high level of friction that's applied when you pull in the line and when the lines
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not being pulled it can slide and it's loose so the idea is this is a climbing hitch that's
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used for this purpose and this is of course in the days before they had these things called
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the senders which attached the rope and you can pull yourself up on them same idea but
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it's with a hitch so I took the rope and I wrapped it around my waist and I laid down
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in the snow and I tried to make the vertical line as tight as possible as taut so that
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Tim could ascend to this and he and it's not it's not like wrapped around at both lines
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are wrapped around to my belly it's like I had to wrap one around my stomach and one
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around my chest to give him room enough to be in between them and so he had some a better
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position so I wrapped this up and he's going up because he's responsible he feels responsible
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because he is he was the lead climber he's the certified guy he's like the only way we're
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out of this situation is if I do this we talked about this this is dangerous scary thing he's
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doing and so I look I wind the line in a line in the snow and he begins the ascent and I
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can't really see him I can't see him I'm like half my face is in the snow and I can see
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with one eye over over to the mountain range that's to the west of us and which isn't
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that far away the mountain range over there and I suddenly the rope is jerking as he's
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going up one arm and one leg and one arm and suddenly I hear him say falling and I'm like
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oh my god and so he comes falling down I try to roll out of the way as quickly as I can
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but I'm in the snow and I can't do this very well because I don't have much coordination
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and calf lands on me and his foot got entangled in the loop that he was of this hitch that
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he was climbing ascending with and it must have jerked the rope free and the rope came
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tumbling down on us this is hours later so this is I tell it in like minutes but that's
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not it was it was not minutes right so the good news is the rope is free there's some
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bad news coming out of feeling there's more bad news but there was a moment of good news
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so the good news was is that we had signed into the wilderness log saying where we're
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going in where we're going what time we're going in and when we're coming out and we
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didn't sign out and the warden came looking for us so at this point maybe it must be before
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midnight at this point some it's some hours before midnight and suddenly down the highway
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comes this headlights and they've only been one vehicle all night long since since the
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last climber left nobody drove by so this vehicle pulls into the parking lot right across
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the street across the parkway from us and flashes its lights and we jump up and down
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and he flashes his lights so we were like it's got to be the warden and he sees us so
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now we're we're like buoyed and our we know somebody knows that we're here and so that
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was very helpful to us emotionally and psychologically so now we put the rope together and what rope
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up with each other again and we make this traverse off but now we're completely off
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the ice we're only on rock with with crampons on so it's clickety-clack-clack as we walk
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across and plus we get all these I have all these ice screws dangling like it like a like
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a bell system off my hip clunk and clunk and clunk and so it's it's and and and they're
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bumping up against me and I'm trying to focus every single motion that I make and as I'm
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walking to this third second repel I I'm driving myself forward with this willpower that I
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didn't know that I had I and I'm driving my fear down but this fear is also propelling
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my willpower towards survival and then I had like this transition moment when I went from
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only just my mental drive when I felt like I had applied so much pressure to myself for
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this survivability that that somehow I drilled down inside this deeper stem of my mind and
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my of my brain and tapped into this place that I that it's like in my animal space my
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original animal nature the hundreds of thousands of years old developed for the survival of
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myself and my species I went into this space where where all of this new strength came
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from and so I wasn't I was having this intuitive experience of my animal nature combined with
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my my reasoning capacity that I was harnessing to drive myself forward in my will for survival
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and and meanwhile while this is going on inside of me buoyed by the vision of the warden down
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below I have this pressure of the fire of the cold burning all of me my hands are on
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fire my face is on fire my feet are on fire my every motion that I take I feel my energy
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being depleted Tim and I are not talking at all literally only few words as necessary
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and every motion that I would make every step I would take I would stop I would look for
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the next footstep I deliberately place it in the right spot and again and again and
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again with continued mental focus so all of this also takes all of this singular paying
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attention to exactly what you're doing in the now because if you don't you die and so
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we traverse over to this place and we get to the third repel second repel second repel
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and there's a an iron pin epoxied in the mountain like a ring with a ring attached to it and
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Tim puts the line through it and he descends this easy repel so we easily repel down the
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space on these rocks and and I follow down him when he calls up to me and I come down
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the line and I turn the corner there's a bit of a corner to go around onto this ledge and
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there are safety harnesses epoxied into the mountain and so he attached himself to the
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safety harness I attached myself and now for the first time all night we're not going to
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fall so at this point we turn we wave to the ward and we're like we made it and he flashes
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his lights after a minute or two and drives away because now we're in this position of
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one more repel and he's going to bed and so it's pretty easy spot it's the it's the practice
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place where people climb up and then repel down from it's the easiest spot on the whole
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climb so I took my I took the line the rope and the tied attached one into my my waist
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harness that was my nylon support and I took the other end of this rope and I tossed it
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out around the side around out to my right around this this corner where I had rounded
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it to come off the repel to stand on this ledge and I gave the rope a yank and I gave
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it a good pull and as soon as I pulled it I pulled it maybe four or six inches maybe
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that much and it it it jammed and and the more I pulled it the deeper it set into whatever
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crag it was caught and I told him you know the rope is jammed and he said well flip the
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line and so I started you know try to flip the line like like a make a wave for a minute
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but the rope was laying against the rock itself and the wave form couldn't bypass that
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corner so I couldn't snap the line out of the jam and so now I only have one end of
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the rope or 100 150 feet up and the that's now wardens gone and we are in deep trouble
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again so he can't get past either right you're below him you're stuck no no we're side we're
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side by side well let me explain I guess I didn't do a good enough job so he's standing
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to my left we're on a ledge the ledge is maybe six maybe eight feet long and maybe two and
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a half three feet deep against the rock face and then the rock face in front of each of
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us are iron pins epoxied in with rings with carabiners and nylon I got it I didn't realize
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there were two of those okay sorry I should have been clearer in my explanation no you're
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good keep going so he's to my left and I'm to his right and when I tied when I tied the
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rope to my harness I had to take my mittens off and I was wearing rag wool mittens with
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leather chaps covered with mink oil right and this was it was adequate for the day but
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not for the night plus I'm all I'm dressed I was wearing a surplus army wool pants that
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I got at the surplus and I was wearing my my boots were these like 1967 or 64 leather
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ski boots that you know that lace up ski boots okay I remember what those look like and they
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were like high tops just above my ankles and I had I had they're the kind of ski boot that
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if you fell you'd definitely break your ankle break yeah and there's no Gore Tex back then
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there's none of that kind of stuff okay it's wool and leather it's wool and leather oh
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my god I never phrased it that way to myself but that's it huh so and I had a rag wool
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hat on under my helmet and so we're in this position I took off my rag wool gloves in
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order to tie this line to myself and the the dexterity of I'm a dexterous person I'm still
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a dexterous person I I'm but I but to move my fingers in a way to tie a simple knot took
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an immense amount of effort I couldn't feel my fingers I could only see them and plus
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I I was casting a shadow over my hands because the moon was behind so all of this effort
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to tie the rope in played into what happened next because we discussed do I untie the rope
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and Tim tried to grab the line with me and we pulled together but every time I pulled
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it it just set deeper and so we just we decided that if I if I tried to untie the rope there's
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chances that I would drop it because my hands are so frozen or the Tim would drop it and
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so we decided that it was better not to do that so it was my responsibility to keep pulling
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on the rope but now the wardens gone my energy is depleting rapidly now so my my tank is
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is heading toward the very end of my of my ability to keep myself warm so all this energy
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in my body is being consumed trying to keep this the my my engine going so if you're a
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cell phone would with the little battery things say like three percent or something oh it
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was getting down there yeah it wasn't quite at three I would say it was more like at seven
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at this point okay because the there were a couple more steps to go through maybe even
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nine couple more hypothermic things that had to happen that's still the red area it's red
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it's in the red and so I'm I'm I'm trying to pull on the rope all have all this emotion
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going through me because now I know I'm going to die and so I say that I say that with such
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ease now I know I'm going to die but I was twenty one years old and I was terrified and
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I knew that there was no way out of this and that I I had made ill-informed decisions that
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led to my death and the the that was a how stupid could I be to have believed that I
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could climb with an axe and a hammer which I did okay I did do that but doing that created
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this cascade of events that led to this moment where where that was going to be public knowledge
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and my parents my parents were going to lose me and my my sister had run away when I was
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a kid when I was fourteen she vanished from our lives it created deep wounds in my family
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this is the reason I was in Montana and not in Boston I was escaping these deep wounds
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I did not want to be in that presence because of the the when when someone becomes a strange
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you know it used to happen a lot in the in the in the olden days when someone would board
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a ship and never be seen again and there'd be this open wound and if they did this in
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the dead of night and they vanished and you believe that they went off in the ship it
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didn't stop this endless mourning for them so there was endless mourning in my house
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and endless grief in my house and so I my my parents were sorely wounded by this and
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I compounded this now not only did I not go back to visit them and on the spring break
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over which they had insisted that I did but I'm like f you I'm not going and so I'm here
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on this cliff and and and I'm desperate now I'm I'm I'm desperate I have this experience
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where suddenly a peace overflows me I'm thinking about my parents I'm thinking about the inevitability
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of my death and it was like this switch flipped and when the switch flipped this piece overcame
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me because I knew I was not getting out of this I I I was watching the progression of
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my frostbite and my hypothermia I was educated in this I I knew I was going to die and when
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I finally knew that I was going to die death was waiting for me a piece in filled me I
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released all of my fear I released all of my not not not knowing what was going to happen
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but the drive of the fears power to drive me forward evaporated
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and I suggest something here sure maybe it wasn't that you just realized you were going
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to die but you had just finally accepted it because up until this point you were in denial
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you were in still and just as bad of a place and at this point you finally went okay I
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accept the inevitable here yeah you know all these years of being a pastor I never put
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that together myself my is maybe was too close to me
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that can bring that piece you're talking about I've seen it happen a hundred times by bedsides
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I just yeah I accepted my circumstance thank you again for listening to the first half
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of Peter's Adventure in part two coming out later this week we'll hear all about what
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he experienced during his NDE and how they were rescued until then I wish you everything
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good that you're looking for in this life and the next.
